Michael Straw

Background

About Michael Straw

I have been with Statistics Canada as a Recruit Economist/Economist since August of 2019 shortly after graduating with an MA in Economics at the University of Toronto. As an economist, I am actually applying what I have learned in my studies over the years. Through a combination of masters courses and research assistantships during my undergraduate career, I have gained the ability to conduct strong independent research. Be it from my empirical analysis on the effects of the recent foreign buyer's tax on the Vancouver housing market, gathering and manipulating data using STATA, or from my two-year long research assistantship, developing code in R to test theoretical methods of reducing forecasting errors, I have garnered much experience in the proper use of statistical software, assisting my ability to conduct thorough research. I have even taken this knowledge on statistical programming languages and developed my own training course to teach R to my colleagues at Statistics Canada. The successful implementation of the training within my section has led to a divisional dissemination of the materials, allowing more employees at the organization to develop their skills in R. My interests lie in the fields of econometrics, programming, data science, public economics, financial economics, monetary policy, and international markets.