We present and assess extensive statistics regarding poverty rates and depths for Vancouver, B.C., and Canada. We show that not only are single adults in B.C. the most likely to experience poverty, but they also experience the deepest level of poverty. Both single adults and single parents who...

The latest report from Northern Policy Institute’s B.I.G. Series argues there are a number of advantages and challenges to using the Personal Income Tax System (PIT) to deliver a basic income guarantee in Ontario. According to Tedds, using the tax system could simplify a very complex, often...

This paper uses a unique and recently available dataset that contains detailed information on firms from around the world to investigate factors that affect under-reporting behaviour by firms. The empirical strategy employed exploits the nature of the dependent variable, which is interval coded,...

This paper examines the pre- and post-tax returns to Canadian and US executives who receive backdated stock options (that appear to be at-the-money options) compared to currently-dated in-the-money options. We begin by comparing the Black-Scholes value of backdated at-the-money options to...

We control for demographic changes to document trends in the allocation of time using time diary data for Canada (1986 to 2005) and the United States (1985 to 2005). We find that (1) in 2005, average weekly hours spent on market work is higher in Canada than in the U.S. (37.29 vs. 33.29) , (2)...

There is considerable interest in measuring the underground economy using microeconomic data. One such method estimates income under-reporting by households by assuming a known, parametric form of the Engel curve and making the further parametric assumption that households under-report their...

This paper uses a unique and recently available dataset that contains detailed information on firms from around the world to investigate factors that affect under-reporting behaviour by firms. The empirical strategy employed exploits the nature of the dependent variable, which is interval coded,...

The notion that many macroeconomic variables fluctuate asymmetrically over time is not new to economic theory but it is relatively new to empirical economics. The most common empirical representations of aggregate time series are usually smooth and sluggish. This study employs the test for...

There is considerable agreement internationally about the factors that determine the relative size of the underground economy (tax burden, regulation, enforcement, confidence in government, labour force characteristics, and morality) and that evidence of underground activity will be captured in...

It is well known that there exists a strong seasonal pattern in births and that the pattern differs across geographic regions. While historically this seasonal pattern has been linked to exogenous factors, modern birth seasonality patterns can also be explained by purposive choice. If birth...