Understanding the factors that determine the migration of labour between regions is crucial for assessing the economy’s response to macroeconomic shocks and identifying policies that will encourage an efficient reallocation of labour. By examining the determinants of migration within Canada from 1991 to 2006, this article provides evidence that regional differences in employment rates and household incomes tend to increase labour migration, and that provincial borders and language differences are barriers to migration.
Topics: Econometric and statistical methods; Labour markets; Regional economic developmentsSince the autumn of 1997, the regional offices of the Bank of Canada have conducted quarterly consultations with businesses across Canada. These consultations, summarized in the Business Outlook Survey (BOS), are structured around a survey questionnaire that covers topics of importance to the Bank, notably business activity, pressures on production capacity, prices and inflation, and credit conditions.
Topics: Business fluctuations and cycles; Regional economic developmentsThe international business cycle is very important for Latin America’s economic performance as the recent global crisis vividly illustrated. This paper investigates how changes in trade linkages between China, Latin America, and the rest of the world have altered the transmission mechanism of international business cycles to Latin America.
Topics: Business fluctuations and cycles; Econometric and statistical methods; International topics; Recent economic and financial developments; Regional economic developmentsUsing census data at the economic region level from 1991 to 2006 and a gravity model framework, this paper examines the factors that influence migration within Canada.
Topics: Econometric and statistical methods; Labour markets; Regional economic developmentsThis article reviews recent work that uses principal-component analysis to extract information common to indicators from the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey (BOS). The authors use correlation analysis and an out-of-sample forecasting exercise to assess and compare the information content of the principal component with that of responses to key individual survey questions on growth in real gross domestic product and in real business investment. Results suggest that summarizing the common movements among BOS indicators may provide useful information for forecasting near-term growth in business investment. For growth in real gross domestic product, however, the survey’s balance of opinion on future sales growth appears to be more informative.
Topics: Business fluctuations and cycles; Regional economic developmentsWhile a number of central banks publish their own business conditions indicators that rely on non-random sampling, knowledge about their statistical accuracy has been limited.
Topics: Business fluctuations and cycles; Central bank research; Regional economic developmentsA number of central banks publish their own business conditions survey based on non-random sampling methods. The results of these surveys influence monetary policy decisions and thus affect expectations in financial markets. To date, however, no one has computed the statistical accuracy of these surveys because their respective non-random sampling method renders this assessment non-trivial.
Topics: Central bank research; Econometric and statistical methods; Regional economic developmentsThe author examines the global impact of U.S. fiscal policy using the Bank of Canada's Global Economy Model (Lalonde and Muir 2007). In particular, she examines the global macroeconomic implications of the expiration of major tax cuts in the United States and of expected increases in U.S. entitlement program expenditures.
Topics: Fiscal Policy; International topics; Regional economic developmentsIn light of the U.S. current account deficit, pressure is high on Asian countries to revalue their currencies. The calls from some U.S. policymakers for tariffs on imports from China has sparked fears that this could trigger a world-wide surge in protectionism.
Topics: International topics; Recent economic and financial developments; Regional economic developmentsThe authors provide a detailed empirical analysis of Canadian city housing prices. They examine the long-run relationship between city house prices in Canada from 1981 to 2005 as well as idiosyncratic relations between city prices and city-specific variables.
Topics: Regional economic developmentsSince the autumn of 1997, the regional offices of the Bank of Canada have conducted quarterly consultations with businesses across Canada. Timed to feed into the process that precedes the Bank's fixed dates for announcing monetary policy decisions, the consultations (now referred to as the Business Outlook Survey) are structured around a questionnaire which is sent to 100 firms that reflect the Canadian economy in terms of region, type of business activity, and firm size. Martin describes both the consultation process and the questionnaire and makes an initial assessment of the data gathered during the business interviews. The article includes charts and correlation tables that illustrate the responses to the key questions included in the survey.
Topics: Business fluctuations and cycles; Regional economic developmentsThe 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).
Topics: Labour markets; Productivity; Regional economic developmentsThis article examines three shocks that affected Canada's economy over the past year from a regional perspective. The downturn in the U.S. economy, high energy prices, and low lumber prices affected Canada's regions to varying degrees. The relative size of the various economic sectors in each region is important in determining the intensity of a region's response to an economic shock.
The article presents some stylized facts on the sectoral mix of each region followed by an analysis of the effects of the three shocks on the regional economies. An outlook is presented, which highlights the results of the survey by the Bank's regional offices in the summer of 2001.
Topics: Regional economic developmentsThis article first outlines the activities of the Bank's regional offices and looks at how regional economic analysis fits into the Bank's decision-making process. The changing role of the regional offices in communications and in information gathering is examined, focusing on the quarterly surveys of industries and associations. The second section reviews, from a regional perspective, economic developments since the Asian crisis and future prospects.
Topics: Regional economic developmentsTowards the end of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the Canadian economy experienced a number of structural changes. These included free trade agreements (both the FTA and NAFTA), significant technological advances, deregulation in many sectors of the economy, the arrival of large, U.S.-based retailers, and the introduction of the GST. The restructuring associated with these developments may partly explain the rather lacklustre performance of output and employment growth in the first half of the 1990s.
The connection between corporate restructuring and employment is difficult to assess analytically. It is, however, useful to ask companies directly about their experiences. For this reason, the Bank's regional offices conducted a survey of 140 companies to ascertain whether restructuring had been more intensive in the 1990s than in the 1980s, and how this affected employment at the firm level.
The broad results of the survey are clear—the degree of restructuring was greater in the 1990s than in the 1980s (Table 1). Restructuring included operational as well as workforce adjustments, and the most common form of restructuring was investing in new technology (Table 3). When companies were asked why they restructured, the most common response was the availability of new technology.
Competition has also influenced firms to restructure. This factor was cited second after the affordability of new technology (Table 4).
The results indicate that many firms did reduce staff as part of their restructuring efforts. Reasons for the reductions included competitive pressures and investment in new technology (Table 6). The survey also attempted to gauge the amount of "churning" or change in the composition of the workforce. The change identified most frequently, especially in the 1990s, was the need for more highly skilled workers. Companies required employees to be adaptable and to change career paths more frequently. This is consistent with the growing investment in new technology.
Companies that had weathered the shocks of the 1980s and 1990s were optimistic. Indeed, the recent performance of the economy would suggest that some of the negative impacts of restructuring are now over. Productivity did pick up in the late 1990s, and it is likely that further gains from restructuring are still to come.
Topics: Labour markets; Productivity; Regional economic developmentsThis paper attempts to provide one interpretation of the broad regional economic history of Canada since the early 1970s. As the title of the paper suggests, we believe that, to a significant degree, regional diversity in economic performance reflects movements in Canada's terms of trade, which very frequently are tied to developments in world commodity markets.
Topics: Regional economic developmentsTheoretically, house prices will reveal greater disparities between regions than prices for more easily tradable goods and services. This contributes to regional disparities in inflation. In this report the author reviews a range of factors that are likely to cause greater disparities in house price inflation than in the price inflation of other goods and [...]
Topics: Regional economic developmentsIn this report the author considers three issues relating to regional disparities in Canada. First, the size of regional disparities in unemployment and wage rates is examined together with the patterns in these disparities over time. Next, various theories related to the causes of regional disparities are reviewed, focussing on their predictions regarding regional disparities [...]
Topics: Labour markets; Regional economic developments
