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This paper develops an approach to derive shadow values of water as a valuable input in a production process, which produces a socially valuable output (which is sold in the market). These shadow values are characterized as the amount producers would be willing, on the margin, to pay for the ability to use water as a free input. The magnitude of these economic benefits can therefore be examined by estimating the private costs that would be incurred in reducing water intake as a free input for a given level of the output.

Recently, considerable public attention has been paid to the possibility that head office employment has been declining as a result of the migration of head offices to other countries, what is sometimes referred to as hollowing-out. This paper asks whether we have observed evidence of this process using new data from Statistics Canada's Business Register, over the past four years (1999-2002). This paper provides a perspective on the changing significance of the head offices in Canada by measuring counts of head offices and their employment. Overall, the paper finds that there are relatively few sectors or enterprises with patterns of decline in their head office function.

This paper examines the variability of workers' earnings in Canada over the period 1982-1997. Using a large panel of tax file data, we decompose total variation in earnings across workers and time into a long-run inequality component between workers and an average earnings instability component over time for workers. We find an increase in earnings variability between 1982-1989 and 1990-97 that is largely confined to men and largely driven by widening long-run earnings inequality. Second, the pattern of unemployment rate and GDP growth rate effects on these variance components is not consistent with conventional explanations and is suggestive of an alternative paradigm of how economic growth over this period widens long-run earnings inequality. Third, when unemployment rate and GDP growth rate effects are considered jointly, macroeconomic improvement is found to reduce the overall variability of earnings as the reduction in earnings instability outweighs the widening of long-run earnings inequality.

This paper measures the degree of job renewal in Canadian manufacturing as a whole and across provinces. This study uses a longitudinal microdata set that covers the population of manufacturing plants in Canada from 1973 to 1996.

The report examines employment, unemployment, work activity, earnings, industrial structure, industry concentration and diversity, and human capital and population growth due to immigration and inter-CMA mobility in census metropolitan areas (CMAs) between 1981 and 2001. The report uses the 1981, 1991 and 2001 censuses of Canada, and the 1987-2003 Labour Force Survey.

"This paper relates to two understudied, but increasingly important concerns: the measurement of regional integration, and the regional benefits to North American economic integration. The objective is to measure Canada's regional integration in manufacturing industries with that of the United States, and examine the regional impact of growing trade integration on productivity growth and select other economic performance variables."--Unedited text from document.