Go Big or Go Home: Priorities for the Canada-EU Economic and Trade Agreement

A comprehensive economic and trade agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union (EU) is both desirable and possible. For Canada, an agreement with the EU is a strategic opportunity to significantly diversify the market for its high-value-added goods, services and skills, to increase the attractiveness of its economy for investors, and to make a statement that it is ready to engage with other important trade partners on reducing barriers to mutually beneficial trade and investment. This is important in light of both the failure of the Doha round of WTO talks and the existence of other important trade negotiations undertaken by Canada’s key trade partners.International Economic Policy, comprehensive economic and trade agreement (CETA), Canada, European Union (EU)

Beyond the Border and Back to the Future: Seizing the Opportunity to Enhance Canadian and US Economic Growth and Security

The leaders of Canada and the United States have announced an ambitious vision for perimeter security and economic competitiveness between the two countries. They have charged a working group with producing a multi-year Action Plan that will turn this vision into reality. The vision is centered on the idea that performing inspection and other formalities well before shipments and people arrive at the busy bilateral border will ease costly delays there, and that this can be achieved while simultaneously enhancing security and reducing costs for secure trade and for individuals. The study concludes that these new mechanisms can draw inspiration from existing ones that help provide the mutual trust, dedication and expertise necessary to successfully manage water issues between Canada and the United States.International Economic Policy, trade, Canada, United States, border security

Connecting up embedded knowledge across Northern Powerhouse cities

One of the driving rationales behind plans for major transport investment between Northern UK cities is that of connecting labour pools. Integrated labour pools, the argument goes, will give rise to agglomeration economies and subsequent growth. Behind this logic lies the idea that access to complementary skills in neighbouring cities will yield benefits for firms. Yet, at what travel time radius is access to these skills beneficial? Can a better understanding of this inform our assessment of the likely economic impact of proposed transport investments and subsequent reductions in travel times? Here we develop a method to estimate this radius based on the relationship between industry employment growth in a city and the size of employment in ‘skill-related’ sectors. Assuming car or rail travel, we find that for Northern cities the radius is around 45  min while for the South it is around 110  min. Manufacturing peaks around 45  min for the whole UK, including both North and South. Services, however, peak around 110  min in the South but 70  min in the North. A comparison between the UK’s Integrated Rail Plan and earlier proposals to invest in High Speed 2 rail and Northern rail connections uncovers lost opportunities for employment growth in Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield. This study provides a road-map for the deployment of methods from Evolutionary Economic Geography, originally developed to predict regional and urban growth and diversification processes as a function of the local skill mix, to evaluate the potential gains from transport infrastructure schemes

The Review of Economic Performance and Social Progress 2001: The Longest Decade: Canada in the 1990s

In this chapter, Daniel Schwanen addresses the impact of the major trade liberalization efforts undertaken by Canada and its trading partners beginning with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 1989. The author focuses in particular on the question of whether liberalized trade could have been a factor behind the emergence of greater inequalities in Canada in the 1990s. The author divides Canadian manufacturing industries into five groups according to their sensitivity to trade liberalization in the 1990s and to the direction taken by exports and imports following the opening of trade. Schwanen concludes from this exercise that more open trade may have contributed to inequalities in Canada, by favoring certain groups already doing relatively well, while being unfavourable to many less-skilled and lesser-paid groups.Trade, Inequality, Manufacturing, Canada, FTA, NAFTA, Free Trade, Free-trade, Trade Liberalization, Free Trade Agreements, United States, US, U.S.

Evitemos los atajos: un desglose de la relación CanadáEstados Unidos

Este artículo intenta trazar el mapa de la interacción de tres dimensiones de integración entre Canadá y Estados Unidos: el acceso a los mercados, la integración de las normas, desde los estándares para productos hasta los procedimientos de seguridad, y el control (soberanía) que Canadá, en tanto socio mucho menor, puede esperar ejercer de manera realista dentro de las dos primeras dimensiones de la integración. Muchos analistas canadienses han señalado que éste sería un buen momento para que Canadá insistiera en obtener un acceso al mercado estadounidense aún mayor al que proporciona el TLCAN. Sin embargo, el autor advierte que esta presión requiere primero de un debate nacional sobre las razones de que Canadá no haya logrado un mayor éxito económico con el Tratado de Libre Comercio entre Canadá y Estados Unidos y el TLCAN. Entre las respuestas posibles, el autor sugiere que sería factible adoptar mejores políticas internas, y no tanto buscar una compatibilidad completa de un sinnúmero de medidas canadienses con las de Estados Unido

Addressing International Governance Challenges The G20 Framework for Strong, Sustainable And Balanced Growth: A Study in Credible Cooperation

Summary The G20 has launched far-ranging reforms of economic governance institutions and the manner in which key economies should cooperate in the future. Its ambitious aim is not only to stabilize the world economy following the economic crisis of 2007-09, but also to anticipate and, as far as possible, prevent future crises and foster sustainable growth going forward. A central element of the promised reform is the "Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth," introduced at the 2009 summit in Pittsburgh, in which the G20 agreed to accept joint and individual responsibility for the health of the global economy. By specifying the key elements of growth, agreeing to assess their policies mutually with the help of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions and agreeing to discuss actions required in light of these assessments, the G20 leaders have launched a potentially effective vehicle for delivering on their promises. In light of past experience, however, there are reasons to be sceptical about commitments to engage in mutual assessment and economic cooperation. Past IMF surveillance, for example, was not particularly effective, while efforts by the G7 and the European Monetary Union to address currency or fiscal imbalances cooperatively often resulted in ultimately cosmetic schemes with possibly counterproductive effects from their lulling players into a false sense of confidence while leaving fundamental issues unaddressed. The G20 will want to avoid this kind of superficiality. The assessment process established by the G20 includes significant innovations: a requirement for new and timely information, the direct submission of reports to decision makers and the integration of various scenarios and perspectives. These requirements in support of the G20's objective will augment the efficacy of existing assessment mechanisms of various multilateral institutions. Important questions remain, however, regarding how candid and transparent these G20 assessments will be and how to integrate into the process valuable experience in peer review and principles-based dialogue at institutions other than the IMF. In addition, the Framework does not require countryspecific commitments to accompany collective assessments and goals setting by G20 members. The Framework also does not mention what would happen in the event of failure to act on agreed collective commitments. In this paper, I argue that the assessment process envisaged in the Framework needs to be strengthened if its goals are to be realized. I also argue that the Framework's fuzziness in spelling out commitments and its inattention to ho