We use the returns on a set of international financial securities to identify exogenous shocks to the Canadian federal surplus. We find that a large portion of the variation in the surplus can be replicated by a linear combination of these returns and that the rising debt observed in the 1980s...

We show how a Schumpeterian process of creative destruction can induce rational, herd-behavior by entrepreneurs across diverse sectors of the economy that may look like it is fuelled by ``animal spirits''. Consequently, a multi-sector economy, in which sector-specific, productivity improvements...

We explore the implications of endogenous credit market imperfections for the relationship between property crime and the process of economic development. In the initial stages of development, property crime rises as the opportunities to gain from illegal activities expand. In later stages,...

We develop an endogenous growth model in which new technology and new skills are bounded complements -- they complement each other to a point, but beyond this the impact of each factor is constrained by the level of the other. As a result, both technological progress and human capital...

The return to "sound" fiscal policy after the high budget deficits of the 1980s and early 1990s has been hailed by many as the Clinton administration's most important achievement. We evaluate post-war, U.S. fiscal policy using a generalized tax-smoothing model that allows for stochastic interest...

This paper presents estimates of the effects of family background, family income and parental work - especially maternal employment - on the behavioural development of young children. The particular outcomes analysed are children's scores on development-assessment instruments measuring cognitive...

It is often argued that risk-sharing employment relationships provide a better description of labour relations than the standard Walrasian framework. Such relationships have been introduced in macroeconomic models under an assumption of full commitment. In the absence of commitment, however,...