The thesis explores the factors affecting the availability and utilization of work-life balance programs in Canadian workplaces and how employee involvement and participation programs can help employees balance their work and life. The introductory chapter provides background information on the...

The structure of China’s current governance bears prominent features of fiscal decentralization. The supply of healthcare resources in China has clearly witnessed slower growth in the last two decades during which the fiscal decentralization process has taken place. Using China’s provincial...

Is emission intensity of carbon dioxide (CO2) spatially correlated? What determines the CO2 intensity at a provincial level? More importantly, what climate and economic policy decisions should the China’s central and local governments make to reduce the CO2 intensity and prevent the...

In the context of China without a median voter system, this study examines whether the “flypaper effect”, an unconditional lump-sum grant from the upper governments to the county governments increases spending in a greater proportion than an equivalent rise in local income, holds true in...

This paper focuses on the decomposition of observed increases in UK wage inequality since 1979 into the component factors of competition from low-wage imports and technological change. Building on recent work by Abrego and Whalley, it argues that the length of production run and degree of .xity...

This paper discusses the results from general equilibrium trade models executed towards the end of the Uruguay Round, reporting both aggregate and regional gains. These results were generated some 5 years ago, and were important to the debates at the end of the Uruguay Round as to what would be...

We explore the implications of trade liberalization in economies with State Owned enterprises (SOEs) and shirking. SOEs are modelled as controlled by the members of the enterprise who determine output and effort levels, while facing output prices and wage rates set by government. Enterprise...

This paper discusses what the next few decades could bring for the developing countries in terms of the size and composition of their trade and inward investment flows, as well as a possibly changing policy framework within the global economy in which they have to operate. Both the prospects and...

This paper explores the use of structural models as an alternative to reduced form methods when decomposing observed joint trade and technology driven wage changes into components attributable to each source. Conventional mobile factors Heckscher-Ohlin models typically reveal problems of...

This paper focuses on the causes of increased wage inequality in OECD countries in recent years and its decomposition into the component factors of trade surges in low wage products and technological change that has preoccupied the trade and wages literature. It .argues that the length of...