I - Health, Education, and Welfare

• The Bank of Canada COVID‑19 stringency index: measuring policy response across provinces

  Staff Analytical Note 2021-1 Calista Cheung, Jerome Lyons, Bethany Madsen, Sarah Miller, Saarah Sheikh

  We construct an index that systematically measures and tracks the stringency of government policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across Canadian provinces. Researchers can use this stringency index to analyze how the pandemic is affecting the economy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Domestic demand and components, Recent economic and financial developments, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E20, H, H7, I, I1, I18, R, R1

• A Macroeconomic Model of an Epidemic with Silent Transmission and Endogenous Self-isolation

  Staff Working Paper 2020-50 Antonio Diez de los Rios

  We study the interaction between epidemics and economic decisions in a model that has silent transmission of the virus. We find that rational behaviour strongly diminishes the severity of the epidemic but worsens the economic recession. We also find that the detection and isolation of not only symptomatic individuals but also those who are infected and asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic can reduce the severity of the recession caused by the pandemic.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E1, H, H0, I, I1

• Cyclicality of Schooling: New Evidence from Unobserved Components Models

  Staff Working Paper 2020-38 Barbara Sadaba, Sunčica Vujič, Sofia Maier

  What is the time-varying impact of economic cycles on decisions to invest in human capital?

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E3, I, I2, J, J2

• Inequality in Parental Transfers, Borrowing Constraints and Optimal Higher Education Subsidies

  Staff Working Paper 2019-7 Youngmin Park

  This paper studies optimal education subsidies when parental transfers are unequally distributed across students and cannot be publicly observed. After documenting substantial inequality in parental transfers among US college students with similar family resources, I examine its implications for how the education subsidy should vary with schooling level and family resources to minimize inefficiencies generated by borrowing constraints.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D1, D14, D6, D61, D64, D8, D82, I, I2, I22, J, J2, J24

• Identification of Random Resource Shares in Collective Households Without Preference Similarity Restrictions

  Staff Working Paper 2017-45 Geoffrey R. Dunbar, Arthur Lewbel, Krishna Pendakur

  Resource shares, defined as the fraction of total household spending going to each person in a household, are important for assessing individual material well-being, inequality and poverty. They are difficult to identify because consumption is measured typically at the household level, and many goods are jointly consumed, so that individual-level consumption in multi-person households is not directly observed.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Domestic demand and components, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C31, D, D1, D11, D12, D13, I, I3, I32

• Sheltered Income: Estimating Income Under-Reporting in Canada, 1998 and 2004

  Staff Working Paper 2015-22 Geoffrey R. Dunbar, Chunling Fu

  We use data from the Survey of Financial Security and the Survey of Household Spending to estimate the incidence and extent of income under-reporting in Canada in 1998 and 2004. We estimate that the proportion of households under-reporting income is roughly 35 to 50 per cent in both years.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Domestic demand and components JEL Code(s): H, H2, H26, I, I3, I32, K, K4, K42

• Does Financial Integration Increase Welfare? Evidence from International Household-Level Data

  Staff Working Paper 2015-4 Christian Friedrich

  Despite a vast empirical literature that assesses the impact of financial integration on the economy, evidence of substantial welfare gains from consumption risk sharing remains elusive. While maintaining the usual cross-country perspective of the literature, this paper explicitly accounts for household heterogeneity and thus relaxes three restrictive assumptions that have featured prominently in the past.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International financial markets, International topics, Labour markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, F, F3, I, I3, I31

• Heterogeneous Returns to U.S. College Selectivity and the Value of Graduate Degree Attainment

  Staff Working Paper 2013-46 Mai Seki

  Existing studies on the returns to college selectivity have mixed results, mainly due to the difficulty of controlling for selection into more-selective colleges based on unobserved ability.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets JEL Code(s): C, C3, C30, I, I2, I21

• Expansion of Higher Education, Employment and Wages: Evidence from the Russian Transition

  Staff Working Paper 2013-45 Natalia Kyui

  This paper analyzes the effects of an educational system expansion on labour market outcomes, drawing upon a 15-year natural experiment in the Russian Federation. Regional increases in student intake capacities in Russian universities, a result of educational reforms, provide a plausibly exogenous variation in access to higher education.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Development economics, Labour markets JEL Code(s): I, I2, I20, J, J2, J24

• Education and Self-Employment: Changes in Earnings and Wealth Inequality

  Staff Working Paper 2006-40 Yaz Terajima

  The author quantitatively studies the interaction between education and occupation choices and its implication for the relationship between the changes in earnings inequality and the changes in wealth inequality in the United States over the 1983–2001 period.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Labour markets JEL Code(s): D, D3, D31, I, I2, I21, J, J2, J23