We use micro data from the Canadian Annual Work Patterns Survey for 1978, 1980 and 1982 to compare the distributions of the annual unemployment experiences of persons. Whether one groups the unemployed by age and sex or by major region, a smaller fraction of total weeks of unemployed is found in...

This paper examines the conceptual issues involved in measuring duration of completed spells of unemployment from Gross Flows. We find that such measures can avoid the "interruption" bias of Labour Force stock data, but that they cannot correct the oversampling of long spells. We also conclude...

Changes in demographic composition and industrial structure have been used to explain rising "natural" unemployment rates in Canada. We find the change in industry mix accommodated concurrent changes in labour force structure, but the substitution within industries, rather than changes in the...

This paper empirically examines entire distributions of unemployment spells according to a novel duration-share approach based on decile shares and Lorenz curves of unemployment. The approach is applied to Canadian micro-data. The approach reveals distinctive patterns of unemployment spell...

This paper reviews recent developments in unemployment research and policy, and their implications. Two international comparisons suggest that the tendency for the unemployed to exit the labour force rather than find employment may be weaker in Canada than in the U.S. and that layoffs may be...

The paper attempts to test one widely accepted corollary of the proposition that the availability of or increases in unemployment benefits have serious disincentive effects: namely, that the seasonality of employment will increase. The results based on an analysis of the dispersion of seasonal...

This paper examines how the distribution of household wealth in Canada varies with age over the life cycle. The wealth distribution is characterized in terms of decile means and decile shares for each of six age groups, and comparisons between age-specific distributions are based on first- and...

This paper considers the problem of statistical inference with estimated Lorenz curves and income shares. The asymptotic distribution of a vector of Lorenz curve ordinates corresponding to a set of cdf abscissa values is shown to be normal with a variance-covariance structure that depends only...

This paper develops an exact maximum likelihood technique for estimating regression equation with general p'th order autoregressive disturbances. Recent expression of the analytic inverse of the covariance matrix of a stationary AR(p) process provide the basis for an iterative, modified...