This is the RSS feed for Global Economics Ltd http://www.global-economics.ca/index.shtml Wed, 13 Nov 2016 15:00:00 -0500 This is a review of George P. Borjas's new book " We Wanted Workers: Unraveling the Immigration Narrative ". It provides a brief summary of the book and recommends it for everyone concerned about the economic impact of immigration on Americans. http://www.global-economics.ca/borjas_workers.htm glo00029 Wed, 13 Nov 2016 15:00:00 -0500 This paper examines the performance of the children of immigrants (called 2nd generation immigrants) to Canada using data from the 2011 National Household Survey, which was administered along with the 2011 Census. An encouraging fact revealed by the data is that 2nd generation visible minority immigrants are becoming more highly educated than both 2nd generation non-visible minority immigrants and non-immigrants: 53.4 per cent of 2nd generation visible minority between 25 and 44 with employment income had earned university certificates or degrees compared to only 35.4 per cent of non-visible minority 2nd generation immigrants and 25.2 per cent of non-immigrants in the same age groups. But, while 2nd generation visible minority immigrants obtained more education than 2nd generation non-visible minority immigrants and non-immigrants, their performance as a group did not measure up so well in the labour market. In the 25 to 44 age group 2nd generation visible minority immigrants earned on average $42,206, which was higher than the $40,431 earned by non-immigrants, but less the $49,202 earned by 2nd generation non-visible minority immigrants. The results from this study are broadly in line with its predecessor (Grady, 2011), but offer more encouragement for an improved performance of 2nd generation visible minority immigrants. http://www.global-economics.ca/immigration_2nd_generation_nhs.htm glo00028 Wed, 11 May 2016 15:00:00 -0500 This paper examines the evidence and offers some observations on the nature of the possible relationships between the oil price and terrorism and their implications for trends in Islamic terrorism, both international and in Canada. It also presents the demographic factors that are contributing to a greater incidence of Islamic terrorism. http://www.global-economics.ca/terrorism_and_oil.htm glo00027 Wed, 23 Mar 2016 15:00:00 -0500 This note considers the role of party platforms in election campaigns in Canada. It presents a case that fully-costed platforms enhance responsibility, tranparency and accountability. http://www.global-economics.ca/platforms.htm glo00024 Fri, 21 Aug 2015 15:00:00 -0500 This paper provides an updated estimate for 2010 for the net fiscal transfer to the recent immigrants who came to Canada between 1985 and 2009. At $5,329 per capita per year, it is significantly lower than the over $6,000 per capita of our two earlier estimates. That this improvement is so small should be of concern given the relative ambitiousness of the Conservative Federal Governments efforts since taking office in 2006 to better select immigrants who are prepared to succeed in Canadas labour market. This included the elimination of a backlog of around a million immigrants selected under an old dysfunctional system who were judged to be likely to encounter labour-market difficulties and the introduction of the Canada Experience Class. And even more worrying should be the fact that the improvement is so small that the overall fiscal cost of fiscal transfers to recent immigrants has continued to grow to $20 to $28 billion in 2010 (and $27 to $35 billion in 2014), up from our earlier estimate of $16 to $24 billion in 2005. The fiscal cost of immigration will probably continue to grow as more immigrants are admitted. At the per capita net fiscal cost of $5,329, the 260,000 to 285,000 planned immigrant admissions recently announced by the Immigration Minister for 2015 should add another $1.4 billion to $1.5 billion to the cost with a similar increment coming ever year thereafter as long as the high targeted level of immigration is maintained. http://www.global-economics.ca/immmigration_and_welfare_state_2014.htm glo00023 Sun, 31 May 2015 16:00:00 -0500 This paper examines the performance of recent immigrants to Canada in the labour market as revealed in the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB). This is an administrative database constructed by Statistics Canada by combining an administrative landing file from Citizenship and Immigration with the T1 Family File (T1FF) of income tax returns from the Canada Revenue Agency. As this database now extends to 2012, it provides the most current evidence on the impact on the labour market performance of recent immigrants of the relatively ambitious immigration reforms introduced by the Conservative Government. These reforms involved tighter criteria for skilled workers, an expansion of the Provincial Nominee Program, and a tightening up on refugee claims. The conclusion of the paper is that the overall performance of recent immigrants has improved enough to modestly reduce the wide earnings gap that has opened up between average recent immigrant and overall earnings. However, the reduction in the earnings gap has not been very large given the ambitiousness of the immigration policy reforms. There are many reasons for this, but the most important is that the Conservative Government has continued to pursue a policy of high mass immigration admitting around 250,000 new immigrants per year right through the 2008-09 recession. Ironically, while the Government has cut back on the number of relatively high performing skilled workers admitted, it has actually increased the number of live-in caregivers, and their families who predominantly are low earning. On the other hand, it is clear that if the Conservative Government had not tightened up immigration policy as aggressively as it did, particularly by eliminating the backlog of workers admitted under the old less stringent criteria, the labour market performance of immigrants would have probably deteriorated, instead of improving modestly as it did. http://www.global-economics.ca/immigration_conservative_policies_2012.htm glo00022 Sun, 19 Apr 2015 15:00:00 -0500 A highly-charged debate that has raged now for four years on the replacement of the long-form census with the voluntary National Household Survey (NHS) has become more political and symbolic than substantive at this point. This article makes the case that the NHS has produced useable high quality data, which is comparable in coverage to that produced by the long-form, at the national, provincial, territorial and census metropolitan level. It also contends that going back to a mandatory questionnaire may not produce much better results given the increased awareness resulting from the controversy that the stiff penalties under the Statistics Act are rarely, if ever, imposed. http://www.global-economics.ca/NHS_comments.htm glo00021 Fri, 6 Feb 2015 9:00:00 -0500 With the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the military intervention of the Coalition led by the United States, the threat of global terrrorism has increased substantially throughout the Western world. While Canada has taken modest steps to deal with the enhanced threat,it has since September 11, 2001 continued to admit an average of over 56 thousand immigrants from Muslim countries each year, bringing the total admitted over the 2002 to 2012 period to 623 thousand. As a consequence of immigration, the Muslim population has risen from 579,640 or 2 per cent of the Canadian population in 2001 to 1,053,945 or 3.2 per cent of the population in 2012, a hefty increase of 82 per cent. Immigration policy is thus increasing the level of Canada's vulnerability to attacks from Islamic terrorists either from abroad or home-grown.The problem, of course, is not that all Muslims are extremists, but rather that Muslim communities seem to spawn and harbor an extremist minority. Many Muslim immigrants admitted to Canada share the jihadist sympathies prevalent, but not universal, in the Muslim countries from which they come and security screening is inadequate to weed them out. http://www.global-economics.ca/immigration_muslim.htm glo00019 Thu, 25 Sep 2014 7:00:00 -0500 This note provides a critique of a recent article that Clement Gignac wrote in the Globe and Mail claiming that high mass immigration in Canada is the key to prosperity. It presents labour market, productivity and demographic data to show that the evidence does not support Gignacs argument and that some of his alleged facts are either misleading or incorrect. http://www.global-economics.ca/immigration_gignac_critique.htm glo00018 Sat, 12 Oct 2013 15:00:00 -0500 When the Conservative Government came to power in January 2006, it inherited a failing immigration policy. Since the number of immigrants was increased in the late 1980s, the performance of immigrants in the labour market had steadily deteriorated and new immigrants had become an increasing drain on government. To deal with the unsatisfactory situation, which threatened to get even worse if the growing backlog of accepted, but not yet admitted, immigrants were all allowed in. The Conservative Government eliminated the backlog by means of legislation, angering many. It also tightened up the criteria for Federal Skilled Workers, and moved to ensure that it was more difficult to make unjustified refugee claims.This paper shows that notwithstanding the relatively ambitious reforms introduced, the measured overall performance of recent immigrants has not improved enough to substantially reduce the wide gap that has opened up between average recent immigrant and overall earnings. There are many reasons for this. The main reason is that the Conservative Government has continued to pursue a policy of high mass immigration admitting around 250,000 new immigrants per year right through the 2008-09 recession. It would be unrealistic to expect the Conservative Governments reforms in immigration policy, as desirable as they might be on their own merits, to by themselves produce the desired improvement in immigrant labour market performance as they applied to only a small proportion of immigrants. The only viable solution to the problem of the growing fiscal burden and rising immigrant poverty is a drastic reduction in the total number of immigrants admitted. http://www.global-economics.ca/immigration_conservative_policies.htm glo00017 Tue, 1 Oct 2013 15:00:00 -0500 The Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is the first global and largest carbon offset instrument, supplementing national or regional cap and trade systems such as the European Unions Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS). This paper draws on weekly IDEACarbon survey data from 2008 to 2010 to empirically examine how investors perception of the CDM regulatory and administrative framework affects the price of CERs in secondary markets (denoted as sCER) and the price spread with EUAs. Results from cointegration analysis and GARCH modeling indicate that the perception of investors about the relative stringency and efficiency of this framework is a significant determinant of the sCER price and the EUA-sCER price spread. An increase in perceived stringency causes significant increases in sCER prices and a substantial narrowing of the EUA/sCER price spread (and vise versa). The analysis also shows that the EU ETS market was instable over the period examined, with a structural shift occurring at the end of 2008 likely due to the 2008 financial crisis. http://www.global-economics.ca/EUA_CER.pdf glo00016 Thu, 25 Sep 2013 15:00:00 -0500 This provides the basis for my presentation to The 9th Interactive Forum on "The Currency Challenge: Creation, Parity and International Convertibility," which was held in Montreal PQ on June 6, 2013. It offers my views on the trends in the main international currencies since the global financial crisis of 2008. http://www.global-economics.ca/sovereign_currency_convertibility.pdf glo00015 Fri, 7 Jun 2013 15:00:00 -0500 This article provides the evidence showing that the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program is not the great success it is cracked up to be by its supporters. In fact, since the introduction of the program in 1999, the relative performance of recent immigrants has deteriorated in Manitoba. And a Federal evaluation shows that the performance of Manitoba PNP principal applicants was the worst in the country as measured by average employment income over all time horizons considered. http://www.global-economics.ca/immigration_manitoba_pnp.htm glo00014 Sat, 8 Sep 2012 12:00:00 -0500 This article critiques Fareed Zakarias CNN special "The GPS Roadmap for Making Immigration Work". It questions some of his facts and presents evidence on the continuing deterioration of the performance of recent immigrants in the Canadian labour market. It also shows that in spite of the praise heaped on Canada's immigration policy by Zakaria, Canada's productivity has continued to deteriorate relative to the United States. http://www.global-economics.ca/critique_zakaria_immigration.htm glo00013 Mon, 18 Jun 2012 12:00:00 -0500 This study published by the C.D.Howe has received much acclaim, but it is problematic from the point of view of an economist concerned about the poor performance of recent immigrants and the need for immigration policy reform. While it provides a very useful overview of immigration policy and history and has had an influential impact on recent immigration policy changes, its analysis, which provides support for those who want to increase immigration levels substantially such as the Globe and Mail editors, is questionable. http://www.global-economics.ca/critique_cdhowe_immigration_study.htm glo00012 Mon, 11 Jun 2012 12:00:00 -0500 Division 54 of Part 4 of the Bill C-38, the Budget Implementation Act, amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Budget Implementation Act, 2008 to provide for the termination of certain applications for permanent residence that were made before February 27, 2008. This Division also amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to, among other things, authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to give instructions establishing and governing classes of permanent residents as part of the economic class and to provide that the User Fees Act does not apply in respect of fees set by those instructions. Furthermore, this Division amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to allow for the retrospective application of certain regulations and certain instructions given by the Minister, if those regulations and instructions so provide, and to authorize regulations to be made respecting requirements imposed on employers in relation to authorizations to work in Canada. In my appearance before the House Finance Committee, I expressed support for these measure, but also argued that the Government still needs to reduce the numbers of immigrants admitted if it is going to make real progress in improving the performance of new immigrants in the labour market and ensuring that immigration benefits Canada economically. http://www.global-economics.ca/speaking_notes_c38.pdf glo00011 Thu, 31 May 2012 14:00:00 -0500 English Canadians need to know that at least some knowledgable Quebeckers are questioning the conventional wisdom that Canada needs immigrants to deal with the aging of the population. Concerned that practically no specialists were intervening in the Quebec debate on the immigration question in general and public consultations held by the Quebec Minister of Immigration in 2007 in particular, Benoit Dubreuil, a philosopher, and Guillaume Marois, a demographer, have written this lively polemic to present the hard facts and to counter the widespread misperceptions encouraged by government, business, labour unions, the academic elites, and especially the media. Canadians concerned about immigration policy who can read French should read this book. Those who can't will have to wait for something to come out in English, which is equally hard-hitting and cuts to the heart of the problem without worrying about the constraints of political correctness. http://www.global-economics.ca/remede_imaginaire.htm glo00010 Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:00:00 -0500 Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has announced his intention to reform Canada's dysfunctional immigration system by redesigning the Federal Skilled Worker program around a job offer requirement. This would be a major step in the right direction, but there are still a large number of issues that must be addressed, which are discussed in this commentary. http://www.global-economics.ca/job_offer.htm glo00009 Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:00:00 -0500 Immigration Minister Kenney announced the elimination of the Federal Skilled Worker Backlog. While this is a good start, deserving of two hearty cheers, the final cheer must be reserved for the time when he cut backs the number of immigrants admitted from the unsustainable quarter million level of the last six years. http://www.global-economics.ca/two_cheers_kenney.htm glo00008 Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:00:00 -0500 Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has recently received "kudos" from a Globe and Mail editorial for reforming the immigration system. However, this praise is premature until Minister Kenney bites the bullet and legislates away the backlog and cuts the numbers of immigrants admitted by introducing a good-paying job requirement. Only then will there be a reasonable chance that the economic performance of immigrants will improve substantially. http://www.global-economics.ca/no_kudos.htm glo00007 Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:00:00 -0500 In 2011, Herbert Grubel and Patrick Grady estimated that in 2005 Canadas immigrant selection policies resulted in an average fiscal burden on taxpayers of $6,000 for each immigrant. Later that year, Mohsen Javdani and Krishna Pendakur from the economics department at Simon Fraser University presented an alternative estimate of this fiscal burden of $450. This study concludes that Javdani and Pendakur's lower estimate is due mainly to their choice of a different immigrant cohort and assumptions about the immigrants absorption of government spending on pure public goods, education, and public housing. http://www.global-economics.ca/fiscal-transfers-to-immigrants-in-canada.pdf glo00006 Thu, 15 Mar 2012 08:00:00 -0500 This is an interview on Madely in the Morning with host Steve Madely on February 23, 2012. The topic is the costs of the parents and grandparents immigration program and the Governments proposal to raise the number of parents and grandparents admitted to 25,000 per year and put a two-year pause on new applications while consulting with the public. http://www.global-economics.ca/parents_CFRA_Feb23.12.mp3 glo00005 Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:30:00 -0500 This article is an op ed piece that presents the case against the current very costly Canadian Parent and Grandparent Immigration Program made in a research paper.It also summarizes the estimates of the cost of the program contained in the longer paper. http://www.global-economics.ca/parents.htm glo00004 Mon, 6 Feb 2012 19:00:00 -0500 This paper critically examines the parent and grandparent program, which allows immigrants to sponsor their parents and grandparents for immigration to Canada. The rationale for the program to be weak given advances in communication and travel. And there are significant problems and costs associated with the program. As a contribution to the Government's consultations, this paper offers a proposal to make the program more fiscally sustainable. http://www.global-economics.ca/parents.pdf glo00003 Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:30:00 -0500 These were prepared for Patrick Gradys testimony before the House Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration on Tuesday October 25, 2011. http://www.global-economics.ca/backlog_speaking_notes.pdf glo00002 Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:30:00 -0500 Youtube video for Patrick Gradys testimony before the House Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration on Tuesday October 25, 2011. http://www.global-economics.ca/backlog_testimony.htm glo00001 Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:30:00 -0500