Paul Hobson is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Queen s University in 1982. He has been on faculty at Acadia since 1981. He has held visiting appointments at Queen s University (1988-1990), University of Western Ontario (1980-1981 and 1984-1986) and Scarborough College, University of Toronto (1978-1980). Since 1993 he has been a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), Montreal. During 1992, he was Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Social Sciences, The Queen s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland. During 1999-2000, while on sabbatical leave from Acadia, he was visiting professor at The School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston. He is currently a Fellow at the Canadian Institute for Research on Regional Development, University of Moncton.
He has previously served as a member of the Board of Editors, Canadian Journal of Regional Science and the Canadian Journal of Economics as well as a member of the executives of the Atlantic Canada Economics Association and the Canadian Economics Association.
He has lectured and published widely on the subject of Canadian fiscal federalism, as well as on property taxation and issues in local public finance. He has co-authored two monographs on Canadian fiscal federalism: Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations in Canada (Toronto: Canadian Tax Foundation, 1993) with Robin Boadway and Toward Sustainable Federalism: Reforming Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1993) with France St-Hilaire. Most recently, he was co-editor (with Robin W. Boadway) of Equalization: Its Contribution to Canada s Economic and Fiscal Progress (Montreal: Queen s-McGill University Press, 1998). He co-authored (with Scott Lynch and Wade Locke) the critique Should Our Concern Be the Gift Horse or the Ideological Bull: A Critical Economic Assessment of Looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth: The Impact of Federal Transfers on Atlantic Canada (Moncton: Canadian Institute for Research on Regional Development, 1997). He was co-editor (with France St-Hilaire) Urban Governance and Finance: A Question of Who Does What (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1997).
Dr. Hobson has worked with a variety of government and non-government agencies including: Department of Finance, Government of New Brunswick; Intergovernmental Affairs, Governments of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency; Atlantic Provinces Economic Council; and the (now defunct) Economic Council of Canada. Over the past few years, he has held regular meetings on fiscal federalism issues with a small group of officials from the Nova Scotia government, representing Intergovernmental Affairs, Finance, Economic Renewal, and Social Services and with officials from the Finance Department, Government of Prince Edward Island.