This paper analyzes the impact of hedging activities of large Canadian oil and gas companies on their stock returns and firm value. Differing from the existing literature this research finds that some of these relationships are nonlinear based on the framework of nonlinear generalized additive...

The rate of incarceration has increased dramatically in the U.S. since 1980. This is attributable to a higher rate of sentencing per crime committed and to an increased prevalence of drug-related crime. We explore the implications of this increased incarceration on national poverty measurement...

The Gini coefficient or index is perhaps one of the most used indicators of social and economic conditions. From its first proposal in English in 1921 to the present, a large number of papers on the Gini index has been written and published. Going through these papers represents a demanding...

Given the multiplicative decomposition of the Sen index into three commonly used poverty statistics – the poverty rate (poverty incidence), poverty gap ratio (poverty depth) and 1 plus the Gini index of poverty gap ratios of the poor (inequality of poverty) – the index becomes much easier to...

U-statistics form a general class of statistics that have certain important features in common. This class arises as a generalization of the sample mean and the sample variance, and typically members of the class are asymptotically normal with good consistency properties. The class encompasses...

Using structural VAR models with short-run restrictions appropriate for Canada and the United States, we empirically examine whether trade and financial market openness matter for the impact on and transmission to stock prices of monetary policy shocks. We find that, in Canada, the immediate...

How do firms adjust prices in the marketplace? Do they tend to adjust prices infrequently in response to changes in market conditions? If so, why? These remain key questions in macroeconomics, particularly for central banks that work to keep inflation low and stable. The authors use the Bank of...

The Raw1sian perspective on social policy pays particular attentionto the least advantaged members of society, but how should "the least advantaged" be identified? The concept of deprivation dominance operationalizes in part the Rawlsian evaluation of the welfare of the least advantaged members...