Catching Up with Canada: A Prosperity Agenda for Atlantic Canada is the first study from the Institute’s new Atlantic Canada Initiative. It finds that even though Atlantic Canada currently lags the rest of the country in several key economic indicators—including household incomes, GDP per capita and the employment rate, among others—the region could close the gap by pursuing pro-growth policy reforms similar to those enacted recently in Michigan and Ireland. In fact, if Atlantic Canada could achieve an inflation-adjusted economic growth rate of 1.6 per cent—0.9 percentage points above forecasted growth for the rest of Canada—the region would catch up with the rest of Canada within 20 years.

Economic Freedom of North America 2019 finds that New Hampshire has reclaimed its status as the most economically free state in the U.S., having scored 7.93 out of 10 in this year’s report, which measures government spending, taxation and labour market restrictions. Rounding out the top five freest states are Florida (2^nd), Tennessee (3^rd), Virginia (4^th) and Texas (5^th). For the fifth year in a row, New York was ranked the least free (50^th), followed by West Virginia (49^th), Alaska (48^th), Vermont (47^th) and Oregon (46^th).

Why Is Equalization Still Growing? finds that due to a specific rule (created in 2009) within Canada’s equalization program, which transfers federal tax dollars to lower-income provinces, total equalization payments to “have-not” provinces must grow every year, even if the gap between richer and poorer provinces shrinks. As a result, total program costs over the past two years have been $2.1 billion (or 5.7 per cent) larger than they would have been without the rule.