Although the unemployment rate is one of the most widely cited and closely monitored economic statistics, the definition and measurement of unemployment remain controversial. An important issue is whether non-employed persons who display a marginal attachment to the labor force (for example,...

A well known finding in the literature on displaced workers is the apparent “portability” of tenure across firms: controlling for experience and other observable characteristics, workers with high levels of predisplacement tenure earn higher postdisplacement wages (e.g. Kletzer 1989). Using...

Under the educational sorting hypothesis, an environment in which some individuals are constrained from entering university will be characterized by increased pooling at the high school graduation level, as compared to an environment with greater university access. This results because some...

This paper surveys recent research on how to measure labour market activities such as unemployment and labour force participation. The conventional approach to distinguishing between unemployment and non-participation is to use a priori reasoning and self-reported survey responses about current...

The principal qualifying condition for welfare in Canada, unlike the US, is financial need - there are no demographic criteria. We use a time-series of annual, national cross-sections for the period 1981 through 1993 to estimate a model of lone-female headship. Our findings do not support the...

Union recognition procedures are about to be reformed in the U.K. Current legislative reform proposes automatic certification. Business prefers mandatory representation votes. Will the choice of union recognition procedure affect certification success? This paper provides empirical evidence on...

We examine how charitable giving is influenced by who in the household is primarily responsible for giving decisions. Looking first at single-person households, we find men and women to have significantly different tastes for giving, setting up a potential conflict for married couples. We find...

This paper reviews the evidence on recent wage polarization in Canada compared to other developed countries. After establishing the existence and degree of Canadian wage polarization, it reviews the available research on the causes of polarization in a number of countries. Consequences of wage...

The family investment hypothesis that credit-constrained immigrant families adopt a household strategy for financing post-migration human capital investment in which the partner with albour market comparative advantage engages ininvestment activities and the other partner undertakes labor market...