This paper projects the future of knowledge economy (KE) in SSA and MENA countries using the four components of the World Bank’s Knowledge Economy Index (KEI): economic incentive, education, ICTs and innovation. The empirical evidence provides the speeds of integration as well as the time...

This paper employs a recent methodological innovation on intellectual property rights (IPRs) harmonization to project global timelines for common policies against software piracy. The findings on 99 countries are premised on 15 fundamental characteristics of software piracy based on...

Reconciling the two dominant development models of the Washington Consensus (WC) and Beijing Model (BM) remains a critical challenge in the literature. The challenge is even more demanding when emerging development paradigms like the Liberal Institutional Pluralism (LIP) and New Structural...

Interprovincial trade barriers are a drag on Canadian productivity and send an embarrassing message to international investors.Despite some past progress in reducing them, they remain an irritant to our economic union. Trade liberalization as pursued by Alberta and British Columbia in the TILMA...

This paper argues that the two-percentage point cut in the GST to 5 per cent proposed by the Conservatives in the January 2006 Canadian federal election and implemented in the 2007 budget was not “stupid” as suggested by many economists. To the contrary, it fortuitously turned out to provide...

This paper discusses the pros and cons of establishing a system of indexed bonds as a means of assisting employers in the event that governments (federal and/or provincial) should require them to adjust pension payments under the pension plans for inflation. The main body of this paper is...

This paper reviews the issues that would arise if Quebec were to separate from Canada. It also presents quantitative estimates of the likely orders of magnitude of their economic impact both on Quebec and the Rest of Canada. Its overall conclusion is that Quebec would be much harder hit than the...