Print Page

Hot Topics in Economics

Too Big to Fail?

December 19, 2008

Michael Burt
Associate Director
Industrial Outlook, Trade & Investment

There is certainly one business activity that has been spurred as a result of the global financial crisis and resultant decline in economic activity; looking to governments for help. As the queue is now extending past financial institutions to include ...

City Halls Can’t Do Much About the Financial Crisis

December 15, 2008


Director
Centre for Municipal Studies
I am running out of breath, and so are several of my colleagues at The Conference Board of Canada. For weeks now, we have been touring the country discussing the potential fallout of the financial crisis on the Canadian economy. Undeniably, ...

Health Dollars Heading South

December 11, 2008

David Redekop
Principal Research Associate
Canadian Tourism Research Institute

While the demand for more health care professionals, MRI’s and shorter wait times grows, governments continue to spend millions of health care dollars outside the country. They continue to do so despite the 2002 recommendation by The Royal Commission ...

Keynes to the Rescue

December 08, 2008

Kip Beckman
Principal Research Associate,
Economic Services
The great economist John Maynard Keynes looked around at the debacle in the 1930s and realized that something was wrong with prevailing economic thinking. From 1929 to 1933, it appeared that the invisible hand of Adam Smith’s free market was in urgent ...

Financial Crisis: the Impact on China’s Financial System

December 02, 2008

Lin Ai
Economist

Although the current financial crisis that is shaking up the global economy has been felt in China, the impact so far has been muted. Four large Chinese commercial banks have disclosed their exposure to the bonds issued by Lehman Brothers. China’s largest commercial bank, the Industrial and ...

Nova Scotia Vying to Be Prime Stop on Suez–Atlantic Trade Route

November 25, 2008

Prince Owusu
Senior Economist

Sure, the global economy is slowing down and container traffic is getting thin in the near term. Will the current downturn in the business cycle throttle the needed infrastructure to keep trade volumes flowing? Certainly not. A report prepared under the auspices of the United Nations ...

“Crisis of Confidence” Hurting Travel Industry

November 20, 2008

David Redekop
Principal Research Associate
Canadian Tourism Research Institute

Canada’s travel industry is in difficulty and the prognosis is not good. More than a million fewer Americans visited Canada during the past 20 months. Visits from overseas travellers are also beginning to wane. Even worse, Canadians don’t seem ...

Is The Party Over For Canadian Retailers?

November 13, 2008

Pedro Antunes

Pedro Antunes
Director
Forecasting and Analysis
From 2005 to 2008, total real household spending advanced at a very healthy pace. If one excludes those items that we tend to buy regardless of economic “conditions,” such as food, tobacco, rent, and energy, the pace of real consumer spending growth was ...

Will Emerging Countries Save the World?

November 06, 2008

Kip Beckman
Principal Research Associate,
Economic Services
The global economy is facing two rather unpleasant choices as we look ahead to 2009 – a fairly mild recession in key countries of the kind that occurred in 2000-01, or a more severe downturn that transpired in the early 1980s. How ...

The Psychology of Recession

October 31, 2008

Glen Hodgson
Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist
Forecasting and Analysis
For the past six weeks or so, media pundits and some economic forecasters have been quick to leap to the conclusion that “we are in an economic recession”. The word “recession” has been used liberally in the media, ...

1 2 3 »

Latest Conference Board Forecasts: