Geoff Wright

This paper examines whether restructuring in the public sector contributed to the slower cyclical recovery in Canada than in the United States during the 1990s. Changes in public sector employment are used to investigate this question.

This paper uses Tobit models and data for union contracts to examine the extent of downward nominal-wage rigidity in Canada. To be consistent with important stylized facts, the models allow the variance of the notional wage-change distribution to be time-varying and test for menu-cost effects.