Category: Research summary

The Impact of Post-Secondary Funding on the Educational Attainment of Indigenous Students in Canada

John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy (JDI)

By Maggie Jones, JDI Student Fellow, Queen’s University

In 1980, Canadian men with a bachelor’s degree earned approximately 32% more than those with a high school degree. For women, the equivalent figure was 44%.  By 2005 the university to high school wage premium had increased to about 41% for men and 51% for women (see Figure 1).  The rise in the wage premium over this time period shows just how important post-secondary education has become at an individual level.

Wage gap for men. Figure from Boudarbat, Lemieux, and Riddell (2010).
Wage gap for women. Figure from Boudarbat, Lemieux, and Riddell (2010).

In a recent working paper, titled Student Aid and the Distribution of Educational Attainment, I examine the effects of providing post-secondary funding on educational choices in the context of a large program for Indigenous students in Canada. Read More »

Understanding How Technological Change Affects the Wage Premium of Skilled Workers

John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy (JDI)

By Wenbo Zhu, JDI Student Fellow, Queen’s University

Some technological advancements are skill-complementing, meaning that they tend to increase the productivity and demand for skilled workers. Other technological advancements are skill-replacing, meaning that they tend to reduce the demand for skilled workers and raise the productivity and demand for unskilled workers. Electronic computers are typically considered a prime example of skill-complementing technologies, whereas assembly lines and the use of interchangeable parts in the manufacturing industry are classic examples of skill-replacing technologies.

Disentangling the impacts of each type of technology is important for understanding of the impact of technological changes on labor markets. Read More »

International Trade with Heterogeneous Firms: Policy Implications

John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy (JDI)

By Beverly Lapham, Queen’s University

Researchers and policymakers have long recognized that firms within an industry differ along many dimensions (size, productivity, participation in international markets, etc.). However, firm-level empirical analysis and rigorous theoretical models with firm heterogeneity have only been developed in the last fifteen years or so. Such analyses improve our understanding of how these differences affect firms’ performance in global and domestic markets and their responses to trade liberalization.Read More »

How effective is unconventional monetary policy in Canada?

John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy (JDI)

michal2By Michal Ksawery Popiel, JDI Student Fellow, Queen’s University

In normal times, the Bank of Canada stimulates the economy by lowering the target for the overnight interest rate, encouraging borrowing and spending. However, interest rate movements are restricted below by an effective lower bound (ELB) — a point at which investors would withdraw their money from banks because they prefer to hold cash for a return of 0 percent. Once it is reached, central banks must turn to other, unconventional measures to influence economic conditions.Read More »

Doctoral Fellow develops methods to better understand regional recessions

John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy (JDI)

sergei2Zooming-in without losing focus – understanding regional recessions and the importance of spatial interactions

By Sergei Shibaev, JDI Student Fellow, Queen’s University

Here is the scenario – you are an interested party (e.g. regional policy maker or researcher) in a small regional division in Canada (e.g. Central Okanagan Regional District of British Columbia).  You need to know if your region is likely to become economically at-risk or potentially distressed separately from the national economy, and to do so you require an informative assessment of any synchronicities (i.e. co-movements) with other regions in the country regarding how your small region’s economy has evolved in the last decade. Furthermore, you have existing knowledge regarding several types of connections to other regions that you know are important for your local economy (e.g. your largest regional trading partners), and you wish to explore and compare them through time. I develop and investigate a tool that is capable of learning by itself about these types of phenomena in a unified framework that collectively models a large number of small regions in a country.Read More »

Campaign finance reform and the market for access

John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy (JDI)

img_0928By Christopher Cotton, Queen’s University

Earlier this year, the government of Ontario was involved in a campaign finance scandal, accused of selling access to ministers in exchange for campaign donations. Most people see the exchange of contributions for access to politicians as obvious evidence of corruption. But, this view is too simple. Much of my academic research has focused on how special interests influence policy making. This research has led to a number of insights.Read More »

Search, Monetary Theory, Policy and Housing Economics

John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy (JDI)

amyAmy Sun, the 2014 Queen’s Economics Department Faculty Research Prize recipient, uses Search Theory to give insight into economic policy. The following article was originally published in the QED alumni newsletter. 

By Amy Sun, Queen’s University

Classical economic theory treats the transaction process as an instantaneous step. Experience from the real world, however, suggests that in many contexts this simplification is too much of an abstraction from reality.Read More »

How long campaigns can make candidates more extreme

John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy (JDI)

By Christopher Cotton, Queen’s University

An except from an article published in The Washington Post.

As the 2016 U.S. presidential hopefuls begin announcing their candidacies, Americans are readying themselves for more than a year and a half of political campaigning.  That’s a long time. Long enough to perhaps cost $5 billion.

There are benefits to a long campaign season. As Calvin Coolidge said, “The purpose of a campaign is to send an intelligent and informed voter to the ballot box.” Campaigns may help inform voters and enable them to develop more accurate assessments of the candidates. Long campaigns have the potential to do this even more effectively.

But there is also a downside. In a new article (ungated here) Raphael Boleslavsky and I show that informative campaigns can also decrease the incentives for candidates to moderate their views. In other words, more informative campaigns encourage polarization between politicians, which tends to make voters worse off.

Keep reading at The Washington Post

The unrecognized benefits of grade inflation

John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy (JDI)

By Raphael Boleslavsky (University of Miami) and Christopher Cotton (Queen’s University)

Grade inflation is widely viewed as detrimental, compromising the quality of education and reducing the information content of student transcripts for employers. This column argues that there may be benefits to allowing grade inflation when universities’ investment decisions are taken into account. With grade inflation, student transcripts convey less information, so employers rely less on transcripts and more on universities’ reputations. This incentivises universities to make costly investments to improve the quality of their education and the average ability of their graduates.

Read the full article at VoxEU