Introduction

Canadian academic economists have a low public profile. Offhand, it's pretty easy to come up with at least three reasons for that:

1. We're Canadian.
2. We're academics.
3. We're economists.

That pretty much adds up to the trifecta in the category of "people whose opinion is not eagerly sought out".

But I think there's more to it than that. There are lots of people whose opinion isn't in any particularly great demand, but who seek the spotlight anyway in order to promote their policy agenda. What's special about us is that we don't seem to need to do that. The Canadian economics community is pretty small, so academic and public-sector economists know each other fairly well. Government economists are people we've met at conferences, people we've gone to graduate school with, or (more and more frequently for me) people we've had as students. We don't need to mount a public relations campaign in order to get a sympathetic hearing at the Department of Finance or the Bank of Canada.

Three of the most important policy initiatives that have been implemented by the federal government during my career are the FTA/NAFTA, the adoption of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), and the Bank of Canada's decision to adopt inflation targets. None of these policies can be characterised as a being a response to popular opinion: they all had their origins in the interactions between academic and public-sector economists. Even if this process has had the effect of producing good policy outcomes, the disconnect between how policies are made and what is being discussed in public is not healthy in a democracy.

Academic economists play an important role in developing Canadian public policy, and we have a commensurately important obligation to try to explain them as best as we can to the non-economist public. This blog is my own small contribution.

In addition to analyses of what's happening in Canada, I'll also be discussing basic concepts (all economics bloggers end up doing that anyway, so I might as well put it in my mission statement), commenting on developments in the world economy, and posting on any topic that I find interesting enough to write about.

Comments

[mc]

What's that font anyways? Looks like verdana to me.

mc

[RP.]

Economics is witchcraft! Get thee behind me, Satan!

[No Yards]

Looking interesting Gordon, I shall book mark this page so I can irritate your ass (just kidding, really.)

Personally I have no issue with Canadians, academics, or even economists as far as that goes. I just find that economists far to easily discount democracy and humanity ... I think Adam Smith would not be pleased with this. Economists at Policy Alternatives seem to be better able to balance the "math" with "the humanity".

That said, so far the topics look very interesting, I look forward to future posts.

Good luck with your project.

P.S.

I hope you will be able to get some of your fellow Canadian Academic Economists to contribute as well.

[Aaron]

I'll blogroll you at www.canadianeconomist.com and will syndicate your rss feed once I get a few things out of the way here.