Re: RE: Origins of 'Dutch Disease'

["Paul Phillips" <phillp2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 25 Feb 02, at 7:46, Devine, James wrote:

> Rob Schaap forwards the following web-page on the "dutch disease." And, I
> was right, it wasn't oil but natural gas.
>
> http://www.aims.ca/Publications/gift/remittance.html
>
> here's the text, without graphs:
>
>
> Looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth:
> The Impact of Federal Transfers on Atlantic Canada
> by Fred McMahon
> AIMS Senior Policy Analyst
>

I would humbly suggest that this analysis has very little to do with
the 'Dutch disease' but is rather an attempt to use a kind of 'flavour
of the month' economic fad to attempt to discredit region
development policies in support of neo-liberal economic orthodoxy.

I actually wrote two books on the subject, the last published in the
early 1980s and have reviewed a number of studies that deal with
this topic since, but whatever the pros and cons of Canadian
regional development policies have been, I can not see for the life of
me what relation they have to the Dutch disease.

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba