J - Labor and Demographic Economics

• The Impacts of Minimum Wage Increases on the Canadian Economy

  Staff Analytical Note 2017-26 Dany Brouillette, Daniel Gao, Olivier Gervais, Calista Cheung

  This note reviews the channels through which scheduled minimum wage increases over the coming years may affect Canadian economic activity and inflation and assesses their macroeconomic impacts. From reduced-form estimates of direct minimum wage pass-through, we find that consumer price index (CPI) inflation could be boosted by about 0.1 percentage point (pp) on average in 2018.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Labour markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, J, J2, J21, J22, J23

• The Evolution of Unobserved Skill Returns in the U.S.: A New Approach Using Panel Data

  Staff Working Paper 2017-61 Lance Lochner, Youngmin Park, Youngki Shin

  Economists disagree about the factors driving the substantial increase in residual wage inequality in the United States over the past few decades. To identify changes in the returns to unobserved skills, we make a novel assumption about the dynamics of skills (especially among older workers) rather than about the stability of skill distributions across cohorts, as is standard.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Labour markets JEL Code(s): C, C2, C23, J, J2, J24, J3, J31

• The Causal Impact of Migration on US Trade: Evidence from Political Refugees

  Staff Working Paper 2017-49 Walter Steingress

  Immigrants can increase international trade by shifting preferences towards the goods of their country of origin and by reducing bilateral transaction costs. Using geographical variation across U.S. states for the period 2008 to 2013, I estimate the respective causal impact of immigrants on U.S. exports and imports.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International topics, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): F, F1, F14, F2, F22, J, J6, J61

• Labour Force Participation: A Comparison of the United States and Canada

  Staff Analytical Note 2017-9 James Ketcheson, Natalia Kyui, Benoit Vincent

  This note explores the drivers behind the recent increase in the US participation rate in the labour market and assesses the likelihood of a similar gain in Canada. The growth in the US participation rate has largely been due to a pickup in the participation of prime-age workers following a post-recession decline.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Labour markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, J, J2, J21

• Wage Growth in Canada and the United States: Factors Behind Recent Weakness

  Staff Analytical Note 2017-8 Dany Brouillette, James Ketcheson, Olena Kostyshyna, Jonathan Lachaine

  This note examines the relatively subdued pace of wage growth in Canada since the commodity price decline in 2014 and assesses whether the weakness is attributable to cyclical (e.g., labour market slack) or structural factors (e.g., resource reallocation and demographic change).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Labour markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, J, J3, J30

• Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity, Inflation and Unemployment: New Evidence Using Micro‐Level Data

  Staff Analytical Note 2017-6 Dany Brouillette, Natalia Kyui

  Recent evidence suggests that the extent of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) in the Canadian labour market has risen following the 2008–09 recession (see Brouillette, Kostyshyna and Kyui 2016).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E3, E31, J, J3, J30

• Constrained Efficiency with Adverse Selection and Directed Search

  Staff Working Paper 2017-15 Mohammad Davoodalhosseini

  Constrained efficient allocation (CE) is characterized in a model of adverse selection and directed search (Guerrieri, Shimer, and Wright (2010)). CE is defined to be the allocation that maximizes welfare, the ex-ante utility of all agents, subject to the frictions of the environment.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets, Financial system regulation and policies, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, D83, E, E2, E24, G, G1, J, J3, J31, J6, J64

• A Canada-US Comparison of Labour Market Conditions

  Staff Analytical Note 2017-4 Dany Brouillette, Katerina Gribbin, Justin-Damien Guénette, James Ketcheson, Olena Kostyshyna, Jonathan Lachaine, Colin Scarffe

  In this note, we provide a brief comparison of the recent developments in the labour markets in Canada and the United States. Our analysis indicates that slack remains in the Canadian labour market, while the US labour market is close to full employment.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Labour markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, J, J2, J21, J22, J23