Au Québec, lorsqu'une entreprise manufacturière fait exécuter en sous-traitance les travaux d'installation, de réparation ou d'entretien de sa machinerie industrielle, elle peut faire appel soit à  une entreprise de construction accréditée qui est soumise à la Loi R-20 de la...

This study investigates the statistical connection between the parameters of the Canadian unemployment insurance system and the rate of social assistance in the Province of Quebec. It is based on an econometric analysis of the annual macroeconomic data of the last two decades and simulations...

In this study, we focus on several potential determinants of provincial social assistance rates: the unemployment rate, the UI wage replacement rate and eligibility rules, the SA benefit level, the minimum wage, and the average industrial wage. Specifically, we try to quantify their respective...

In this chapter, Pierre Fortin provides a critique of the conduct of Canadian monetary policy in the 1990s, a critique that he developed throughout the decade. While not denying that the US economic slowdown in the early 1990s reduced growth in Canada, Fortin lays the blame for the inferior...

This paper examines health-care spending projections when the interaction between end-of-life care expenditures and declining mortality is taken explicitly into account. Based on Quebec's historical public health-care spending data and mortality rates for 20 age groups over the period 1998 to...

Inflation definitely has costs, but they remain difficult to quantify for rates below 10-15 per cent. Aiming for a low rate of inflation, as Canada has done in the last 20 years, carries with it various risks, such as debt deflation, reduced flexibility of interest rates, and downwardly rigid...

In this rejoinder the key role played by high interest rates in the Canadian economic and fiscal crisis of 1990-96 is reaffirmed. I argue that (i) important econometric biases could have led many to underestimate the effects of high interest rates on output; (ii) it is imprudent to conduct...

Quebec’s relative growth performance with Ontario has always been an issue of concern for economic historians. In his paper Pierre Fortin discusses trends in Quebec’s real domestic income relative to that in Ontario over the last half-century. He finds that per capita real domestic income in...