Category Frances Woolley
Does female employment raise or lower savings rates?
When female incomes rise, household expenditure patterns change. One oft-quoted survey paper suggests: men spend more of the income they control for their own consumption than do women. Alcohol, cigarettes, status consumer goods, even "female companionship" are noted in these studies. Another well known paper found that a UK policy change that transferred resources from […]
When is a ban a subsidy?
In the United States, surrogate mothers receive fees of about $20,000 to $25,000 for their services. In Canada, the U.K., Australia and a number of other countries, commercial surrogacy is outlawed, but surrogates are compensated for expenses, for example, clothing, food, prenatal vitamins, childcare, travel costs, lost wages, medications, medical bills, etc. In the U.K., reported expenses range […]
Surrogate motherhood: the case for commodification
Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban have one. So do Elton John and David Furnish, and that woman in the New York Times. They all have children borne by surrogate mothers. In Canada, as in the UK, Australia, France and several other countries, it is illegal to pay surrogate mothers for anything more than their expenses — […]
Why is Canadian GDP Growth Higher Under Liberal Governments?
Canadian economic growth is about two percentage points higher under Liberal governments. At least, that's what my colleagues Stephen Ferris and Marcel Voia found in their recent article in the Canadian Journal of Economics (earlier ungated version here). This is a large impact. For example, if the economy was growing at 1 percent under a Conservative government, […]
Organic Milk and Japanese Cars
In the Spring of 2009, the Dairy Farmers of Canada launched the "100% Canadian milk campaign." Products displaying the logo shown on the right are guaranteed to be made with 100% Canadian milk. I'll admit it. As someone who lived through the British BSE outbreak of the 1980s, I'm slightly paranoid about milk safety. I'm […]
Retirement savings plans: brilliant economics, lousy psychology
The US has 401(k)s and IRAs. The UK has personal pension schemes. Canada has Registered Retirement Savings Plans or RRSPs. Economists typically support such plans because of their effects on savings. The plans also make the tax system fairer, granting all taxpayers access to the tax advantages enjoyed by employer pension plans. But the truly brilliant part […]
Videogames and the sexual division of labour
Consider a model in which individuals have a fixed amount of time to allocate between three activities: paid work, household production, and gaming. Each one of these activities requires an investment of effort and human capital, and each provides rewards, either monetary or non-monetary.
“I’m a corporation and so’s my wife.”
"Women are persons in matters of pains and penalties, but are not persons in matters of rights and privileges." Traditional British common law held that women and men were inherently unequal. Today, the equality of men and women is enshrined in the Canadian constitution, and we face a different legal challenge: Corporations are persons in […]
Does the construction industry suffer false consciousness?
According to research carried out by Professor Jack Mintz of University of Calgary, the construction industry stood to gain enormously from Ontario's adoption of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST): In 2009, the business tax structure was heavily biased against investments in construction (42.2%) and services… By 2018, however, Ontario’s business tax structure will be not only […]
Why Statistics Canada oversamples Newfoundland
When playing around with some data the other day, I noticed something odd. I was trying to figure out where my respondents lived, so I typed "tab PROV" and was surprised to see that about four percent lived in Newfoundland. That's the number in the distribution of respondents column in the table below. Distribution of […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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