Questions have been raised as to whether the equalization payments system in Canada is such that a recipient government’s tax and expenditure policies may have a direct effect on the size of its equalization payment. As a result, there has been discussion over the possible links between the...

This paper examines the role of legislated fiscal rules in determining fiscal performance. It reviews the rationale for fiscal rules and discusses the advantages and drawbacks associated with them, notably the possibility that rules may impede countercyclical fiscal policy. The paper then...

The first version of the Canadian Economic and Fiscal Model (CEFM) was completed in 1986. Since then, CEFM has been used by the Department of Finance for macroeconomic forecasting and policy analysis. The model has gone through many rounds of revision since its original version. This report...

Tuition fees increased rapidly in the 1990s in most Canadian provinces raising concerns about access to post-secondary education. This paper examines the role of tuition fees in explaining participation in college and university programs from 1997 to 1999 in all provinces except Quebec and...

This paper examines the evidence for downward nominal wage rigidity in provincial wage Phillips curves over the period 1981–1999. Three Phillips curve models are used: a standard model; a model with hysteresis; and a model in which downward nominal wage rigidity is explicitly modelled. In each...

This paper is a companion to the two-sector, computable endogenous growth model of government spending and taxation developed by Xu (1997). This paper studies the sensitivity of the results to the model's preference, technology, and policy parameters. The policy parameters are the capital and...