This paper proposes a new framework to empirically assess the effects of the minimum wage in a developing country. This approach allows us to jointly estimate the effects of the minimum wage on unemployment, average wages, sector mobility, wage inequality, the size of the informal sector and on...

This paper uses the Canadian Labour Force Survey to understand why the level and dispersion of wages have evolved differently across provinces from 1997 to 2013. The starker interprovincial differences are the much faster increase in the level of wages and decline in wage dispersion in...

While proponents argue that minimum wage laws are essential in improving social welfare and economic well-being, implementation of minimum wage laws can also be associated with increased unemployment and the movement of workers into the informal sector where worker protection and workplace...

Increasing inequality cannot be a long-run steady state – i.e. a trend that can continue indefinitely. Because the bottom 99% and top 1% in the U.S. and Canada have had very different rates of growth of market income among since the 1980s, consumption and savings flows have necessarily...

When the Dow Jones stock index hit an all-time high on March 5, 2013, some commentators said that this surge in share prices indicated a breaking of the psychological barrier faced by markets since the Great Recession. But others noted just how volatile financial markets have been – the...

Le Supplément de revenu garanti (SRG) a largement contribué à la réduction de la pauvreté des personnes âgées au Canada, mais les futurs bénéficiaires du SRG atteignant leurs 64 ans devraient penser à deux fois avant de continuer de cotiser à un REER. Souvent, la meilleure solution...

We estimate the elasticity of reported income with respect to tax rates for high earners using sub-national variation across Canadian provinces. We argue this allows for better identification of tax elasticities than the existing literature. We find that elasticities of reported income at the...

According to Canadian taxfiler data, over the last thirty years there has been a surge in the income shares of the top 1%, top 0.1% and top 0.01% of income recipients, even with longitudinal smoothing by individual using three- or five-year moving averages. Top shares fell in 2008 and 2009, but...

Richard Shillington (1999, 2003) estimates that one-third of near-seniors have made Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSP) contributions in error as their asset holdings are low enough to suggest that they will likely be Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) recipients. Hence they are likely to...

The Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) has contributed significantly to the reduction of senior poverty in Canada, but prospective GIS recipients should think twice at age 64 about making an RRSP contribution. In many cases, the best move may even be withdrawing the whole RRSP. This is because...