Start Here — Accessible & Engaging
Award-winning storytelling about economics. Each episode takes one real-world event — a trade war, a bank failure, a peculiar market — and uses it to illuminate an economic principle. The best general-purpose companion to this course.
A daily 10-minute episode built around one economic number. Perfect for staying current on GDP releases, CPI reports, jobs data, and central bank decisions as they happen. Short enough to listen between classes.
Applies economic thinking to unconventional questions — crime, education, parenting, healthcare. Excellent for building intuition about incentives, opportunity cost, and unintended consequences before we formalize those ideas in lecture.
The Canadian Economy
Statistics Canada — Official Canadian Data
Statistics Canada's official podcast. Statisticians and economists explain how Canada's key macroeconomic indicators are produced — GDP, the Labour Force Survey, the Consumer Price Index, international trade data, and productivity measures. The primary Canadian source for the numbers behind every topic in this course.
Host Max Zimmerman talks with Amanda Sinclair, Assistant Director of National Economic Accounts, about what GDP actually measures, why it matters to everyday Canadians, and how Statistics Canada produces the quarterly National Accounts estimate. The most direct possible companion to the National Income chapter.
Guy Gellatly, Chief Economic Advisor at Statistics Canada, explains the Bank of Canada's 2% inflation target, why zero inflation is not ideal, and how deflationary spirals work. Covers the CPI, core inflation, and why some inflation supports wage growth — the measurement foundations of the Inflation chapter.
Eh Sayers — Episodes Paired to This Course
Guy Gellatly, Chief Economic Advisor at Statistics Canada, explains the Canada–US tariff conflict: how US exports represent roughly 17% of Canadian GDP, which sectors (manufacturing, oil & gas, autos) are most exposed, and which indicators — employment, trade flows, investment, and pricing — to watch as the shock works through the economy.
Open Economy · Aggregate DemandGuy Gellatly explains why Canadian labour productivity declined in 12 of the 15 quarters before this episode and has fallen below pre-pandemic levels. Covers why roughly 90% of GDP-per-capita growth over four decades comes from labour productivity, what low business investment means for long-run living standards, and what AI might — or might not — change.
Economic Growth · Long-Run Aggregate SupplyTaylor Mitchell of Statistics Canada's Prices Division explains the gap between official food CPI numbers and what Canadians feel at the checkout. Covers how grocery prices are collected, why the CPI basket construction matters, the role of supply chains and corporate margins, and why inflation can feel higher than the headline rate even when the data is accurate.
Inflation · CPI MeasurementPaul Glavin of McMaster University discusses with Statistics Canada how gig and platform work (Uber, Fiverr, TaskRabbit) reshapes labour force participation, job stability, and income distribution. Connects to the Unemployment chapter's discussion of non-standard employment, the Labour Force Survey's classification challenges, and why the headline unemployment rate can miss precarious work.
Growth & Unemployment · Labour MarketsPolicy & In-Depth Analysis
Weekly hour-long conversations with leading economists — Nobel laureates, central bankers, policy researchers. Deep and rigorous. Best for students who want to go beyond the textbook on growth theory, monetary policy, and international trade.
Focused entirely on monetary economics — money supply, the zero lower bound, inflation targeting, central bank independence, and quantitative easing. An excellent companion to the Money & Banking and Monetary Policy chapters.
Data, Statistics & Critical Thinking
Featured Episodes — Paired to Course Topics
Why economists across the political spectrum support carbon taxes — and why it is so politically difficult to enact them. A masterclass in externalities, deadweight loss, and efficient taxation, with real-world Canadian context.
Fiscal Policy · Supply & DemandA clear, concise explanation of the post-pandemic inflation surge: supply chain shocks shifting SRAS left, demand stimulus shifting AD right, and why the Bank of Canada responded with the most aggressive rate-hiking cycle since the 1990s.
Monetary Policy · Aggregate ExpenditureChallenges the standard definition of GDP — what gets counted, what does not, and whether it is still the right measure of economic welfare. Connects the National Income Accounting chapter to the broader debate about measuring wellbeing.
National Income AccountingNobel laureate David Card discusses the Card–Krueger study, labour market monopsony, and why standard supply-and-demand models sometimes produce wrong predictions about minimum wages. Essential context for the analytical questions in this course.
Supply & Demand · Labour MarketsHow economists use natural experiments — the methodological approach behind Card and Krueger, Angrist and Imbens, and the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics. Explains why careful empirical economics is harder than it looks and why it matters for policy.
Foundations · MethodsDavid Beckworth interviews a Bank of Canada economist on the emergency rate cuts, quantitative easing programme, and forward guidance deployed in March 2020. A real-time case study in every unconventional monetary policy tool discussed in this course.
Monetary Policy · Money & Banking