Canada has a large Income Security system for retirement that provides significant and widely varying disincentives to work at older ages.We provide an empirical analysis of the retirement incentives of the Canadian Income Security system using a newadministrative database.We find that the work...

The effect of taxes on participation in Registered Retirement Savings Plans between 1982 and 1996 is studied. Interprovincial changes in the tax structure over this period provide identifying variation. Using this variation, I find that taxes influence households' participation decisions, but...

We study the impact of campaign spending limits for candidates in Canadian federal elections. We first demonstrate that spending limits are binding mostly for incumbent candidates. We then use this information to produce endogeneity-corrected estimates for the impact of incumbent spending on...

This paper documents the life-cycle patterns of household portfolios in Canada, and investigates several hypotheses about asset accumulation and allocation. Inferences are drawn from the 1999 Survey of Financial Security, with some comparisons to earlier wealth surveys from 1977 and 1984. I find...

We present new evidence on levels and trends in after-tax income inequality in Canada between 1980 and 2000. We argue that existing data sources may miss changes in the tails of the income distribution, and that many of the changes in the income distribution have been in the tails. For this...

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....

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive picture, circa the late 1980s, of occupational gender segregation in Canada and its consequences for wages. Our analysis reveals sensitivity of the estimated penalty to "female work" to both specification and estimation strategy. Our preferred estimates...

We document the application of pro-active pay equity legislation to the private sector of the Canadian province of Ontario in the early 1990s. We report substantial lapses in compliance among smaller firms where the majority of men and women work. We also find that the pay equity law had no...

The authors examine the male/female earnings differential between 1970 and 1990. Their objective is to provide consistent estimates that can be compared and interpreted over time, and to assess the sensitivity of their results to alternative specifications. The authors find that women made...