Government of Canada

About: Government of Canada is a government organization based out in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & Productivity. The organization has 796 authors who have published 886 publications receiving 21366 citations. The organization is also known as: federal government of Canada & Her Majesty's Government.

Relative Multifactor Productivity Levels in Canada and the United States: A Sectoral Analysis

Abstract: This paper has three main objectives. First, it examines the level of multifactor productivity (MFP) in Canada relative to that of the United States for the 1994-to-2003 period. Second, it examines the relative importance of differences in capital intensity and MFP in accounting for the labour productivity differences between the two countries. Third, it traces the overall MFP difference between Canada and the United States to its industry origins and estimates the contributions of the goods, services and engineering sectors to the overall MFP gap.Our main findings are as follows. First, the overall capital intensity is as high in Canada as in the United States; but there are considerable differences in Canada’s capital intensity across asset classes. Canada has considerably less machinery and equipment, about the same amount of buildings and considerably more engineering construction. Second, most of the differences in labour productivity between Canada and the United States are due to the differences in MFP. Third, our industry results show that the levels of labour productivity and MFP in the goods and the engineering sectors are closer to those of the United States. But, the level of labour and multifactor productivity in the services sector is much lower in Canada. The lower levels of labour productivity and MFP in the Canadian services sector account for most of the overall productivity level difference between the two countries.

A Micro Approach to the Issue of Hysteresis in Unemployment: Evidence from the 1988?1990 Labour Market Activity Survey

Abstract: This paper uses a rich set of microeconomic labor market data--the 1988-90 Labour Market Activity Survey published by Statistics Canada--to test whether there is negative duration dependence in unemployment spells. It updates and extends similar work carried out by Jones (1995), who used the 1986-87 Labour Market Activity Survey. Applying hazard model estimation, the analysis finds some evidence of negative duration dependence at the microeconomic level, which is consistent with the de-skilling hypothesis of hysteresis. These microeconomic estimates of negative duration dependence are used to compute macroeconomic estimates of hysteresis in unemployment. The results suggest that hysteresis effects from de-skilling are very small at the macro level, contributing less than 0.1 percentage points to the aggregate unemployment rate. The small estimated size of this hysteresis effect may explain why evidence of hysteresis has been so difficult to find at the macroeconomic level. The paper also shows that Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits reduce the probability of exiting from unemployment and that unemployment duration does not seem to be prolonged by reservation wage effects.

Theoretical foundations for sticky wages

Abstract: . The paper compares three different types of theoretical explanation of ‘sticky’wages. They are implicit contracts, efficiency wage models and insider/outsider models. It then reconsiders Keynes’rationale for sticky wages, which focuses on relative wage issues. Finally, the paper considers possible directions for future research.

Implementation of an IEEE 802.11 link available bandwidth algorithm to allow cross-layering

Abstract: With the popularity and wide adoption of IEEE 802.11 equipment, wireless networks are being used in an increasing number of applications. Wireless links brings new challenges to communications protocols since link quality is unpredictable. To cope with this problem, many recent research proposals have employed cross-layering design. Often, the MAC layer is assumed to provide link quality metrics. Existing IEEE 802.11 radios and drivers do not provide detailed link quality metrics, which restrained a lot of cross-layering work to simulation environment. In this paper, we propose an algorithm that measures and computes link quality metrics inside IEEE 802.11 MAC so that it provides detailed link quality information to other layers of the protocol stack. Among other things, we implemented an algorithm that provides the available bandwidth to each neighbor node in an ad hoc network. This could be used in a number of scenarios to achieve work in the area of cross-layer design in real test beds. Typically, such work has been constrained to simulation or emulation environments due to the lack of link quality metrics provided by IEEE 802.11 MAC drivers.

Securitization and the Dark Side of Diversification

Abstract: Diversification by banks affects the systemic risk of the sector. Importantly, Wagner (2010) shows that linear diversification increases systemic risk. We consider the case of securitization, whereby loan portfolios are sliced into tranches with different seniority levels. We show that tranching offers nonlinear diversification strategies, which can reduce the failure risk of individual institutions beyond the minimum level attainable by linear diversification, without increasing systemic risk.