The author considers an employment contracting model in which firms have private information that is directly payoff-relevant to workers and workers are always free to quit. In contrast to existing models, firms will sometimes fail to reveal adverse information to workers in equilibrium because...

This paper considers the possible role of shifts in labour demand away from unskilled workers, combined with an institutionally-generated greater labour supply elasticity in Canada, in explaining the apparent secular increase in Canadian male unemployment, and in explaining the emergence of the...

Since the mid-1970s, unskilled Canadian men have experienced very sizeable reductions in real wages, and they now work substantially fewer weeks per year. This article discusses a wide range of possible policy responses to this phenomenon, arguing that the best short-term response is the...

Using a new survey of Canadian job searchers, this paper attempts to measure the effect of employment equity laws on job search outcomes, and on perceptions of discrimination by both men and women. We find some evidence that employment equity coverage in a pre-separation job reduces the relative...

Employment protection laws abound in the developed world; in Canada they primarily take the form of advance notice requirements of up to four months for layoffs. Recent research on the partial-equilibrium effects of such notice requirements reveals that they are effective in reducing the...