Labour markets
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Educational Spillovers: Does One Size Fit All?
In a search model of production, where agents accumulate heterogeneous amounts of human capital, an individual worker's wage depends on average human capital in the searching population. -
Recent Developments in Self-Employment in Canada
The authors document the recent evolution of the self-employment rate in Canada. Between 1987 and 1998, the self-employment rate rose 3.5 percentage points from 13.8 per cent to 17.3 per cent. -
Self-Enforcing Labour Contracts and the Dynamics Puzzle
To properly account for the dynamics of key macroeconomic variables, researchers incorporate various internal-propagation mechanisms in their models. -
Public Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is a key factor in promoting growth in output and employment. Consequently, to encourage new start-ups, most governments in developed countries have public venture capital programs. -
November 22, 2003
Recent Labour Market Developments in Canada
In the year and a half leading up to mid-2003, both employment and labour force participation increased at an unusually rapid pace compared to domestic economic activity. Gains in employment were unusually large, relative to output growth, compared to gains in total hours worked. This is explained by a faster rate of increase in the participation rate of the 55 and older age group, many of whom opted for part-time employment. This shift in the composition of employment contributed to a reduction in the length of the average workweek in 2002. As a result, labour input progressed at a rate that was markedly slower than for employment and more in line with its historical relationship to output growth. The authors anticipate that the 55 and older age group will continue to participate strongly in the labour force, but that as the economy rebounds and uncertainty diminishes, the cyclical component in the growth of part-time work should diminish and that of full-time employment increase. Employment growth should moderate in relation to output growth and there may be a cyclical rebound in labour productivity as total hours worked increases during the initial recovery in output growth. -
Technological Change and the Education Premium in Canada: Sectoral Evidence
It has been well documented that the education premium measured by the wage difference between university and high school graduates has remained constant over the past two decades in Canada. Despite this stable pattern at the aggregate level, skill-biased technology could have important implications for the inter-industry wage structure. -
Restructuring in the Canadian Economy: A Survey of Firms
The regional offices of the Bank conducted a survey of 140 Canadian companies (representing all non-government sectors of the economy) to study the effects of restructuring (defined as a major change in the way firms do business). -
Employment Effects of Restructuring in the Public Sector in North America
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. -
How Rigid Are Nominal-Wage Rates?
This study examines the effect of nominal-wage rigidities on wage growth in Canada using a hazard model and micro data for union contracts. The hazard model is specified in a way that allows considerable flexibility in the shape of the estimated notional wage-change distribution.