This paper uses detailed administrative data from one of the largest community colleges in the United States to quantify the extent to which academic performance depends on students being of similar race or ethnicity to their instructors. To address the concern of endogenous sorting, we use both...

Separate identification of the price and quantity of human capital has important implications for understanding key issues in economics. Price and quantity series are derived for four education levels. The price series are highly correlated and they exhibit a strong secular trend. Three...

Universality is a hallmark of Canadian social policy for very young children. The evidence base for these policies is small, non-experimental and offers mixed results. In contrast the evidence base for targeted early childhood interventions is largely experimental and offers strong guidance....

We use a large, rich Canadian micro-level dataset to examine the channels through which family socio-economic status and unobservable characteristics affect children's decisions to drop out of high school. First, we document the strength of observable socio-economic factors: our data suggest...

This paper reviews the recent research on the determinants of the educational attainment among the children of immigrants (the 2nd generation) in Canada and the United States. The focus is on the gap in educational attainment between the 2nd and 3rd-and-higher generations (the children of...

We examine the evolution of the returns to human capital in Canada over the period 1980-2005. Our main finding is that returns to education increased substantially for Canadian men, contrary to conclusions reached previously. Most of this rise took place in the early 1980s and since 1995....

This paper studies the role played by linguistic enclaves on the economic integration of immigrants to Canada. Linguistic enclaves are defined as groups of people who are similar with respect to languages used on their jobs. A five category classification of major types of linguistic enclaves is...

We utilize a multinomial probit model and the 2007 National Apprenticeship Survey (NAS) to investigate the persistence behaviour of individuals enrolled in apprenticeship programs. These behaviours include continuing, discontinuing (or quitting) and completing programs. The NAS contains detailed...

Canadian apprenticeship policy has recently turned to direct subsidies for participants, including a federal tax incentive for employers. Some assumptions underlying the employer subsidy are: that apprenticeship training is a principal contributor to the skilled trades labour supply; that...

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...