Higher after-tax returns to skill in U.S. states compared to Canadian provinces have raised the issue that higher skilled Canadian workers especially will find migration to the U.S. economically attractive, and especially so after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), provisions of...

Recent trends in inequality and poverty across Western Canada, a region known for its energy resources, seem to correspond to movements in energy prices, with much of the rise in inequality and decline in poverty taking place during the energy boom from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. These...

In the energy-rich region of Western Canada, inequality rose over the past two decades, while poverty declined, begging the question of whether the recent energy boom was a contributing factor. This study uses measures of inequality and poverty across local labor markets that vary in energy...

According to the standard economic model of crime, which assumes that individuals are rational decisions makers who consider the opportunity cost of crime and take into account the possibility of getting caught and punished; the concern that immigration can cause increases in crime is warranted,...

Selon le modèle économique normal de la criminalité, qui suppose que les gens prennent des décisions de façon rationnelle, en considérant le coût d’opportunité du crime et en tenant compte de la possibilité d’être pris et puni, on se pose la question de savoir si l’immigration...

We develop and estimate a generalized labour supply model that incorporates work effort into the standard consumption-leisure trade-off. We allow workers a choice between two contracts: a piece rate contract, wherein he is paid per unit of service provided, and a mixed contract, wherein he...

Household production is an important non-market activity and the empirical literature has developed different methods towards valuing household production without, however, providing a rigorous theoretical foundation for the various approaches. We follow the literature spawned by Becker (1965)...

The Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) represents one of the largest transfer programs administered by the Canadian government, representing 4.5 percent of federal transfers to individuals. The UCCB – which provides $100 monthly to parents for every child under six years of age –...

I study the effect of a universal child-related income transfer on the labour supply of married individuals. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, I find the Canadian Universal Child Care Benefit has significant negative income effects. The likelihood of lower-educated mothers to...

There is growing international interest in a Canadian-style points system for selecting economic immigrants. Although existing points systems have been influenced by the human capital literature, the findings have traditionally been incorporated in an ad hoc way. This paper explores a formal...