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1. An economy is for producing well-being, not GDP or tax revenue

   I’m normally a big fan of TD Economics and its various newsletters and publications, which you can get sent to you free. A well-known bank economist once told me the purpose of bank economics departments is not to help with actual bank ...

2. TPP redux—The Art of the Bad Deal

   You encourage 11 of your allies to get together with you in a trade and investment deal. You impose structure and content on it. Then at the last minute you decide you yourself aren’t going to join. After they go ahead and finalize the ...

3. Each episode of financial disaster is a little different than the others

   I spent Wednesday and Thursday of this week at a conference called “Are we ready for the next financial crisis?” Held at the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto, it was a terrific conference—i.e., both fun and ...

4. Canada’s shadow economy—a shadow of its former self

   The International Monetary Fund, or IMF, has some interesting new estimates out on the size of different countries’ shadow economies. We in Canada are about to undergo a rare economic experiment in which part of the economy that has been ...

5. The gender question in economics

   The Montreal newspaper La Presse —which isn’t actually a newspaper anymore but rather a newsscreen, since it comes out on weekdays only in a digital version—observed International Women’s Day by asking why there aren’t more women in ...

6. 35-stop shopping—coming soon to a government near you

   If more innovation programs were all we needed to solve our innovation problems, they would have been solved a long time ago. ...

7. Let’s not subsidize journalism

   When the country’s financial and economic journalists gather in Ottawa Feb. 27 to be voluntarily locked up for several hours in the Ottawa Convention Centre to read (and try to digest) the federal budget, many will be wondering, more ...

8. In Alberta’s wine war with B.C., I’m siding with Australia

   B.C. premier John Horgan threatens to delay the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion yet again so Alberta premier Rachel Notley cancels Alberta’s purchases of B.C. wine, at least those that take place through the Alberta Gaming and Liquor ...

9. The professor pay gap

   One of the many things University of Toronto Prof. Jordan Peterson (pictured above) and TV interviewer Cathy Newman talked about recently in their now-famous-on-YouTube discussion on Britain’s Channel 4 was the male-female wage gap. ...

10. Ban golf and the economy would get along just fine

    Don’t get me wrong. I love golf. I came to the game late but, as my spouse will tell you (with a sigh), I’m trying hard to make up for lost time. As I write, it’s minus 15 Celsius in Montreal with a bitter north wind that makes it feel ...