J - Labor and Demographic Economics
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How Should Unemployment Insurance Vary over the Business Cycle?
Should unemployment benefits be more generous during economic downturns? The optimal amount and duration of benefit payments ultimately depend on the demographic and wealth characteristics of benefit recipients. -
Earnings Dynamics and Intergenerational Transmission of Skill
How are your past, current and future earnings related to those of your parents? We explore this by using 37 years of Canadian tax data on two generations. -
Cyclicality of Schooling: New Evidence from Unobserved Components Models
What is the time-varying impact of economic cycles on decisions to invest in human capital? -
Child Skill Production: Accounting for Parental and Market-Based Time and Goods Investments
Can daycare replace parents’ time spent with children? We explore this by using data on how parents spend time and money on children and how this spending is related to their child’s development. -
Optimal Taxation in Asset Markets with Adverse Selection
What is the optimal tax schedule in over-the-counter markets, e.g., those for corporate bonds? I find that an optimal tax schedule is often non-monotonic. For example, trading of some high-price assets should be subsidized, and trading of some low-price assets should be taxed. -
On the Evolution of Multiple Jobholding in Canada
The number of workers who hold more than one job (a.k.a. multiple jobholders) has increased recently in Canada. While this seems to echo the view that non-standard work arrangements are becoming pervasive, the increase has in fact been trivial compared with the long-run rise of multiple jobholding that has occurred since the mid-1970s. -
The Intergenerational Correlation of Employment: Is There a Role for Work Culture?
We document a substantial positive correlation of employment status between mothers and their children in the United States, linking data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Children and Young Adults. After controlling for ability, education and wealth, a one-year increase in a mother’s employment is associated with six weeks more employment of her child on average. -
Online Job Seekers in Canada: What Can We Learn from Bing Job Queries?
Labour markets in Canada and around the world are evolving rapidly with the digital economy. Traditional data are adapting gradually but are not yet able to provide timely information on this evolution. -
Local Labor Markets in Canada and the United States
We examine local labor markets in the United States and Canada from 1990 to 2011 using comparable household and business data. Wage levels and inequality rise with city population in both countries, albeit less in Canada.