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Kevin Milligan Profile picture
Kevin Milligan
@kevinmilligan
I teach economics at UBC Vancouver School of Economics @ubcVSE.
Michael Atkinson Profile picture 2 subscribed
Apr 16 • 48 tweets • 16 min read
Starting to read the budget now. Unorganized tweeting commencing....

budget.canada.ca/2024/home-accu… Such an important point here about immigration and GDP per capita. Young immigrants ding the dominator in the short run, it's true. But young immigrants add productive capacity to the economy which grows the numerator within a few years. We should aim for long-run GDP/N !
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Nov 22, 2023 • 24 tweets • 7 min read
It was FES day yesterday!

Let's talk about fiscal sustainability.... The question of fiscal sustainability looks at whether the trajectory of a country is sustainable without large fiscal adjustments (e.g. tax increases or spending cuts).

Fiscal sustainability analysis does *not* assess the quality of spending.
Mar 31, 2023 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
Lots of interest in the longevity analysis featured by @jburnmurdoch. It is fascinating.

There is Canadian work on this that you might also find interesting: by me and @tammyschirle.

You can find it (including ungated versions) here:

sites.google.com/view/kevin-mil… @jburnmurdoch @tammyschirle We find that Canadian men in the top 5% of earners live 8 years longer than men in the bottom 5%.

That's a lot more life for those at the top.

(Women are a bit different because we only look at those with earnings; and for older cohorts that was a pretty selected sample.)
Mar 31, 2023 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
Let me address two concerns that have been raised about fiscal sustainability.

First is net vs gross public debt comparisons.

Second is intergenerational fairness.

tl;dr is it helps to first define what you're trying to measure...

Here is chart 27 from the Budget. It uses *IMF* data on 'general govt net debt'.

Here, 'general govt' means that it includes national+subnational public debt.

'Net' means it subtracts off financial assets.

This is how the IMF likes to do international comparisons. Why?...
Mar 30, 2023 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
My thread yesterday laid out some fiscal context for the budget numbers released Tuesday.

tl;dr: be wary of those peddling fiscal scare stories. Those are silly criticisms.

But that doesn't mean the budget is beyond criticism. Here are three areas where I have some Q's. Criticism of the budget (1):

Are we prepping debt/GDP for the next shock?

We want stable longrun debt/GDP. We should be glad that govts in 1990s and 2000s lowered our debt/GDP to give us fiscal room to handle the COVID shock.

We should do the same now. But: how quickly?...
Mar 29, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Here is debt-GDP, which is the measure economists use to measure debt sustainability.

It slopes down, which is a good indication that there will not be a need for tax increases to afford future public debt payments.

In other words, 'fiscal crisis' lol no. Image Here is public debt service to GDP.

We are likely to settle in at around 1.5% to 1.6% of GDP, which is...near historic lows.

Again, for anyone looking for signs of an incipient fiscal crisis....uh, no. Image