P U B L I C F I N A N C E & F I S C A L F E D E R A L I S M
All four Atlantic Provinces face serious fiscal challenges. Public debt as a share of GDP is high, and debt servicing costs threaten to further constrain the ability of governments to keep taxes competitive and public services adequately funded in the years ahead.
Our work in the area of public finances and fiscal federalism draws on lessons from our own country’s history and other jurisdictions to identify successful strategies for public spending and tax reform that can help spur economic growth while improving the health of public finances. AIMS will also continue to be a leading centre for research on equalization and fiscal federalism.
POLICY PAPERS & OP-ED COMMENTARIES
Good Enough for Government Work
Good Enough for Government Work, the latest edition of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies’ annual review of provincial finances, finds that no province stands out with a gold medal performance. Or, to use a more appropriate analogy for early April, there are few home runs; rather, provinces are more ...
Could Do Better – West
This is an extension of AIMS' successful Could Do Better series, which evaluates the status of provincial finances. The Institute has published three such papers for the Atlantic Provinces. This is the first for Western Canada, and a forerunner to a national Could Do Better series. To determine a single ...
Could Do Better 3
Could Do Better 3 is proof of the troubling trend that has been keeping Atlantic Canadians either in the poorhouse or on their way to Fort McMurray; governments have not learned the lessons that out of control spending increases and crushing debt should have taught them. Lower taxes, spending restraint ...
Too Many Cooks
Equalization and fiscal imbalance have moved from the back pages, to front page headlines across the country. Under Canada’s constitutionally entrenched equalization system, provinces with lower-than-average fiscal capacities receive transfers from the federal government that vary acccording to the amount of their shortfall in fiscal capacity. Recent recommendations for changes ...
Could Do Better 2
Fiscal health, budgetary accuracy, and budgetary impact are a hit and miss proposition in Atlantic Canada concludes the latest AIMS paper “Could Do Better 2: Grading Atlantic Canada’s 2005/2006 provincial finances” by Dr. David Murrell and Bruce Winchester. Says Murrell, an economics professor at UNB, “promises of balanced budgets, fiscal ...
MEDIA MENTIONS
Free tuition in other provinces virtually inevitable: student leader
In a Canadian Press story about university costs, AIMS researcher Jackson Doughart says that while eliminating tuition is a bad idea, targeting subsidies to students from low-income families makes sense ...
Tax dollars going up in smoke
A Telegraph-Journal editorial criticizes subsidy-induced job growth. Citing AIMS's "I'll take New England Anyday!", it recommends "freezing — and then cutting — marginal tax rates and ... removing barriers to ...
Lower taxes would warm NB’s job creation climate
A Times & Transcript editorial references AIMS' study "I'll take New England Anyday!", counseling against subsidy-based job creation and recommending that hidden tax hikes, like higher gasoline taxes, be avoided ...
Should government subsidize universities to boost enrollment?
In a story by the Telegraph-Journal's John Chilibeck, John Williamson argues against further subsidies to higher education. On the issue, Williamson doubts that governments "are prepared to cut in one ...