Suchergebnisse

AbstractWe assess the current state of knowledge in the economics of immigration and consider how economic theories of knowledge can be used to further the goal of developing a just immigration policy. In the process, we highlight the contributions of economists working in Canada and Canadian economists internationally in furthering our understanding of this important research area. We identify research gaps such as the need for more research on the underlying causes of the poor returns to foreign work experience for immigrants from non‐traditional source countries and the effect of immigrants on stimulating innovation. More research is also needed on the implications of temporary foreign worker (TFW) programs and the growing importance of employers in immigrant selection systems.

AbstractThe earnings and occupational task requirements of immigrants to Canada are analyzed. The growing education levels of immigrants in the 1990s have not led to a large improvement in earnings as one might expect if growing computerization and the resulting technological change was leading to a rising return to non‐routine cognitive skills and a greater wage return to university education. Controlling for education, we find a pronounced cross‐arrival cohort decline in earnings that coincided with cross‐cohort declines in cognitive occupational task requirements and cross‐cohort increases in manual occupational task requirements. The immigrant earnings outcomes had only a small effect on overall Canadian earnings inequality.

We examine the impact of mandatory retirement on the retirement decisions of professors in Canada using administrative data. We find that the age distributions of professors at universities without mandatory retirement and those at universities with mandatory retirement at age 65 have diverged over time with a higher fraction of professors over the age of 65 being at universities without mandatory retirement. Estimation of a discrete time hazard model indicates that faculty members at universities with mandatory retirement at age 65 have exit rates at age 65 that are around 30 to 36 percentage points higher than those of their counterparts at universities without mandatory retirement. Similar results are found for both men and women; however, the magnitude of this effect is somewhat smaller for women.