Time for a Break

Well it has been a busy time for Northern Economist and getting busier all the time.  March always marks the onset of my busiest time of the year and this year along with finishing up supervising two honour's theses, teaching my courses, and being Department Chair, I am also involved in an undergraduate program evaluation for the Department of Economics at Lakehead and helping to draft our new Department academic plan.  I'm also on the university Promotion, Tenure and Renewal committee again in the spring.  In addition, I'm also committed to conference papers to present my research in April, May, June, July and September so as much as I enjoy blogging about northern Ontario's economy, I'm out of time. 

As my colleague Steve Gordon at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative has remarked, blogging is a lot like giving out free pizza.  However, the pizza is free only for those who choose to consume the product - I still have to do the baking.  We blog to contribute to debate and policy formation, to try and help make a difference, but in the end there is only so much time to go around.  This break may last a while as I'm also heading into a sabbatical and for academics, sabbaticals are generally breaks from your usual routine and investment of your time in professional development.  I will be spending mine on wealth research and analysis of health expenditure and health system sustainability along with some deepening on my econometric skills.  Sorry, but baking lots of free pizza is not the way I was planning to spend my sabbatical.

For those of you who like my stuff on northern Ontario, you can continue to access the past posts I've done both here and at at my original Northern Economist 1.0 site where there is a wealth of material dealing with the region's economy from a descriptive and analytical perspective.  Enjoy.  You can also check in at this site from time to time just in case an important topic grabs my attention.  As well, I will continue to post occasionally on more general economic topics as part of the team on Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Canada's premier economics blog.  You can access all of my posts on Worthwhile Canadian Initiative in a convenient listing at Ufollow.

All the best and cheers! Livio.