The selection of workers into part-time jobs and the wages they earn are analysed using the 1989 Labour Market Activity Survey. We focus on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary part-time workers, since involuntary part-time workers earn substantially lower wages than other workers....

In this paper we examine the effect of technological change on the relative demand for skilled workers across Canadian industries. We find that skill upgrading at the aggregate level is less evident in Canada than in the United States and other industrialized economies over the 1981-94 period....

Research comparing the labour market performance of recent cohorts of immigrants to Australia and Canada points to superior employment and earnings outcomes in Australia. Examining Australian and Canadian Census data between 1986 and 2006, we find that this performance advantage is not driven by...

Standard economic models suggest that adverse demand shocks will lead to bigger employment losses if institutional factors prevent real wages from declining. Some analysts have argued that this insight explains the dichotomy between the United States, where real wages of less-skilled workers...

We provide the first firm-level evidence of the impact of the trade in producer services (`offshoring') on the labour market. Using a new data set from the UK that measures trade in services at the firm level, we find no evidence that importing intermediate services is associated with job losses...

In this paper we examine the determinants of self-employment success for microcredit borrowers. Theories of social capital and neighbourhood effects are integrated in an attempt to account for earnings differentials among a unique sample of microfinance borrowers. We posit that social capital -...

This paper investigates the link between nationality of ownership and wage elasticities of labour demand at the level of the plant. In particular, we examine whether labour demand in multinationals becomes less elastic with respect to the wage if the plant has backward linkages with the local...

Recent studies of search theory examine how employers use a wage-setting mechanism - either by bargaining or through the posting of a non-negotiable wage offer in a job ad - to facilitate search. We contribute to this literature by examining wage posting in job ads in the US, the UK, and...

Self-employment has risen dramatically in Canada, accounting for a disproportionate share of job growth since the 1980s. Using hitherto unexploited information on labour force transitions from sixteen waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances between 1982 and 1998, we show that the changes in...

This paper studies the direct impact of labour force ageing on productivity growth in 10 Canadian provinces over the period 1981-2001, with an outlook to 2046. It shows that older workers are, on average, less productive than younger workers and that labour force ageing has a modest negative...