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The last third of the nineteenth century, covering the years from Confederation until the beginning of the era of rapid expansion on the Western prairies, was a formative period for Canada. It is surprising that this period has as yet received little attention from economic historians, for analyses of demographic and economic changes during these years may yield high returns in the form of a more sophisticated interpretation of Canadian development.One of a number of important yet neglected aspects of these years in Canada is the business cycle, and the purpose of this paper is to report some new research in this area. A study of business cycles, as opposed to "panics," implies the existence of a clearly defined cyclical sequence that becomes apparent once an economy has reached a certain state of commercialization. While the process of commercialization in Canada generally lagged behind that in the United States it is clear that even before Confederation a viable market economy had been created in the united province of Ontario and Quebec. There is good reason to believe that by the time of Confederation factor and product markets were functioning quite smoothly and that the price system was playing a prominent role in allocating resources.The two most authoritative, though far from definitive, accounts of cycles and growth in the late nineteenth century are contained in the works of Breckenridge and Skelton. Other students of Canadian economic history have relied heavily upon Skelton's findings about the pace and nature of activity in the post-Confederation years. Skelton concludes that the short period from 1869 to 1873 was a prosperous one, despite the abrogation of reciprocity with the United States, because (1) exports to the latter were well maintained, (2) Canadian producers were successful in finding new domestic markets, and (3) there were expanding sales to the United Kingdom. In contrast the period from the mid-seventies through the mid-nineties he considered to be "Days of Trial" during which Canada waited grimly for a favorable turn in its economic fortunes. In the late nineties Canada's "hour had struck" with emerging opportunities for agricultural expansion in the prairie west.

Since the appearance of annual estimates of gross national expenditure and its components, their use has dominated the analysis of Canadian business fluctuations. They provide the most comprehensive picture of the value and volume of those goods and services, currently produced and consumed, which have passed through the market place. The national accounts have been adapted to analyses of the relationship between the Canadian economy and the economies of the United Kingdom and the United States, particularly of the latter. Interest in these relationships existed for many years before national income accounting became available, but its development certainly gave the problem new focus.The use of national accounts for cyclical analysis has given rise to two problems. The first is that attention in Canada has focused on the period since 1926. There has been great emphasis accordingly on the Great Depression, its transmission to and impact on the economy. This cyclical experience has dominated the recent thinking of Canadian economists quite apart from the crises and misery which it brought. After all it is the one cyclical movement which stands out clearly in the national accounts. Furthermore, the experience of 1929-32 presented an unusual combination of circumstances. Nothing like it in duration or extent had occurred since the 1870's. To base much of the analysis of Canadian business cycles on this one downturn, however major it might have been, and to draw implications for policy therefrom, could easily put public and private decision-making on an inadequate and misleading foundation.

There have been numerous studies of Canadian cyclical experience during the Great Depression beginning in 1929. Similarly, the cyclical experiences of 1937–8 in both the United States and the United Kingdom have been fairly popular subjects for examination. However, it is interesting that no intensive analysis of Canadian experience during the 1937–8 recession has been made, but rather it has been treated as an afterthought to studies of the 1929 downturn instead of receiving the specialized attention which it merits. As a result there are doubts about its exact timing, about the magnitude of the fluctuations involved, about the influences exerted upon Canadian activity by the comparable American and British recessions, and certainly there has been a tendency in some recent works to provide a very facile interpretation.The 1937–8 recession is a subject of interest for several reasons. It is the last pre-war cyclical movement, and roughly coincides with similar economic changes in Canada's major trading partners. Cyclical movements in Canada do not always coincide with those in the United States, as was evident in 1948–9 and 1926–7, but when they do, a close examination of what has happened in Canada and of possible interrelationships between the Canadian and American experience may improve our understanding of Canadian cyclical patterns. This paper first represents a modest attempt to single out those sectors of the economy in which the cyclical downswing was concentrated, and second offers a tentative interpretation of the causal elements at work in this particular cycle.

This paper evaluates a number of univariate and multivariate time-series forecasting models of selected indicator variables for three Canadian provinces: Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba. The out of sample forecasts from these models are compared not only with themselves but with common indicators from the quarterly provincial forecast model of the Conference Board of Canada. The concepts of directional accuracy, the conditional efficiency, and the robust regression are used in evaluating the forecasts. In most cases, the strategy of combining forecasts produced superior results to those given by the Conference Board of Canada.

AbstractThe adoption of flexible work arrangements to accommodate women's family responsibilities is usually seen as costly for organizations. In order to demonstrate that losing women in managerial and professional positions is even more costly, a method of determining the true costs of employee turnover is required. Thus, the issue of women's turnover must be approached in the context of an organization's beliefs about turnover in general. A human capital framework can provide a means of determining this, by examining the organization's beliefs about the nature of the training it provides, and its consequent investment in its employees. The accounting profession is used to illustrate this approach.RésuméL'adoption des horaires de travail souples pour concilier les responsabilitès familiales des femmes est coûteuse pour les entreprises, du moins telle est la perception gènèrale. Mais pour dèmontrer que la perte d' une femme dètenant un paste de cadre ou de professionnelle est encore plus coûteuse, il faut trouver une mèthode de calcul des coûts vèritables du roule‐ment du personnel. Par consèquent, la question du roulement du personnel fèminin doit être apprèhendèe dans le contexte global de la conception de l'entreprise au sujet du roulement du personnel en general. Pour ce faire, á I'aide d'une grille s' appuyant sur le capital humain, on examinera comment l' entreprise concoit la formation et dans quelle me sure elle investit dans ses ressources humaines. La profession de comptable est utilisee pour illustrer cette approche.