Category Labour markets
The marginal productivity of geniuses: why Apple’s workers earn modest wages
Apple has recently come under fire for the low wages paid to its retail employees, the sales "specialists" and technical support "geniuses." According to a recent New York Times article, Apple is doing something "unique in the annals of retailing". It pays "a modest hourly wage, and no commission, to employees who typically have college […]
Working on Claim in a Low Wage Economy
People value time – and money. There is a trade-off: to get more money, a person must spend less time on other things – child care or home repairs, making cinnamon buns or swimming in Meech Lake, playing Call of Duty or Tetris. In the absence of income support programs, or help from family and […]
Coming Soon to a University Near You…H-Index Rankings
Most of us are familiar with the metric known as the h-Index. Developed by Jorge Hirsch, the h-index is a measure that says that if you have an index of h, you have published h papers each of which has been cited at least h times.
Competition between unions
Suppose you were a believer in the benefits of canoes. You want as many Canadians as possible to own a canoe. You would presumably want to encourage competition between different canoe manufacturers, so they would compete on price and quality, so that price would be lower and/or quality would be higher, so that more Canadians […]
“Does Canada have Dutch disease?” is a question without a meaningful answer
The debate about whether or not Canada has "Dutch disease" can never get very far, because there is in fact no clear notion what it is. As far as I'm concerned, the term has by now been stripped of meaning: people are using the definition that is most convenient for their purposes. So in this […]
The Big Three Are Still Big
Employment growth in Canada has been particularly robust in the west and nowhere is this more evident than when examining recent employment growth amongst Canada’s CMAs.
An erratum on US employment flows during the recession
In my most recent post, I did some eyeball econometrics and missed something. It turns out that Canadian and US employment flows during the recession were not quite as dissimilar as I had thought. (Thanks to Dan Kervick in the comments for catching it.)
Flows in and out of employment during the recession
These are the slides I prepared for this conference a few weeks ago in Ottawa, in which I tried to get a handle on the gross flows in and out of employment during the recession, and how it compared to the US experience. It's actually the extended version of those slides; I ended up hacking […]
Should Canadian professors be paid in US dollars?
A recent study claims that Canadian university professors are – as the Toronto Star put it – "the best-paid in the world". The media reports should be interpreted with caution. The study is restricted to professors at public universities, hence excludes the highest earning academics in the US and, possibly, other countries. "The world" turns out […]
What is a University President Worth?
Along with the Canada geese returning home and the melting snow revealing buds of green growth, another sign of spring in Ontario is the unveiling of the sunshine list – those individuals in the Ontario public sector and broader public sector earning $100,000 or more. Included as always on the 2012 list are university salaries […]
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