This paper analyzes the effect of a fiscal equalization system on the composition of government expenditures of subnational governments. We incorporate vertical equalization transfers with optimal choice of the composition of government expenditures in an endogenous growth model and show that...

This paper is the first to examine the causal relationship between trade openness and government size using both aggregate and disaggregated government expenditure data, including data on social security. Our results indicate that examining the relationship separately for functional categories...

In the late 1990s, China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) underwent dramatic labor retrenchment, drawing considerable attention to how women fared relative to men during the retrenchment process. However, almost all the existing studies on the subject rely on individual-level data. In this...

Provincial Nominee programs have increased the role of the provinces in selecting immigrants to Canada. We use administrative data to compare the earnings and settlement rates of Provincial Nominees (PNs) and immigrants through comparable federal programs, such as economic class immigrants...

To encourage more even dispersion of economic immigrants throughout Canada, the federal and various provincial governments have developed the Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs). In this paper, we provide an overview of these programs and assess their impact on the flow of immigrants to smaller...

We discuss how social considerations can affect the desirability of trade liberalization in a conventional small open economy model. We consider a representative family in which there are location specific network effects from interactions with other family members, such as joint consumption,...

In this paper we undertake a comparative study of productivity in the manufacturing sector for China and India using data from survey of manufacturing industries for the two countries. We find that productivity of manufacturing industries in China relative to that in India improved substantially...

We examine whether trade openness influences government size. Using panel data, we find no evidence of a positive relationship. Rather, causality tests show that larger government size leads to lower openness, the opposite of what Rodrik [Rodrik, Dani, 1998, Why do more open economies have...

Most of the growth accounting literature relies on an aggregate production function to determine the contribution of factors of production relative to that of total factor productivity (TFP) in explaining differences in incomes across countries. I show that the importance of TFP in accounting...