Occupational gender composition and wages in Canada, 1987–1988

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive picture, circa the late 1980s, of occupational gender segregation in Canada and its consequences for wages. Our analysis reveals sensitivity of the estimated penalty to 'female work' to both specification and estimation strategy. Our preferred estimates indicate that the wage penalties for women in female jobs in Canada are generally smaller than penalties in the United States. Of particular note, while there is some heterogeneity across worker groups, on average the link between female wages and gender composition is small and generally not statistically significant. JEL Classification: J71, J78
Taux de féminité des professions et salaires au Canada: 1987–88. Dans cet article, les auteurs dressent un portrait complet de la ségrégation professionnelle fondée sur le sexe au Canada à la fin des années 1980, et de ses répercussions sur le niveau des salaires. Leur analyse révèle que les évaluations de la 'pénalité salariale' dans les emplois féminins dépendent du choix des méthodes d'estimation et des spécifications des fonctions. Les évaluations les plus robustes indiquent que, pour les femmes au Canada, la pénalité reliée aux emplois féminins est généralement plus faible que celle qu'on trouve aux Etats-Unis. Bien qu'on trouve des résultats différents selon les groupes de travailleurs, en moyenne, le lien entre le taux de féminité des professions et le niveau de salaires des femmes est faible, et n'est généralement pas statistiquement significatif.     

Life-Cycle Saving in the United States, 1900–90

This paper examines how the proportion of US saving that represents life-cycle accumulation changed over the last century. As individuals retire earlier and live longer than before, the expected length of male retirement has increased by more than six-fold since 1850. According to life-cycle models of saving, this means that the proportion of lifetime income saved for retirement should rise over time. I estimate that the fraction of lifetime income saved for retirement tripled between 1900 and 1990. In contrast to such an increase in the estimated retirement saving, the actual aggregate household saving rates exhibit a relatively stable long-term tendency during the 20th century. Based on this result, I argue that the relative contribution of the life-cycle saving to US wealth accumulation increased substantially, perhaps two to three times, over the last hundred years.     

Employment,labor supply and real wages in market disequilibrium

The purpose of this paper is to provide estimates of a disequilibrium labor market model which has been fitted to the US private non-farm sector and to the manufacturing sector. After examining the rationale of the ‘minimum’-type disequilibrium model, we reject it in favor of a formulation suggested by Chow. The latter provides not only a wage adjustment mechanism, but also a quantity adjustment mechanism and treats wages and quantities symmetrically. The empirical findings for both sectors support the disequilibrium formulation employed and reject the equilibrium hypothesis for the labor market.     

Cyclicality of markups and real wages in Korea

This paper examines the cyclical patterns of markups, real wages, and labor share for Korean industries. Markup ratio is greater than 1 in most industries. Markups are countercyclical, and real wages and labor share are procyclical. Income distribution effect has more impact on determining markups than price and technology effect.     

Real wages,real interest rates,and the Phillips curve

This article argues that any analysis of a Phillips curve should include the real interest rate in addition to inflation and real wages as any changes in the interest rate changes the labour–capital input mix in the production process leading to a change in the level of employment in the economy. To justify this argument a Phillips curve model is developed, which includes the real interest rate in addition to inflation and real wages. After the diagnosis of the time series properties of the data, an error correction model is developed and estimated using a set of US annual data from 1948 to 1996. The estimated parameters of the model do suggest that one should really take into consideration of the real interest rate while analysing the Phillips curve. A non-nested test (F-test) also suggests that the Phillips curve model with real interest rate as an additional variable performs better than the conventional method that does not include the real interest rate.     

Consumer demand, ‘full income’ and real wages

This paper develops and tests a model of consumer behaviour in which income and leisure are simultaneously chosen. Using a version of the AIDS, we develop a system of consumer demand equations in which consumer demand depends on ‘full income’, relative prices and the real wage rate, and we find that the predictions of the model are not rejected.     

Non-linear adjustment of real wages,employment and output in the UK

We employ the Brock, Dechert and Scheinkman statistic to investigate non-linearity in conditional mean in UK real wages, employment and output, and to fit threshould regression models to the series. The latter porvide reasonable representations for thenon-lineraity in real wages and output but the residuals from the threshold autoregressive model for employment still contain a non-linear component. In a forecast comparison the TAR models performed better than simple autoregressions. Using the lagged share of wages as an error-correction term we find evidence that all three series respond asymmetrically to lagged changes in wage share and other variables. Fore-casts of real wages and employment derived from these models were superior to those derived from standard, symmetric, ECMs.     

Canadian manufacturers' relative productivity performance, 1907–1990

In this paper I calculate TFP ratios for a sample of Canadian manufacturers relative to their American counterparts on an annual basis throughout most of the twentieth century. The data used to calculate these ratios are drawn from both industry-level and firm-level statistical sources. I find that, in contrast to the relative labour productivity evidence in the literature, when TFP is used as the measuring stick, there is virtually no evidence of consistent and substantial relative technical inefficiency on behalf of the Canadian manufacturers represented in my sample. JEL Classification: D24, N60
Dans ce mémoire, l'auteur calcule les ratios de la productivité totale des facteurs de production (PTF) des manufacturiers canadiens par rapport à celle de leurs collègues américains sur une base annuelle pour la plus grande partie du vingtième siècle. Les données utilisées sont tirées des sources statistiques tant au niveau de l'industrie que de l'entreprise. On montre que, contrairement à ce que suggère la littérature spécialisée à propos de la productivité relative du travail, quand la PTF est utilisée comme étalon de mesure, on ne trouve vraiment pas vraiment de résultats qui suggéreraient une inefficacité technique relative substantielle et persistante des manufacturiers canadiens de l'échantillon.     

A cross‐country comparison of the cyclicality of real wages

Abstract.  This paper contains the first cross‐country comparison of the cyclical behaviour of real wages using microdata. After controlling for changes in labour quality, I find that real wages are strongly procyclical in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In contrast, the cyclicality of government‐published real aggregate hourly wages varies substantially across these three countries. The disparity suggests that a direct comparison of the cyclical behaviour of real aggregate wages is misleading. Finally, I show that variations in labour quality also bias the cross‐country correlation of several key labour market variables. JEL classification: J3, E3
Une comparaison transversale entre pays du caractère cyclique des salaires réels.  Ce mémoire présente la première comparaison entre pays du comportement cyclique des salaires réels à l'aide de micro‐données. Après normalisation pour tenir compte des changements dans la qualité du travail, cette étude montre que les salaires réels sont pro‐cycliques au Canada, au Royaume‐Uni et aux Etats Unis. Au contraire, le caractère cyclique des données sur les salaires horaires agrégés varie substantiellement entre ces trois pays. Cette disparité suggère qu'une comparaison directe du comportement cyclique des salaires réels agrégés peut être trompeuse. Finalement, cette étude montre que les variations dans la qualité du travail biaisent aussi les corrélations entre pays de plusieurs variables du marché du travail.     

Sources of Australian Labour Productivity Change 1950–1994

This study examines sources of Australian labour productivity change from 1950 to 1994. Time-series data are used to estimate a model capturing the interaction between labour productivity, fixed capital, human capital, telecommunications, trade openness and international competitiveness. Attention is given to the time-series properties of these data. ADF tests for unit roots are employed, and the sensitivity of the tests to non-linear transformations and structural breaks are considered. Estimates suggest that policies that promote investment, economic integration and international competitiveness will improve short-run labour productivity. In the long run, fixed capital accumulation is the dominant source of productivity improvement.     

The Social Opportunity Cost of Consumption for Australia, 1960–61 to 1988–89

The social opportunity cost of consumption (SOCC) for an economy is the rate at which current consumption can be traded for consumption in the future. The SOCC is an important determinant of the socially optimal levels of investment and the current account surplus and should be an input into the framing of government economic policy. Using overseas interest rates, the SOCC for Australia is calculated in this article. The calculated series is fairly constant for the 1960s and then has a pronounced cyclical pattern from the late 1960s to 1988–89. The average value of the SOCC for Australia is about four per cent.     

The evolution of male-female earnings differentials in Canadian universities,1970–2001

Abstract .  The evolution of academic salaries and the gender earnings gap in Canadian universities is analysed using a unique Statistics Canada data set containing detailed information on all full-time teachers at Canadian universities over the period 1970 through 2001. Male salaries declined across cohorts, while female salaries remained stable; consequently, male-female earnings differentials have narrowed. Recent years have also seen increasing variation in academic salaries for both men and women. A gender earnings gap remains, the bulk of which can be explained by differences in men's and women's rank and field. The unexplained earnings gap has decreased over time.     

High and low frequency variations and the cyclical behaviour of real wages

The conflicting empirical evidence on the cyclicality of real wages may be a result of the fact that the measure of comovements employed in the literature is affected by coherence among non-business cycle variations in the data. By recursively removing components the degree to which long- and short-term cycles contaminate the existing evidence is studied. While confirming many of the results of the current literature, it is found that evidence of cyclicality is affected more by long rather than by short-term components, even though the data have been detrended by a number of different methods. It has been suggested in the literature that wages become more countercyclical as the deflators used represent less finished bundles of goods. This study shows that this result is robust to the removal of components from either end of the spectrum.     

Quality of life,firm productivity,and the value of amenities across Canadian cities

We estimate quality‐of‐life and productivity differences across Canada's metropolitan areas in a hedonic general‐equilibrium framework. These are based on the estimated willingness‐to‐pay of heterogeneous households and firms to locate in various cities, which differ in their wage levels, housing costs, and land values. Using 2006 Canadian Census data, our metropolitan quality‐of‐life estimates are somewhat consistent with popular rankings, yet find Canadians care more about climate and culture. Quality of life is highest in Victoria for anglophones, Montreal for francophones, and Vancouver for allophones, and lowest in more remote cities. Toronto is Canada's most productive city; Vancouver is the overall most valuable city.     

Self-employment dynamics and self-employment trends: a study of Canadian men and women, 1982–1998

Self‐employment has risen dramatically in Canada, accounting for a disproportionate share of job growth since the 1980s. Using hitherto unexploited information on labour force transitions from sixteen waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances between 1982 and 1998, we show that the changes in transition patterns underlying these increases were very different for women and men. For women, most of the increase in self‐employment is attributable to an increase in retention rates in self‐employment. For men, most is attributable to a decrease in the stability of paid employment. Self‐employment thus rose both in secularly improving (women's) and deteriorating (men's) labour markets. JEL Classification: J23, J63 Dynamique et tendances du travail autonome: une étude des hommes et des femmes au Canada, 1982–1998. Le travail autonome a augmenté dramatiquement au Canada et a été une source relativement importante de la croissance des emplois dans les années 1980. En utilisant des données qu'on n'avait pas utilisées auparavant sur seize transitions dans l'expérience de travail (données obtenues par les Enquêtes sur les finances des consommateurs entre 1982 et 1998), les auteurs montrent que les changements dans les patterns de transition qui soustendent cet accroissement dans le travail autonome sont très différents pour les hommes et les femmes. Pour les femmes, le gros de l'accroissement est attribuable à un accroissement du taux de rétention d'emploi dans le travail autonome. Pour les hommes, le gros de l'accroissement est attribuable à un déclin dans la stabilité de l'emploi rémunéré. Le travail autonome croît donc à la fois dans les secteurs où le marché du travail a le vent dans les voiles (pour les femmes) et dans ceux où le marché du travail se détériore (pour les hommes).