This paper asks whether Canadian data is consistent with political opportunism, partisanship and/or political competition effects on real output growth since Confederation. Using data from the 1870 to 2005 time period, we find support for an electoral cycle only if actual election dates are...

We argue for the use of cointegration and error correction analysis as a method to combine economic factors that are nonstationary with political factors that are stationary into a dynamic, empirical model of the evolution of public policy over long periods. The approach we develop is applied to...

This paper uses annual data from 1870 and 2000 in Canada to test whether overtly political variables interact with macroeconomic variables through government size. We begin by asking whether Canada’s macro data is consistent with political cycles, i.e., the hypothesis that macro cycles have...

We address the problem of how to investigate whether economics, or politics, or both, matter in the explanation of public policy. We first pose the problem in a particular context by uncovering a political business cycle (using Canadian data for 130 years) and by taking up the challenge to make...

In this paper we argue that policy in relation to education has relied too extensively on the more easily measured costs of production to support a common conclusion of economies of scale in school and/or district size. We argue that there are external costs that increase with size but that can...

This paper investigates one aspect of the relationship between school size and education outcomes-- whether school size is associated with youth violence. The importance of this question is underlined by the prevalent view that large school sizes are needed to realize production scale economies....