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Jacqueline Best
Associate Professor, School of Political Studies, and Coordinator, International Political Economy Network
Canada's leading centre for analysis and debate of international affairs.
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Jacqueline Best
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When It Comes to COVID, Our Political Leaders Have Been Seduced by Wishful Thinking
- Analysis
- December 7, 2020
When confronted by the very difficult decisions created by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, our political leaders have been seduced time and time again into a dangerous kind of wishful thinking. Instead of acting decisively to save lives, …
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Why It’s Important to Acknowledge What We Don’t Know in a Crisis
- Analysis
- March 25, 2020
How do we effectively make and execute policy when there is so much that we simply do not know about what lies ahead? This is the challenge that policymakers face today on two very different fronts: public health and the …
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Can the Bank of Canada Come to the Rescue Again?
- Analysis
- March 17, 2020
Like central banks around the world, the Bank of Canada has cut its target interest rate in order to tackle the economic effects of the novel coronavirus.
Does that mean that central bankers are once again our knights in shining …
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Economic exceptionalism is back (if it ever went away)
Exceptionalism is usually used to describe how liberal democracies handle major security threats. However, governments also use exceptionalist policies to deal with economic crises. This development is troubling for both economic and political reasons.
What do Boris Johnson’s attempt to …
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A beginner’s guide to economic ignorance
Ignorance is not the antithesis to knowledge, but it is part of it. Wishful thinking, muddling through and other forms of ignorance play a crucial role in shaping economic policy and its effects on society.
We hear a lot about …
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Neoliberalism’s ‘unfailures’
- Analysis
- September 16, 2019
The late 1970s and early 1980s are a moment in time that is often seen as a resounding success for neoliberal theory and practice
Economic policies enacted under neoliberalism have often failed to meet their objectives, but have remained unchallenged. …
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How the 2008 Financial Crisis Helped Fuel Today’s Right-Wing Populism
- Analysis
- October 10, 2018
Ten years ago, on 3 October 2008, President George W. Bush signed the “Troubled Assets Relief Program” (TARP), promising $700 billion to support banks and companies hit by the global financial crisis. As Congress passed this historic bill, it seemed …
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Why We Aren’t Ready for the Next Financial Crisis
- Analysis
- September 27, 2018
Ten years ago, as the global economy slipped ever closer to a total meltdown, regulators were slow to recognize the severity of the problem because they were looking in the wrong direction.
Transcripts from the US Federal Reserve’s policymaking committee …
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Why Nationalizing the Trans Mountain Pipeline is Undemocratic
- Analysis
- June 8, 2018
When Canadians woke up to learn that they were the proud owners of a run-down pipeline, many of them no doubt asked themselves, “Can the government just do that?” After all, nationalization hasn’t been a popular government pastime in Canada …
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Why We Need to Stop Letting Economic Crises go to Waste
- Analysis
- April 30, 2018
There’s a popular adage that we should never let a good crisis go to waste. Yet, arguably, that’s what we’ve been doing for decades now. We’ve avoided facing the genuine political challenges that economic crises present us and lost these …
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Don’t Panic! (At least not about inflation)
- Analysis
- March 2, 2018
As financial markets have been showing their panicky side in the last few weeks, we’ve been hearing various accounts of what’s driving the volatility. One of the key narratives goes something like this: 1) wages are moving up in the …
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Bring Politics Back to Monetary Policy
- Analysis
- January 25, 2018
The current battle over the liberal world order seems to be about trade, climate, and security policy. But monetary policy has also become an increasingly important arena of conflict. Populist leaders seem to love nothing more than denouncing central bankers …
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Scrooge in Paradise: Why Private Wealth is a Political Issue
- Analysis
- December 19, 2017
As global inequality grows to “extreme levels” — as revealed in the just-released World Inequality Report — it is hard not to wonder what it bodes for the health of liberal democracy — around the world and here in Canada.…
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Why Trump Should Cause Us All to Rethink Our Policies
- Analysis
- February 1, 2017
As Donald Trump makes it clear that he is intent on pursuing his rash and racist agenda come what may, we might be tempted to stand back, count our blessings, and try to minimize the damage.
We need to be …
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Why We Need Better Central Bank Accountability
- Analysis
- June 16, 2016
As pundits debate whether the US Federal Reserve will raise interest rates again this summer or fall, we are reminded of just how much of the economy’s direction hinges on central bankers’ decisions.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, the power …
READ MORECentral Banks Facing Credibility Trap
- Analysis
- April 27, 2016
When the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Stephen Poloz, insisted in New York this week, “the idea that monetary policy just isn’t working any more [is] one myth I’d like to dispel right off the top,” he was right …
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Rebuilding the Middle Class: The Liberals Have a Chance to Rectify their Past Economic Mistakes
- Analysis
- November 5, 2015
By Jacqueline Best
After a decade under a Conservative leadership that actively undermined the government’s capacity to conduct research, Canadians have elected a government that has promised to base its policies on evidence.
Yet, if the new Liberal government wants …
READ MORECanada Needs to Do a Better Job of Managing Financial Uncertainty
- Analysis
- June 5, 2015
Published in the Hill Times, May 25, 2015
As Canadians, we pride ourselves on how well our financial regulations coped with the 2008 financial crisis. Given this attitude, it’s not surprising that Canadian policymakers have avoided a major overhaul …
READ MOREWhat Counts as Policy Failure — And Why it Matters
- Analysis
- March 6, 2015
When things go wrong in politics, the word ‘failure’ gets bandied around a lot. In recent weeks, we’ve heard about the failure of Canadian drug policy (as admitted by Stephen Harper), the failure of Canadian diplomatic efforts to get Barack …
READ MOREWhat Economic Uncertainty Means for Canadian Policymakers
- Analysis
- October 23, 2014
If you have been reading the financial press over the past week, you know that the global economy’s chances are looking a lot more uncertain these days. What you may not know, however, is that this more recent upswing in …
READ MOREHedging Bets: Aid Agencies’ New Preoccupation with Failure
- Analysis
- September 11, 2014
An earlier version of this essay appeared on RegBlog.org
Nobody likes to admit failure—least of all government-funded development organizations in hard economic times. Yet recent years have seen a number of prominent development agencies confess to failure. The International Monetary …
READ MOREThe Public is Back — But Not as We Knew It
- Analysis
- September 7, 2014
In sharp contrast to neo-liberal ‘hands off’ attitudes that shaped its past policies, the Harper government is considering a much greater public role in the economy, strategically targeting certain key sectors. Meanwhile, in response to growing concerns about the …
READ MOREThe Austerity Trap
- Analysis
- December 4, 2011
As the prognosis for the global economy gets darker by the day, we are hearing one word over and over: austerity. The British government has announced that it will extend its austerity measures past the next election in 2015. In …
READ MOREEconomic Exceptionalism
- Analysis
- October 13, 2011
In the aftermath of 9/11, we entered a moment of political exceptionalism: we were told that in normal times, certain basic civil rights applied, but these were exceptional times and the normal rules didn’t apply. Suddenly, practices like torture, detention …
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