Canadian Journal of Economics-Revue Canadienne D Economique最新文献

We investigate the long-run effect of ride-hailing on public transit ridership, traffic congestion, and traffic fatalities. We estimate the long-run effect by exploiting British Columbia's use of a pre-existing regulation in 2013 to ban ride-hailing from Vancouver. Using difference-in-differences, we show that the estimated effects are sensitive to the choice of control group. Motivated by this, we use the synthetic control method to construct a counterfactual Vancouver. We do not find a statistically significant effect of ride-hailing on our outcomes. To help understand these findings, we conduct a meta-analysis. We find significant heterogeneity in the literature's estimates, but the average estimate is near zero.

The neutral rate of interest is an important concept and communication tool for central banks. We develop a structural macroeconomic model to study the determinants of the neutral real rate of interest in a small open economy. The model captures domestic factors such as population aging, declining productivity, rising government debt, and inequality. Foreign factors are captured by changes in the global neutral real rate. We use the model to evaluate secular dynamics of the neutral rate in Canada from 1980–2018 and find that changes in both foreign and domestic factors resulted in a protracted neutral rate decline.

This article reviews a selection of recent papers that leverage new analytics of career progression, emphasizing potential sources of gender disparities among PhDs in Economics. It offers a unique and comprehensive perspective by examining gender representation, from student choices to end-of-career rewards. The review provides a thorough, in-depth analysis of the topic, highlighting the progress made in valuing women's contributions to economic research, including two Nobel Prize winners in the past 5 years. However, it also points out some recent transformations rooted in the empirical and “big data” revolution, which necessitates large teams of co-authors and favours PhD applicants with pre-doctoral experience, potentially disadvantaging women.

Cost of living is comparatively high in Northern Canada, which is a remote and sparsely populated region served by retail oligopolies (about 34% of communities feature a monopoly, while the rest feature a duopoly). Government transfers constitute a large share of household income in Northern communities, and child benefits are particularly important, with these programs having expanded in recent years (Universal Child Care Benefit in 2015 and Canada Child Benefit in 2016). We assess the extent to which increased child benefits are “captured” by higher prices. Using the Longitudinal Administrative Database and community-level data on prices and food shipments from Nutrition North Canada (2012–2019), we find that expanded child benefits are associated with higher prices (with an elasticity of 0.02), which for a family of four offset about 24% of the increased purchasing power resulting from the expansion. Our results suggest that expanded child benefits increase food demand and that the main transmission mechanism leading to higher prices is markups, as our price effects hold conditional on the quantity of food shipped and are mostly driven by monopoly communities, where about 61% of increased purchasing power is offset by higher food prices. Thus, Northern communities are not pure “price-takers,” and policies that increase cash assistance should consider the implications for local prices.

We examine the role that the railroad played in the dispossession and cession of Indigenous lands within the borders of present-day Canada. Using georeferenced data on the construction of the railroad network and on the timing, content and extent of treaties signed between the Crown and Indigenous nations, we find that the expansion of the railway network does not appear to hasten the signing of treaties or increase the area ceded. However, we find evidence consistent with the Crown engaging in treaty-signing well in advance of railroad construction to secure the path for the transcontinental railway. We find some weak evidence that US westward expansion, as measured by nearby US population, partly explains the cession of Indigenous lands in what is now Canada. Taken together, our results indicate that the relationship between the railroad and Indigenous land dispossession looked very different in Canada from the United States. In the latter, the process was concurrent; in Canada, land cession occurred well in advance of railway construction. This forward-looking approach accords with a historical narrative that centres the role of the railway in bringing British Columbia into Confederation and in securing the Prairies from US territorial ambitions.

Hospitals in public and private healthcare systems frequently undergo mergers despite mixed evidence on their effects on quality and cost. We use confidential health data from Ontario to evaluate the effect of hospital mergers on measures of hospital quality, capacity and financial status. In particular, we investigate the claim that hospital mergers involving physical restructuring are more likely to improve these measures than hospital mergers that are administrative in nature. Our primary analysis finds little evidence of an impact of hospital mergers on quality of care. While neither type of merger has an impact on most measures of financial status, mergers are associated with a reduction in total expenses that is greater when the merger involves physical restructuring (with the caveat that both types of merged hospitals produce fewer inpatient cases post-merger).

We develop a dynamic model of inventory and trade to study how an importer may hedge demand uncertainty when importing involves an order lead time. We show that when the import cost is low, the importer optimally holds safety inventory (i.e., inventory of imported goods in excess of expected sales) to deal with demand surges. As the import cost rises, the firm switches from safety inventory to dual sourcing (i.e., to covering demand surges through quickly available but expensive domestic supplies while using imports for base-level demand). The endogenous adjustment of the hedging strategy implies that the volume of inventory and imports falls by more than expected sales as the import cost rises. This effect is magnified by an increase in demand uncertainty.

This paper empirically investigates the effect of immigrant business ownership on Canada's imports using a firm-level database with business ownership information and import data from 2002 to 2012. Our findings show that immigrant business ownership positively and significantly affects imports from the owners' origin, but it has little impact on imports from other regions. Compared to Canadian-owned firms, immigrant-owned firms are more likely to import, with a greater total value, a larger number of products and a higher average value per product from the owners' origin. The impact is larger for wholesalers than for manufacturers. The study also differentiates immigrant owners by their years since arrival. Firms owned by immigrants arriving within five years are more likely to import from the owners' origin than those owned by Canadians under the age of 45 by 14.66 percentage points, but this difference narrows to 6.22 percentage points when the owners stay for more than 15 years. Our findings suggest that while immigrant owners may enhance imports through connections with the origin, this advantage deteriorates with separation. Additionally, we find that immigrant business ownership has little effect on the total value of imports, as higher imports from the owners' origin are offset by lower imports from non-origin regions.

This paper presents a model of private provision of a public good where individuals have altruistic preferences and care about the private and public good consumption of the other members of their group. I compare the Nash level of the public good to the benchmark level of provision by a social planner who aggregates the preferences of group members. I find that income inequality can cause overprovision of the public good as compared to the planner's benchmark. To understand overprovision, I examine a second model where, in addition to contributing to the public good, members can give private transfers of income to other members they care about. The Nash equilibrium of the model with transfers is found to be closely connected to the equilibrium of the model without transfers. Overprovision can occur in the model without transfers because the richer individuals contribute to the public good as a way to improve the welfare of the poor (noncontributors to the public good) in the absence of private transfers. These results indicate that public goods cannot substitute the role of income transfers to the poor, even when individuals are altruistic, if there is extreme income inequality.

Does the online delivery of digital content truly eliminate geographical trade frictions? Using cross-country sales data from Steam, the world's largest digital PC game distribution platform, we find that even in a purely digital environment, consumers are still less likely to purchase games developed in distant countries. This enduring geographical effect is primarily driven by changes in sales quantity rather than price. Further analysis points to information friction and consumer preferences as partial explanations. We develop a model incorporating these enduring frictions and quantify their significance in evaluating welfare gains.