This article sheds light on the important differences in self-declared happiness across countries of equivalent affluence. It hinges on the different happiness statements of natives and immigrants in a set of European countries to disentangle the influence of objective circumstances versus...

La croissance de la mobilité internationale souligne l’importance de données internationales comparables pour décrire la migration mondiale et ses caractéristiques, non seulement dans les pays de destination mais aussi dans les pays d’origine. Ce document donne une image détaillée des...

The brain drain has long been viewed as a serious constraint on poor countries development. However, recent theoretical literature suggests that emigration prospects can raise the expected return to human capital and foster investment in education at home. This paper takes advantage of a new...

In this essay, I provide an extensive review of the theoretical and empirical contributions pertaining to human capital. The first part follows the development of the theory with special emphasis, naturally, on Becker's path-breaking work (JPE '62 and Woytinski Lecture) and also on Ben-Porath's...

In this lead article, Peter Nicholson, who until recently served as advisor to the Secretary General at the OECD and is currently serving as policy advisor to the Prime Minister, Paul Martin, discusses the long-run economic performance, prospects in Canada, and policy priorities based on the...

The fundamental importance of skills for productivity advance is being increasingly recognized. In this article, Someshwar Rao, Jianmin Tang and Weimin Wang of Industry Canada provide additional evidence of this relationship through a detailed examination of the dynamics of innovation and...

The fourth issue of the International Productivity Monitor produced by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards contains five articles. Topics covered are: recent productivity developments in the United States and Canada and implications for the Canada-U.S. productivity and income gaps; the...

In this second contribution to the Symposium included in this volume on Future Productivity in Canada, Tiff Macklem of the Bank of Canada compares sources of recent productivity growth in Canada and the United States. Macklem sees aggregate labour productivity growth in Canada advancing at...

Spatial mobility can be seen as an employment strategy to obtain job opportunities located into a different local labor market than the individual origin’s local market. That is migrants should have higher wages than non-migrants, as much more than migration effort should be compensated by job...