Working Paper No. 2003-00

December 2003

Introduction

This report contains brief, categorized descriptions of research currently being undertaken by members of McMaster's Economics Department. Each description is accompanied by a list of faculty members' research since 2000. Since each research item is listed under only one category you may not always find work listed where you personally would expect to find it.
 

Contents

1 Microeconomics

2 Macroeconomics

3 International Economics and Economic Development

4 Econometrics

5 Economic History and History of Economic Thought

6 Experimental Economics

7 Health Economics

8 Labour Economics

9 Population Economics

10 Public Economics

11 Resource and Environmental Economics

12 Law and Economics / Political Economy

13 Housing and Urban Economics
 

1 Microeconomics

This section includes research on microeconomic theory and applied microeconomics.

• John Burbidge, Lonnie Magee, and Les Robb are using Canadian microdata sets to study the behaviour of earnings, consumption, and wealth-holding over the life cycle. Their research is discussed in Section 4.

 
• Ken Chan, Stuart Mestelman, McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Rob Moir (University of New Brunswick at Saint John) and Andy Muller are studying the impacts of communication, heterogeneity in incomes and preferences, and notions of fairness on collective decision-making. Stuart Mestelman, Andy Muller and Ph.D. student Neil Buckley are investigating the performance of different institutions and instruments for emission permit trading programmes, with particular attention to open-market and baseline-and-credit plans. Stuart Mestelman, Marc Bilodeau (IUPUI) and McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Jason Childs (University of New Brunswick at Saint John) are investigating the incentives for an individual to volunteer to provide a public service. Stuart Mestelman and David Goodwin (a former undergraduate student) are comparing the market performance of duopolists who post prices after making capacity commitments with the market performance of duopolists who make output decisions and sell their output in a competitive sealed-bid auction. Stuart Mestelman, Andy Muller, graduate student Neil Buckley, and Stephan Schott (Carleton University) are evaluating the performance of output sharing as a regulatory mechanism for over-exploitation of common pool resources. Stuart Mestelman, Andy Muller and Mohamed Shehata (McMaster, School of Business) are studying the impact of liability rules on information dissemination in financial asset markets. (See Section 6).

• Martin Browning (University of Copenhagen) and Thomas Crossley are undertaking both theoretical and empirical research on life-cycle models of consumption and smoothing. One of their principal interests has been the role of the timing of durable purchases in smoothing income shocks.

• Don Dawson is investigating aspects of the economics of professional sports in general and the professional wrestling industry in particular.

 
• Frank Denton and Byron Spencer have been studying the effects of demographic and budgetary shocks on enrollment and faculty renewal in tenure-based universities, using simulation modelling techniques.

 
• Frank Denton and Dean Mountain (Faculty of Business, McMaster and Associate Member of the Department of Economics) have been working on the calculation of aggregation and disaggregation biases in consumer demand elasticities.

• Seungjin Han is working on developing a simple set of mechanisms in collective contracting environments with many principals and many agents such that competition relative to such a set supports equilibrium allocations that could have been generated by any set of complex mechanisms. He is also investigating matching models, in which he attempts to show that the core can be supported by rational expectations equilibrium without any assumptions on preferences and players' characteristics.

• Alok Johri's research on collusive pricing and markup behaviour is reported in Section 2. His work with Jack Leach on middlemen is also reported there.

• Peter McCabe and Varouj Aivazian, (University of Toronto) have been examining the duty to disclose in contractual relationships; the Coase Theorem when transactions costs are present. They are studying efficiency criteria for assessing proposals to implement statutes that require disclosure in bilateral and multilateral arrangements. In addition to two person contracts they are also studying the role of insider rules with respect to the emergence and stability of coalitions of decision makers who are not all endowed with the same information about relevant details to a contract.

 
• Peter McCabe is also working on a set of mathematical and economic integrability (sufficient) conditions for the local and global existence of a utility function when the decision maker is constrained by several (possibly) nonlinear constraints. When the decision maker's actions are restricted by several (possibly nonlinear) constraints, the restrictions implied by the maximization hypothesis on actual choices are no longer sufficient for the existence of a utility function rationalizing actual choices. The research describes exactly the gap between the necessary and sufficient conditions and sets out two mathematical theorems that are applied to the economic integrability theorem.

• Yorgos Papageorgiou is mainly working on urban and regional analysis; this research is reported in Section 10. In microeconomic theory he collaborates with Andre de Palma (University of Geneva) and McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Gordon M. Myers (Simon Fraser University) on consumer models of imperfect choice.

Recent Research

M. Browning and T. F. Crossley, "The Life-Cycle Model of Consumption and Savings," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2001.

_______, "Luxuries are Easier to Postpone: A Proof," Journal of Political Economy, 2000.

M. Browning, T. F. Crossley and G. Weber, "Asking Consumption Questions in General Purpose Surveys," Economic Journal, 2003.

F.T. Denton and D.C. Mountain, "Income Distribution and Aggregation/Disaggregation Biases in the Measurement of Consumer Demand Elasticities," Economics Letters, 2001.

_______, "Aggregation Effects on Price and Expenditure Elasticities in a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System," Research Report No. 374, Research Institute for Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population, McMaster University, 2002.

F.T. Denton and B. G. Spencer, "How Well Does the CPI Serve as an Index of Inflation for Older Age Groups?" in F.T. Denton, D. Fretz and B.G. Spencer (eds.), Independence and Economic Security in Old Age, University of British Columbia Press, 2000.

S. Han, "An Efficient Mechanism for Differentiated Quality of Internet Service", working paper, 2003.

_______, "Investment Competition and One-Sided Agreement in a Large Matching Model", unpublished, 2003.

_______, "Menu Theorems for Bilateral Contracting", unpublished, 2003.

L. Magee, and M.R. Veall, " Allocating Awards across Non Comparable Categories" IZA Working Paper 617 and McMaster Department of Economics Working paper no 11, 2002.
 

2 Macroeconomics

This section includes research in macroeconomic theory, monetary economics, applied macroeconomics and finance.

• Alok Johri's research interests in macroeconomics include the theoretical and empirical study of economic fluctuations as well as monetary models. Current projects include the study of the high frequency implications of learning by doing, for labour market behaviour, inflation and exchange rates.

 
• Marc-Andre Letendre's research focuses on closed and open-economy macroeconomic models. His current work with Alok Johri investigates the properties of various real business cycle models by looking at their structure and not only their predictions. With Martin Boileau (University of Colorado, Boulder), he is investigating the role of inventories in generating persistent responses of GDP, inflation, and the real exchange rate in response to changes in monetary policies. Letendre is also working on a small open-economy model of the Canadian economy to investigate the factors driving the Canadian trade balance.

 
• Bill Scarth explores topics in both applied and theoretical macroeconomics. His current research interests include models of the natural unemployment rate, supply-side effects of interest rates, employment subsidies, work-sharing, aging populations, exchange-rate policies, general tax reform, and an evaluation of alternatives for income redistribution and stabilization in small open economies. Bill's work has involved estimates of the welfare effects of disinflation, devaluation, debt reduction and alternative monetary-policy targeting strategies. New editions of his intermediate macro and introductory books were published in 2003.

Recent Research

S. Ahmad, "Demand for Money: the Keynesian Approach." in Vane, H. and Snowdown, B. (Eds.) Encyclopaedia of Macroeconomics, Edward Elgar 2002.

M. Boileau and M.-A. Letendre, "Inventories, Sticky Prices, and the Propagation of Nominal Shocks," unpublished, 2002.

______, "How Much Persistence Should Sticky-Price Models Generate to Match US data?" Economics Letters, 2003.

R. Cooper and A. Johri, "Learning by Doing and Aggregate Fluctuations," Journal of Monetary Economics,49 2002.

F.T. Denton and B.G. Spencer, "Population Change and Economic Growth: The Long-Term Outlook," QSEP Research Report 383, 2003.

F. Gonzalez and A. Johri, "Asymmetric Labor Adjustment, Organizational Capital and Aggregate Job Flows," McMaster University Working Paper #2002-3, 2002.

______, "Markups and the Seasonal Cycle," Journal of Macroeconomics, 2001.

______, "Learning by Doing and (Truly) Endogeneous Price Stickiness," unpublished, 2003

A. Johri and M.-A. Letendre, "What do "Residuals" from First Order Conditions Reveal About DGE Models?" McMaster University Working Paper, 2002.

A. Johri and J. Leach, "Middlemen and the Allocation of Heterogeneous Goods," International Economic Review, 2002.

R. Kneebone and J. Leach, "The Accumulation of Public Debt in Canada," Canadian Public Policy, 2001.

J.P. Lam and W.M. Scarth, "Alternative Public Spending Rules and Output Volatility," unpublished, 2003.

______, "Monetary Policy and Built-In Stability," Review of International Economics, 2002.

M.-A. Letendre, "Semi-Parametric Predictions of the Intertemporal Approach to the Current Account," forthcoming, Journal of International Economics.

______, "The Effect of Restricting Asset Trade in Dynamic Equilibrium Models," forthcoming, Pacific Economic Review.

______, "Capital Utilization and Habit Formation in a Small Open-Economy Model," forthcoming, Canadian Journal of Economics.

M.-A. Letendre and G.W. Smith, "Precautionary Saving and Portfolio Allocation: DP by GMM," Journal of Monetary Economics, 2001.

H. Malik and W.M. Scarth, "Is Price Flexibility De-Stabilizing? A Reconsideration," unpublished, 2003.

A. Myatt and W.M. Scarth, "Is Policy Perversity Consistent with Keynesian Business Cycles,"Journal of Macroeconomics, 2003.

T. Moutos and W.M. Scarth, "Worksharing: An Efficiency Wage Analysis," unpublished, 2003.

______, "Some Macroeconomic Consequences of Basic Income and Employment Subsidies," forthcoming in Labor Market Institutions and Public Regulation, MIT Press.

______, "A Political Feasibility Approach for Reducing Unemployment Among the Unskilled", unpublished, 2003.

W.M. Scarth, "Population Aging, Productivity and Growth in Living Standards," Review of Economic and Social Progress, 2002.

_______, "Growth and Inequality: A Review Article," Review of Income and Wealth, 2000.

_______, "Alternative Perspectives for Determining the Target Debt Ratio," forthcoming in Is the Debt War Over? Lessons from Canada's Battle Against Budget Deficits, Institute for Research on Public Policy.

_______, "John Kuszczak's Contribution to Economics," first annual John Kuszczak Memorial Lecture, forthcoming in Price Adjustment and Monetary Policy, Bank of Canada, 2003.

_______, Baby-Boom Aging and Labour shortages: Should We Increase Immigration?," unpublished, 2003.

W.M. Scarth and M. Souare, "Baby-Boom Aging and Average Living Standards," SEDAP Research Paper No. 68, 2002.
 

3 International Economics and Economic Development

• Ken Chan applies game theory to various issues in international trade, with application to a number of empirical settings of policy concern. He also engages in research in economic issues concerning southeast Asian economies and currency crises.

 
• Ken Chan, Stuart Mestelman, Andy Muller and McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Jason Childs (University of New Brunswick at Saint John) are using a laboratory environment to study currency attack, regulatory mechanisms, and the effects of asset diversity on the completeness of arbitrage in financial asset markets.

• Atif Kubursi is continuing his examination of various issues: industrialization strategies in the Arab Gulf States, industrial development in Sudan, development and manpower in the West Bank, oil and development in Iraq, and the informal sector in Indonesia and Thailand.

Recent Research

S. Ahmad "Islamic Banking: An Introduction and Some Suggestions." Economia (Journal of Yokohama National University), 2001.

K. Chan, "Trade and Bureaucracy Efficiency," Economic Development and Cultural Change, April 2002.

K. Chan and S. Chiu, "The Role of (Non-)transparency in a Currency Crisis Model," European Economic Review, February 2002.

K. Chan, C. C. Chao and W. L. Chou, "Financial Linkages Among the Asian Crisis Economies," World Economy, August 2001.

K. Chan, "Trade, Social Values and the common trust." mimeo, 2003.
 
 

4 Econometrics

• John Burbidge, Lonnie Magee, and Les Robb are examining various estimation and testing procedures using time series of cross-sections data.

 
• Thomas Crossley and former SEDAP Postdoctoral Fellow Vincent Hildebrand (now at Glendon College of York University) have been investigating estimation methods for repeated short (or rotating) panels.

 
• Frank Denton, SEDAP Research Associate Christine Feaver and Byron Spencer have been working on the time series modelling and stochastic forecasting of mortality rates.

 
• Frank Denton, Dean Mountain (Faculty of Business and Associate Member of the Department of Economics), Byron Spencer, and others have been working on the estimation of econometric models in the areas of consumer demand and energy economics.

Recent Research

D. Cobb-Clark and T. Crossley, "Econometrics for Evaluations: An Introduction to Recent Developments," Economic Record, 2003.

T. Crossley and V. Hildebrand, "Estimating Error-Components Models on Repeated Short Panels, with an Application to Age-Wealth Profiles," unpublished, 2001.

D. A. Dawson and L. Magee, "The National Hockey League Entry Draft, 1969-1995: An Application of a Weighted Pool-Adjacent-Violators Algorithm," The American Statistician, 2001.

F.T. Denton, C.H. Feaver and B.G. Spencer, "Time Series Properties and Stochastic Forecasts: Some Econometrics of Mortality from the Canadian Laboratory," paper prepared for annual conference of the European Society for Population Economics, 2001.

______, "A Model of Energy Demand in the U.S. Commercial Sector with Declining Rate Schedules," Research Report No. 346, Research Institute for Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population, McMaster University, 2000.

______,"Energy Demand with Declining Rate Schedules: An Econometric Model for the U.S. Commercial Sector." Land Economics, Vol. 79, No. 1, pp. 86-105, 2003.

______, "Age, Retirement and Expenditure Patterns: An Econometric Study of Older Canadian Households," QSEP Research Report 375, 2002

L.G. Godfrey and M.R. Veall, "Alternative Approaches to Testing by Variable Addition," Econometric Reviews, 2000.

Lam, J.-P. and M. R. Veall, "Bootstrap Confidence Intervals for Single Period Regression Forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, 2002.

A. Pagan and M.R. Veall, "Data Mining and the Econometrics Industry: Comments on the Papers of Mayer and of Hoover and Perez," Journal of Economic Methodology, 2000.
 

5 Economic History and History of Economic Thought

• Syed Ahmad is working on some aspects of John Rae's economics, particularly on his contribution to the theory of technical change.

 
• Peter George is President and Vice-Chancellor of McMaster. His academic research area is economic history and he has recently worked with McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Livio DiMatteo (Lakehead University) on patterns of wealth. More recently, he is concentrating on historical and current issues in the economic development of Northern Ontario. Some of his research concerns the impact of resource-based development on native peoples and the economic viability of remote native communities.

 
• Wayne Lewchuk, who holds a joint position in the Department of Economics and in Labour Studies, is continuing his work on the history of labour relations, managerial strategies, and technology in the British and American motor vehicle industries. He is also engaged in research on the history of health and safety in Canadian mass-production industries. He is currently working on the rise of labour market regulation in nineteenth-century Europe.

 
• Ken Norrie is Vice-President (Academic) and Provost of McMaster. His academic research area is economic history and particularly Canadian Economic Development.

 

S. Ahmad, "Hicks on Capital," Indian Journal of Applied Economics: Special Issue on Sir John Hicks, 1998. Reprinted in Puttaswamaiah, K. (ed.) John Hicks: His Contribution to Economic Theory and Application, Transaction Publishers, 2001.

______, "The Flow and Ebb in Mixter's Treatment of Rae: A Note," History of Political Economy, 2001.

______, "A `General' Non-Substitution Theorem Along Samuelsonian Lines." International Journal of Applied Economics and Econometrics. 2001. Reprinted in Puttaswamaiah, K. (ed.) Paul Samuelson and the Foundation of Modern Economics, Transaction Publishers, 2002.

W. Lewchuk, "European Economic Integration and the Labour Compact, 1850-1913" (with Michael Huberman), forthcoming, European Economic History Review.

W. Lewchuk, "Frank Woollard," in H.C.G. Matthew (ed.), New Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

K. Norrie, "On Fiscal Balance in the Canadian Federation" in Robert D. Brown Canadian Conundrums: Views From the Clifford Clard Visiting Economists, C.D. Howe Institute, 2002.

K. Norrie, D. Owram and J.C. H. Emery, A History of the Canadian Economy, 3rd edition. Thompson/Nelson, 2002.
 

6 Experimental Economics

The McMaster Experimental Economics Laboratory opened in March 1994. Although there are similar facilities at universities in the United States and Europe, this is the first laboratory in Canada to be dedicated to computer-mediated interactive experiments in Economics and related disciplines. Laboratory facilities include sixteen subject booths, eighteen personal computers, Internet access and a software library for program development.

Current projects include investigations of economic instruments for achieving environmental objectives, methods of managing common pool resources, and the impact of income distribution on voluntary contributions to the provision of public goods. The Laboratory is available to graduate students who are studying market institutions and collective decision making and who wish to use laboratory methods in their doctoral research.
 

Ken Chan, Stuart Mestelman, McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Rob Moir (University of New Brunswick at Saint John) and Andy Muller are studying the impacts of communication, heterogeneity in incomes and preferences, and notions of fairness on collective decision-making.

 

Stuart Mestelman, Andy Muller and Ph.D. student Neil Buckley are investigating the performance of different institutions and instruments for emission permit trading programmes, with particular attention to open-market and baseline-and-credit plans.

Stuart Mestelman, Marc Bilodeau (IUPUI) and McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Jason Childs (University of New Brunswick at Saint John) are investigating the incentives for an individual to volunteer to provide a public service.

Stuart Mestelman and David Goodwin (a former undergraduate student) are comparing the market performance of duopolists who post prices after making capacity commitments with the market performance of duopolists who make output decisions and sell their output in a competitive sealed-bid auction.

Stuart Mestelman, Andy Muller, graduate student Neil Buckley, and Stephan Schott (Carleton University) are evaluating the performance of output sharing as a regulatory mechanism for over-exploitation of common pool resources.

Stuart Mestelman, Andy Muller and Mohamed Shehata (McMaster, School of Business) are studying the impact of liability rules on information dissemination in financial asset markets.

 Ken Chan, Stuart Mestelman, Andy Muller and McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Jason Childs (University of New Brunswick at Saint John) are using a laboratory environment to study currency attack, regulatory mechanisms, and the effects of asset diversity on the completeness of arbitrage in financial asset markets.

Recent Research

M. Bilodeau, J. Childs and S. Mestelman, "Volunteering a Public Good: An Experimental Investigation." unpublished, 2003.

D. Brunton, R. Hasan and S. Mestelman, "The 'Spite' Dilemma: Spite or No Spite, is there a Dilemma?," Economics Letters, 2001.

N. Buckley, R. A. Muller, S. Mestelman, "Long-run Implications of Alternative Emissions Trading Plans: An Experiment with Robot Traders," unpublished, 2003.

N. Buckley, S. Mestelman and M. Shehata, "Subsidizing Public Inputs," Journal of Public Economics, 2003.

K.S. Chan, N. Buckley, J. Chowhan, S. Mestelman and M. Shehata, "Value Orientations and Income and Displacement Effects," Experimental Economics, 2001.

K.S. Chan, R. Godby, S. Mestelman and R.A. Muller, "Crowding Out Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2002.

______, "Heterogeneity, Communication, Equity and Voluntary Contributions to a Public Good, unpublished, 2003.

K.S. Chan, S. Mestelman and R.A. Muller, "Voluntary Provision of Public Goods," Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, forthcoming.

J. Clark, L. Friesen, and R.A. Muller, "The Good, the Bad, and the Regulator: An Experimental Test of Two Conditional Audit Schemes," Economic Inquiry, forthcoming.

D. Goodwin, and S. Mestelman, "Duopolies with Advance Production and Posted or Market Clearing Prices," unpublished, 2002.

S. Mestelman, "The Performance of Double-Auction and Posted-Offer Markets with Advance Production," Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, forthcoming.

______, "Share Trading and Coupon Banking Interact to Improve Performance in Emission Trading Markets," Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, forthcoming.

R.A. Muller, S. Mestelman, J. Spraggon and R. Godby, "Can Auctions Control Market Power in Emissions Trading Markets?" Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2002.

R.A. Muller and A. Sadanand, "Order of Play, Forward Induction, and Presentation Effects in Two Person Games," Experimental Economics 6:5-25, 2003.

S. Schott, N. Buckley, S. Mestelman and R. Andrew Muller, "Output Sharing Among Groups Exploiting Common Pool Resources," unpublished, 2002.
 

7 Health Economics

The Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis (CHEPA) at McMaster cooperate with the Department of Economics in research and in offering courses in Health Economics. Jerry Hurley is a member of the Department of Economics and of CHEPA; Greg Stoddart is a member of the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and CHEPA and an associate member of the Department of Economics. McMaster Alumnus Paul Grootendorst (Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto) and Emile Tompa (Institute for Work and Health, Toronto) are adjunct members of the department.

• McMaster Alumna Sule Alan (now at York University), Thomas Crossley, Paul Grootendorst and Mike Veall are working on prescription drug use consumption patterns before and after the introduction of public drug benefit plans.

 
• Paul Contoyannis has focused on the causes and consequences of inequalities in health, considering both theoretical and empirical issues relating to addiction, wages and income inequality. Other interests include the analysis of health dynamics and the determinants and effects of lifestyle, which has led him to consider and utilize simulation-based estimation and inference in complex microeconometric models. He is also involved with projects with Jerry Hurley, Paul Grootendorst and others concerning the impact of changes in drug plans in Quebec and the determination of a capitation formula for primary care practitioners in Ontario.

• Frank Denton and Byron Spencer have collaborated with Amiram Gafni of McMaster's Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the development of SHARP, a System for Health Area Resource Planning. The project produced a system of models and microcomputer software for projection, simulation, and analysis of future health care requirements and resources in Ontario. Work is now underway on the development of a system of models relating to the health care system in Canada as a whole. Work has also been carried out on the effects of population change on the future requirements for physicians and the costs of physician services.

 
• Frank Denton, Leslie Robb and Byron Spencer are working with McMaster PhD candidate NeilBuckley on the relationship between income and "healthy aging." That work makes use of various master survey files now available in the Statistics Canada Research Data Centre at McMaster.

 
• Martin Dooley has initiated a program of research concerning the socioeconomic determinants of child health and development. His collaborators include Ellen Lipman and Dan Offord (Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, McMaster University), Shelley Phipps, McMaster Ph.D. alumna Lori Curtis (Dalhousie University), David Feeny (University of Alberta) and McMaster Ph.D. alumna Jennifer Stewart (Carleton University).

• Paul Grootendorst's research examines how government intervention in the financing of health care services and remuneration of providers affects the behaviour of health care providers and consumers. Specific examples include assessment of the effects of prescription drug user fees and other pharmaceutical cost control measures on patient health and overall health care costs, and analysis of the impact of provincial government physician expenditure caps on physician labour supply and health service provision.

• Jerry Hurley's current work includes an examination of public and private roles in health care financing, including parallel systems of finance and medical savings accounts; policy issues surrounding the use of capitation funding in health care; development of capitation-based funding formula for health care; physician responses to global physician expenditure caps in Canada; and values in Canadian health policy.

• Wayne Lewchuk is involved in projects with the Canadian Automobile Workers, the Ontario Public Sector Employees Union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and the United Steel Workers of America into the impact of work reorganization and changes in labour markets on workers' health outcomes. A major project is underway funded by the WSIB and the CAW into the impact of work organization on hypertension.

 
• Greg Stoddart's interests in health economics are many and varied, including the public-private mix in health care finance, social and economic determinants of health care utilization and health, inter-sectoral resource allocation for health, and knowledge transfer to inform health and health care policy-making.

S. Alan, T. F. Crossley, P. Grootendorst and M. Veall, "The Effects of Drug Subsidies on Out-of-Pocket Prescription Drug Expenditures by Seniors: Regional Evidence from Canada," Journal of Health Economics, 2002

_________, "Out of Pocket Prescription Drug Expenditures and Public Prescription Drug Programs" SEDAP Research Paper 88, 2002.

C. Altmeyer, B. Hutchison, V. Torrance-Rynard, J. Hurley, S. Birch and J. Eyles, "Geographic Disparity in Premature Mortality in Ontario, 1992-1996," Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis Working Paper No. 03-02, 2002.

M.C. Auld and P. Grootendorst, "An Empirical Analysis of Milk Addiction," unpublished, 2002.

F. Beland, S. Birch, and G. Stoddart, " Unemployment and Health: Contextual Level Influences on the Production of Health in Populations," Social Science and Medicine 2002; 55(11):2033-2052.

P. Contoyannis, A.M Jones and R. Leon-Gonzalez "Using simulation-based inference with panel data in health economics," forthcoming in Health Economics.

P. Contoyannis, A.M Jones and N. Rice "Simulation-Based inference in dynamic panel probit models: an application to health," forthcoming in Empirical Economics.

___________, "The dynamics of health in the British Household Panel Survey," forthcoming in Journal of Applied Econometrics.

P. Contoyannis and A.M. Jones, "'Socio-economic status, health and lifestyle," revised and resubmitted to Journal of Health Economics, 2003.

T. F. Crossley and S. Kennedy, "A Note on the Stability of Self Assessed Health Status," Journal of Health Economics, 2002.

GR Currie, C Donaldson , BJ O'Brien, GL Stoddart, GW Torrance and MF Drummond, "Willingness-to-pay for What? A Note on Alternative Definitions of Health Care Programme Benefits for Contingent Valuation Studies," Medical Decision Making, 2002; 22(6):493-497.

L. Curtis, M.D. Dooley and S. Phipps, "Child Well-Being and Neighbourhood Quality: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth," forthcoming, Social Science and Medicine.

______, "Does Mother (or Father) Know Best? An Assessment of Parent/Child Agreement in the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth," unpublished, 2000.

______,"The Role of Permanent Income and Family Structure in the Determination of Child Health in the Ontario Child Health Study," Health Economics, 2001.

F.T. Denton, A. Gafni and B.G. Spencer, "Population Change and the Requirements for Physicians: the Case of Ontario," Canadian Public Policy, 2001.

______,"Exploring the Effects of Population Change and the Costs of Physician Services", Journal of Health Economics, 2002.

______, "Requirements for Physicians in 2030: Why Population Aging Matters Less than You May Think", Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2003.

L. DiMatteo and P. Grootendorst, "Federal Patent Extension, Provincial Policies and Drug Expenditures: 1975-2000," unpublished, 2002.

M.D. Dooley and R. Finnie, "An Economic Analysis of the Duration of Spells of Lone Motherhood in Canada," 2003, Working Paper.

M.D. Dooley, E.L. Lipman and D. Offord, "Special Demands of Single Parenting," in D. Willms (ed.), Vulnerable Children, Human Resources Development Canada, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2001.

M.D. Dooley and J. Stewart, "Test of the Relationship Between Child Outcomes and Family Outcomes," HRDC Working Paper, 2002.

M.D. Dooley, J.Stewart, E.L. Lipman,"Testing the Good Mother Hypothesis: Do Child Outcomes Vary with the Mother's Share of Income?" Working Paper, 2003.

M.D. Dooley, J.Stewart, E.L. Lipman and D. Offord,"Consumption Indicators, Family Income and Child Outcomes," HRDC Working Paper, 2002.

R. Evans, M. Barer, S. Lewis, M. Rachlis, and G. Stoddart, "Private Highway, One-Way Street: The Deklein and Fall of Canadian Medicare?," Centre for Health services and Policy Research, University of British Columbia, 2000.

J. Eyles, M. Brimacombe, P.Chaulk, G.Stoddart, T. Pranger and O. Moase, "What Determines Health? To Where Should We Shift Resources? Attitudes Toward the Determinants of Health Among Multiple Stakeholder Groups in Prince Edward Island, Canada." Social Science and Medicine, 2001.

M. Giacomini and J. Hurley, "Quarrels and Complaints: Stakeholders and the Concept of Equity in Health Resource Allocation," unpublished, 2002.

M. Giacomini, J. Hurley, I. Gold, P. Smith and J. Abelson. "The Policy Analysis of Values Talk: Lessons from Canadian Health Reform," forthcoming, Health Policy.

M. Giacomini, J.E. Hurley and G. Stoddart, "What It Can Mean to De-Insure a Health Service: The Case of IVF in Ontario," Social Science and Medicine, 2000.

P. Grootendorst, "Beneficiary Cost Sharing under Canadian Provincial Prescription Drug Benefit Programs: History and Assessment," Canadian Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 2002.

______, "Censoring in Statistical Models of Health Status: What Happens When One Can Do Better Than '1'," Quality of Life Research, 2000.

______, "The Impact of an On-line Pharmacy Claims Adjudication Network on Use and Costs of Prescription Drugs: Evidence from British Columbia Pharmacare," unpublished, 2002.

P. Grootendorst, G.M. Anderson and D. Feeny, "Do Provincial Drug Plans Matter? Effects of Provincial Drug Plan Eligibility on Drug Utilization among the Elderly," Final Report submitted to the National Health Research and Development Program, 2000.

P. Grootendorst, L. Dolovich, B. O'Brien, A. Holbrook, A. Levy, " The Impact of Reference Pricing of Nitrates on the Use and Costs of Anti-anginal Drugs," Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2001.

P. Grootendorst, D. Feeny and W. Furlong, "Health Utilities Index Mark 3: Evidence of Construct Validity for Stroke and Arthritis in a Population Health Survey," Medical Care, 2000.

P. Grootendorst, L. Goldsmith,B. O'Brien, J.E. Hurley, and L. Dolovich, "Dispensing with Financial Incentives: An Evaluation of Generic Substitution Policies in British Columbia," revised 2002.

P. Grootendorst and M. Levine, "Do Drug Plans Matter? Effects of Drug Plan Eligibility on Drug Use Among the Elderly, Social Assistance Recipients and the General Population," Final report to the Health Transitions Fund pursuant to grant NA227, 2000.

P. Grootendorst, D. Palfrey, D. Willison , and J. Hurley, "A Review of the Comprehensiveness of Provincial Drug Coverage for Canadian Seniors," Canadian Journal on Aging, forthcoming.

P. Grootendorst, E. Newman, and M. Levine, "Validity of Self-Reported Prescription Drug Insurance Coverage in a Population Health Survey," unpublished, 2002.

J.E. Hurley, "The Normative Economics of Health and Health Care," in A.J. Culyer and J.P. Newhouse (eds.), Handbook of Health Economics, North Holland, 2000.

_____, "Medical Saving Accounts: Approach with Caution," Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, 2000.

_____, A Cost and Effect Review of Pricing Life: Why It's Time for Health Care Rationing, by P. Ubel, Canadian Medical Association Journal, Vol. 165(8): 1073-74. 2001.

_____, "Commentary on 'Health-related Quality of Life Research' and the Capability Approach of Amartya Sen," Quality of Life Research, 2001.

_____,"Ethics, Economics and Public Financing for Health Care," Journal of Medical Ethics, 2001.

_____,"Medical Savings Accounts: Not the Right Prescription." Policy Options, July/August: 21-26, 2002.

_____,"Medical Savings Accounts will Not Advance Canadian Health Care Objectives." Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2002.

J. E. Hurley, J. Cosby, M. Giacomini and B. Hutchison, "Making Resource Allocation Decisions - The Health Sector: A Review of Some Recent Proposals," Regionalization Research Centre Occasional Paper No. 4, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 2000.

J. Hurley, R. Hopkins, B. Hutchison, V. Torrance-Rynard, "The Relationship Between Health Care Need and Standardized Mortality Ratios in Ontario," Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis Working Paper No. 02-02, 2002.

J.Hurley,, B. Hutchison, G. Buckley, and C. Woodward, " Needs-based Funding for Home Care and Community Support Services in Ontario,"Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis Working Paper No. 03-01, 2003.

J. Hurley, R. Vaithianathana, T. Crossley and D. Cobb-Clark, "Parallel Private Health Insurance in Australia: A Cautionary Tale and Lessons for Canada," McMaster University, Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis, Working Paper 01-1, 2001

B. Hutchison, J.E. Hurley, S. Birch, J. Lomas, S. Walter, J. Eyles and F. Stratford-Devai, "Needs-Based Cap Primary Medical Care Capitation: Development and Evaluation of Alternative Approaches," Health Care Management Science, 2000.

B. Hutchison, V. Torrance-Rynard, J. Hurley, S. Birch, and J. Eyles, "Equity in Health Care Funding: Comparison of Current Allocations in Ontario to Allocations based on Population Need," Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis Working Paper No. 03-03. 2002.

M. Jowett, P. Contoyannis, and N.D. Vinh, "The impact of public voluntary health insurance on health expenditures in Vietnam", Social Science and Medicine, 2003.

J. Lavis, M. Farrant and G. Stoddart, "Barriers to Employment-Related Health, Public Policy in Canada," Health Promotion International, 2001.

J. Lavis, S. Ross, J. Hurley, J.Hohenadel, G. Stoddart, C. Woodward and J. Abelson, "Examining the Role of Health Services Research in Public Policy-making", Milbank Quarterly, 2002.

M.A.H. Levine and P. Grootendorst, "Proportion of Osteoporotic Post-Menopausal Women at Increased Risk for Upper GI Adverse Events Associated with Bisphosphonate Therapy," Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety 2000.

A.R. Levy, B.J. O'Brien, C. Sellors, P. Grootendorst, D. Willison, " Coding accuracy of administrative drug claims in the Ontario Drug Benefit database," Canadian Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, forthcoming.

W. Lewchuk (with Charlotte Yates & Paul Stewart), "Quality of Working Life in the Automobile Industry: A Canada-UK Comparative Study", New Technology Work & Employment, 2001.

__________, "Control for Whom? Work Organization Automobile Industry in the North America,", in Globalization and Transformation of Employment Relationship, 2001.

__________,"Empowerment as a Trojan Horse: New Systems of Work Organization in the North American Automobile Industry", Economic & Industrial Democracy, 2001.

W. Lewchuk, "Workload, Work Organization and Health Outcomes: The Ontario Disability Support Program", Report prepared for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, 2002.

W. Lewchuk (with David Robertson, Donald Cole, and Mickey Kerr), CAW/McMaster Health at Work Study: Final Report to the WSIB, 2001.

W. Lewchuk (with Alice deWolf and Andy King), "From Job Strain to Employment Strain: Health Effects of Precarious Work", Just Labour, 2003.

W. Lewchuk (with Donna Baines, Karen Hadley), Final Report: Improving Work Organization to Reduce Injury and Illness: Social Services, Stress, Violence and Workload, 2002.

S. Lewis, D. Kouri, H. Dickinson, C. Estabrooks, J. Williams, C. Mustard and J. Hurley, "Democratic Devolution in Saskatchewan: An Interim Report," Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2001.

E. Lipman, M Boyle, M.D. Dooley and D. Offord, "Children and Lone-mother Families: An Investigation of Factors Influencing Child Well-Being," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2002.

J. Marshall, P. Grootendorst, B. O'Brien, L. Dolovich, A. Holbrook, and A. Levy, "Impact of Reference Based Pricing of H2-Receptor Antagonists and Special Authority for Proton Pump Inhibitors in British Columbia," Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2002.

L. McLeod and M.R. Veall, " The Dynamics of Food Deprivation and Overall Health; Evidence from the Canadian National Population Health Survey", SEDAP Research Paper No. 86 and IZA Discussion Paper 638, 2002.

F. Miller, J. Hurley, S. Morgan, R. Goeree, P. Collins, G. Blackhouse, M. Giacomini, and B. O'Brien, "Predictive Genetic Tests and Health Care Costs: Policy Framework and Illustrative Estimates," McMaster University Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis Working Paper No. 02-03, 2002.

F. Miller, M. Giacomini, S. Morgan and J. Hurley, "Classifying Predictive Genetic Tests by Health System Impact," unpublished, 2002.

S. Morgan and J. Hurley, "The Health Economic Consequences of an Aging Population." Expert Review of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research, 2002.

S. Morgan, and J. Hurley. Influences on the Health Care Technology Cost-driver. Discussion Paper No. 14, Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada. Also forthcoming in Selected Discussion Papers from the Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, P.G. Forest, T. McIntosh and Greg Marchildon, eds, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2002.

S. Morgan, J. Hurley, F. Miller and M. Giacomini, "A Predictive Genetic Tests and Health System Costs," Canadian Medical Association Journal, Vol. 168(8): 989-91. 2002.

S. Schneeweiss, M. Maclure, A.M. Walker, P. Grootendorst and S.B. Soumerai, " On the Evaluation of Drug Policy Changes with Longitudinal Claims Data: The Policy Maker's Versus the Clinician's Perspective," Health Policy, 2001.

S. Schneeweiss, C. Dormuth, P. Grootendorst, and M. Maclure, "Net Overall health Care Savings From Reference Drug Pricing For Angiotensin-converting Enzyme Inhibitors in Elderly British Columbia Residents," unpublished, 2002.

R. Storey and W. Lewchuk, "From Dust to Dust to Dust: Asbestos and the Struggle for Worker Health and Safety at Bendix Automotive," Labour/Le Travail, 2000.

R. Tamblyn et al. (including J. Hurley), "Adverse Events Associated with Prescription Drug Cost-Sharing Among Poor and Elderly Persons," Journal of the American Medical Association, 2000.

R. Tamblyn, P. McLeod, J. Hanley, N. Girard, and J. Hurley, "Physician and Practice Characteristics Associated with the Early Utilization of New Prescription Drugs," forthcoming, Medical Care.

D. Willison, M. Wiktorowicz, P. Grootendorst, B. O'Brien, M. Levine, R. Deber and J. Hurley, "International Experience with Pharmaceutical Policy: Common Challenges and Lessons for Canada," Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis Working Paper No. 01-08, 2001.

D. Willison,, M. Wiktorowicz, P. Grootendorst, B. O'Brien, M. Levine, R. Deber, J. Hurley, " International Trends in Managing Drug Plans: Lessons for Canada," forthcoming, Policy Options.
 

8 Labour Economics

• David Bjerk's work examines causes of the Black-White wage gap, focusing primarily on how the underlying nature of the gap may differ across employment sectors due to informational differences across sectors.

 
• Paul Contoyannis has recently examined the effect of psychological and self-assessed health on hourly wages with Nigel Rice (Centre for Health Economics, University of York, UK), and is currently working on a dynamic mixed multinomial logit model of household composition and labour supply which will be used to analyse and predict poverty transitions (jointly with Carol Propper and Simon Burgess, both at the London School of Economics, UK).

• Thomas Crossley studies the experiences of "displaced workers" - those who lose a job because of factors such as changing trade patterns or technical change. With Martin Browning (University of Copenhagen), he has examined the role of unemployment insurance systems in consumption smoothing in unemployment spells and developed expenditure (consumption) based measurement of the long run costs of job loss. He has also worked on immigration with Deborah Cobb-Clark (Australian National University), Chris Worswick (Carleton University) and Ted MacDonald (University of New Brunswick).

 
• Alan Harrison (Professor Emeritus) has analysed wage contracts and strike behaviour in postwar Canada. His current interests within this area are contract length and downward nominal wage rigidity in private-sector union contracts.

 
• Stephen Jones's research includes an empirical investigation of recent Canadian labour market dynamics, a project conducted in part with Craig Riddell (University of British Columbia), and a comparative analysis of such dynamics in the U.S. economy. Other current research includes the estimation of empirical job-search models and the use of self-reported reservation wage data in such models.

 
• Bill Scarth's work on income distribution examined within efficiency-wage and union models is reported in Section 2.

 

D. Bjerk, "The Differing Nature of the Black-White Wage Gap Across Sectors", unpublished, 2003.

M. Browning and T.F. Crossley, "Unemployment Insurance Levels and Consumption Changes," Journal of Public Economics, 2001.

M. Browning, T.F. Crossley and E. Smith, "Asset Accumulation and Short Term Employment," McMaster University, Department of Economics Working Paper 2002-14.

J. Burbidge and R. Finnie, "The Geographical Mobility of Baccalaureate Graduates: Evidence from Three Cohorts of the National Graduates Survey, 1982, 1986 and 1990," unpublished, 2000.

______, "Employment Outcomes and the Interprovincial Mobility of Baccalaureate Graduates," unpublished, 2000.

______, "The Inter-Provincial Mobility of Baccalaureate Graduates: Who Moves and When," Canadian Journal of Regional Science, forthcoming.

J. Burbidge, L. Magee and A.L. Robb , "Cohort, Year and Age Effects in Canadian Wage Data," in F.T. Denton, D. Fretz, and B.G. Spencer (eds.), Independence and Economic Security in Old Age, University of British Columbia Press, 2000.

______, "The Education Premium in Canada and the United States." Canadian Public Policy, 2002.

B. Chapman, T.F. Crossley and T. Kim, "Credit Constraints and Training After Job Loss," McMaster University, Department of Economics Working Paper 2002-15.

D. Cobb-Clark and T.F. Crossley, "Revisitng the Family Investment Hypothesis", forthcoming, Labour Economics.

P. Contoyannis and N. Rice, "'The impact of health on wages: evidence from the British Household Panel Survey," Empirical Economics, 2001.

T.F. Crossley, J.T. MacDonald and C. Worswick, "Immigrant Benefit Receipt: Sensitivity to Choice of Survey Years and Model Specification," Journal of Human Resources, 2001.

S.R.G. Jones, "Reservation Wages and Job Search Behaviour: Evidence from the Survey on Repeat Use of Employment Insurance," in S. Schwartz and A. Aydemir (eds.), Essays on the Repeat Use of Employment Insurance, SRDC, Ottawa, 2001.

______, "Reservation Wages and Job Search Behaviour: How Different are Repeat Users of Unemployment Insurance ?,"unpublished, 2003.

______, "The Dynamics of U.S. Labor Force Attachment," revised, 2003.

______, "Unemployment and Non-Employment: Heterogeneities in Labour Market States," unpublished, 2002.

______, " Unemployment and Labour Force Attachment: A Study of Canadian Experience 1997-1999," unpublished, 2002.

A.L. Robb, L. Magee, and J.B. Burbidge, " Wages in Canada: SCF, SLID, LFS and the Skill Premium," revised, 2003.
 

9 Population Economics

• The SEDAP Program is supported by an award by SSHRCC under the terms of its Major Collaborative Research Initiative to Byron Spencer and 27 other researchers, including John Burbidge, Frank Denton, Lonnie Magee, Dean Mountain, Leslie Robb, William Scarth, Greg Stoddart, and Mike Veall from this department. SEDAP will run until the end of 2003. (SEDAP is an acronym for Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population.)

 
• Frank Denton, former Director of the Research Institute for Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population (QSEP), collaborates with the new Director, Byron Spencer, as well as Faculty of Business professor and Associate Member of the Department of Economics Dean Mountain and SEDAP Research Associate Christine Feaver, on a range of projects in the area of population economics. QSEP encourages and facilitates faculty research, especially on population, both within the department and in other departments and faculties

 
• Martin Dooley's current research, which bridges labour, population and health economics, includes the following topics: poverty among women and children; the growth of lone mother families; welfare reform; changes in the market work patterns of married and lone mothers; and the impact of low income and lone parenthood on child health and development. (See Section 7 for the last topic.)

 

F.T. Denton, C.H. Feaver and B.G. Spencer, "The Future Population of Canada and Its Age Distribution," in F.T. Denton, D. Fretz and B.G. Spencer (eds.), Independence and Economic Security in Old Age, University of British Columbia Press, 2000.

______, "Projections of the Population and Labour Force to 2046: Canada," Research Report No. 347, Research Institute for Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population, McMaster University, 2000.

______, "Projections of the Population and Labour Force to 2046: The Provinces and Territories," Research Report No. 348, Research Institute for Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population, McMaster University, 2000.

______, "Alternative Pasts, Possible Futures: A `What If' study of the Effects of Fertility on the Canadian Population and Labour Force," Canadian Public Policy,Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 443-459, 2002.

F.T. Denton, D. Fretz and B.G. Spencer (eds.), Independence and Economic Security in Old Age, University of British Columbia Press, 2000.

F.T. Denton and B.G. Spencer, "How Old is Old? Revising the Definition Based on Life Table Criteria," Mathematical Population Studies, 1999; and in F.T. Denton, D. Fretz and B.G. Spencer (eds.), Independence and Economic Security in Old Age, University of British Columbia Press, 2000.

______, "Some Demographic Consequences of Revising the Definition of 'Old Age' to Reflect Future Changes in Life Table Probabilities," Canadian Journal on Aging, forthcoming.

______, "Population Aging and Its Economic Costs: A Survey of the Issues and Evidence," Canadian Journal on Aging, 2000.

M.D. Dooley and R. Finnie, "An Analysis of Differences in Labour Force Participation and Welfare Participation Among Lone Mothers Using Longitudinal Data," unpublished, 2000.

M.D. Dooley, P. Lefebvre and P. Merrigan, "Lone Female Headship and Welfare Policy in Canada," Journal ofHuman Resources, 2000.

L. Magee, J. Burbidge and A. L. Robb, "The Correlation Between Husband's and Wife's Education: Canada, 1971-1996," SEDAP Research Paper #24, 2000.

B.G. Spencer, "Student Enrolment and Faculty Recruitment in Ontario: The Double Cohort, the Baby Boom Echo and the Aging of University Faculty," Research Report No. 373, Research Institute for Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population, McMaster University, 2002.

______, "The Double Cohort and the Shortage of Faculty: How Big Are the Problems?" Toronto: CD Howe, 2002.
 
 

10 Public Economics

This section includes research on public economics, income distribution, regional economics and urban economics.

• David Bjerk is examining various issues related to criminal law. One study examines how actors in the judicial system, namely prosecutors, use their discretion to alter the overall effects of mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Another study examines how to distinguish between statistical and preference based motives for racial profiling among police departments.

 
• John Burbidge (Professor Emeritus) is studying social security, saving plans and income distribution with SEDAP Research Associate Deb Fretz, Lonnie Magee, Les Robb and Mike Veall. John is also working with McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Gordon Myers (Simon Fraser University) on issues in fiscal federalism.

• With a number of coauthors (Krishna Pendakur, Simon Fraser University; Chris Worswick, Carleton University; McMaster Ph.D. alumna Lori Curtis, Dalhousie University; Garry Barrett, University of New South Wales), Thomas Crossley has been exploring the measurement of inequality and poverty, particularly with household level expenditure data. His work (with Martin Browning, University of Copenhagen) on unemployment insurance systems is described in Section 8 and his work on prescription drug benefit plans (with Sule Alan, York University, Paul Grootendorst and Mike Veall) is described in Section 7.

• Katherine Cuff is studying various issues in redistribution and fiscal federalism. With Robin Boadway (Queen's University) and Nicolas Marceau (Universite du Quebec a Montreal), she is examining the effects of both imperfect labour markets and agglomeration on government policies. Together with John Burbidge, she is studying the implications of increasing returns on capital tax competition. She also works with John Burbidge and Jack Leach on issues relating to firm heterogeneity and agglomeration.

• Ken Chan, Stuart Mestelman, McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Rob Moir (University of New Brunswick at Saint John) and Andy Muller are studying the impacts of communication, heterogeneity in incomes and preferences, and notions of fairness on collective decision-making. Stuart Mestelman, Marc Bilodeau (IUPUI) and McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Jason Childs (University of New Brunswick at Saint John) are investigating the incentives for an individual to volunteer to provide a public service. Stuart Mestelman, Andy Muller, graduate student Neil Buckley, and Stephan Schott (Carleton University) are evaluating the performance of output sharing as a regulatory mechanism for over-exploitation of common pool resources. (See Section 6)

• Martin Dooley and Abigail Payne (with David Card at University of California) are starting a project to examine the role of school choice on student performance in Canada. They are also starting a project to study the effect of changes in school finance schemes on student performance. This research continues the work of Abigail Payne and David Card that looked at the effect of school finance on student performance on college entrance exams in the United States.

 
• With McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Gordon M. Myers (Simon Fraser University), Yorgos Papageorgiou, (Professor Emeritus in both Economics and Geography) is studying some problems of fiscal federalism and the design of efficient systems for immigration control.

• James Andreoni (University of Wisconsin) and Abigail Payne are continuing their work to examine the role of government grants on private donations and on fundraising by charitable organizations.

 
• Abigail Payne is starting to develop a research data laboratory that will focus on creating data sets using Canadian sources to study Canadian public economics issues.

• Mike Veall and SEDAP Research Associate Deb Fretz have been studying the retirement income system in Canada both in itself and in comparison with public pension plans in other countries. Veall is also working with Emmanuel Saez (Berkeley) on using income tax data to study the top of the Canadian income distribution.

Recent Research

J. Andreoni and A.A. Payne "Government Grants to Private Charities: Do They Crowd-Out Giving or Fund-raising?" American Economic Review, 93(3), 792-812, June 2003

G.F. Barrett, T.F. Crossley and C. Worswick, "Demographic Trends and Consumption Inequality in Australia Between 1975 and 1993," Review of Income and Wealth, 2000.

______, "Consumption and Income Inequality in Australia," Economic Record, 2000.

R. Boadway and K. Cuff, "A Minimum Wage Can Be Welfare-Improving and Employment-Enhancing," European Economic Review, 2001.

D. Bjerk, "Making the Crime Fit the Penalty: Prosecutorial Discretion Under Mandatory Minimum Sentencing", unpublished, 2003.

R. Boadway, K. Cuff and N. Marceau, "Inter-Jurisdictional Competition for Firms," International Economic Review, 2002.

______, "Redistribution and Employment Policies with Endogenous Unemployment," Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming.

______, "Agglomeration Effects and the Competition for Firms," unpublished, 2003.

R. Boadway, K. Cuff and M. Marchand, "Optimal Income Taxation with Quasi-Linear Preferences Revisited," Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2000.

______,"Equalization and the Decentralization of Revenue-Raising in a Federation," Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2003.

J.B. Burbidge, "Awkward Moments in Teaching Public Economics," The Atlantic Canada Economics Association Papers and Proceedings, 2000.

______, "TDSPs," unpublished, 2001.

J.B. Burbidge and K. Cuff, "Capital Tax Competition and Returns to Scale," unpublished, 2002.

______,"Tax Competition and Strategic Firms", unpublished, 2002.

J. Burbidge, K. Cuff, and J. Leach, "Agglomeration and Heterogeneous Firms," unpublished, 2003.

J.B. Burbidge and G.M. Myers, "Tariff Wars and Trade Deals with Costly Government," Working Paper 2000-05, Department of Economics, McMaster University, 2000.

D. Card and A.A. Payne "School Finance Reform, the Distribution of School Spending, and the Distribution of SAT Scores," Journal of Public Economics, 83(1), 49-82, January 2002

T.F. Crossley and L. Curtis, "Child Poverty in Canada," McMaster University, Department of Economics Working Paper 2003-06.

T.F. Crossley and K. Pendakur, "Consumption Inequality," forthcoming in D. Green (Ed.), Dimensions of Inequality in Canada.

K. Cuff, "Optimality of Workfare with Heterogeneous Preferences," Canadian Journal of Economics, 2000.

D. Fretz and M.R. Veall, "The Effects of the Tax-Transfer System on Retirement Savings," in F.T. Denton, D. Fretz and B.G. Spencer (eds.), Independence and Economic Security in Old Age, University of British Columbia Press, 2000.

______, "Review Article: 2½ Proposals to Save Social Security," Southern Economic Journal, 2001.

______, "Economists and the ARC Large Grants Program: A Brief Report," Economic Record (Miscellany Section), 2001.

D. Fretz, A. Macnaughton and M.R. Veall, "Policy Approaches to Promote Private and Occupational Old-Age Provision in Canada", Bertelsmann Foundation, Vorsorgestudien, 4, 2002.

J. Leach, A Course in Public Economics, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

A. Macnaughton and M.R. Veall, "Tipping and the McQuatters Formula," Public Finance Review, 2001.

L. Magee and M.R. Veall, "A Model of Award Application Behaviour," revised, 2003.

G.M. Myers and Y.Y. Papageorgiou, "Immigration Control and the Welfare State," Journal of Public Economics, 2000.

_____, "Towards a Better System for Immigration Control," Journal of Regional Science, 2002.

_____, "Externalities, Nonconvexity and Agglomeration," Journal of Urban Economics, 2000.

A.A. Payne "Do Government Grants Indicate Quality of Research at Universities? Evidence Suggesting Grants are More Than Substitutes for Private Donations," International Tax and Public Finance, 8, 731-51, November 2001

R.E. Robb and A.L. Robb, "Gender and the Study of Economics: The Role and Gender of the Instructor," Journal of Economic Education, 1999.

J. Robbins, and M.R. Veall, "Registered Saving Plan Holdings as a Government Asset," C.D. Howe Institute Backgrounder No. 63, 2002.

E. Saez, and M.R. Veall, "The Evolution of High Incomes in Canada, 1920-2000," NBER Working Paper 9607 and SEDAP Research Paper 99, 2003.

M. A. Sillamaa and M. R. Veall, "The Effect of Marginal Tax Rates on Taxable Income: A Panel Study of the 1988 Tax Flattening in Canada," Journal of Public Economics, 2001.

R. Smith, L. Magee, A.L. Robb and J.B. Burbidge, "The Independence and Economic Security of Older Women Living Alone," in F.T. Denton, D. Fretz and B.G. Spencer (eds.), Independence and Economic Security in Old Age, University of British Columbia Press, 2000.

M. R. Veall, "Did Tax Flattening Affect RRSP Contributions?," Canadian Journal of Economics, 2001.

11 Resource and Environmental Economics

• David Butterfield is working on incorporating natural resources into national accounts. He and Atif Kubursi are working on modelling economy-environment interactions based on an input-output framework and also on models of water demand and water conservation.

 
• Dean Mountain (Faculty of Business and Associate Member of the Department of Economics) has developed regional models and models of individual consumers' demands for time-of-day electricity consumption. Mountain has pursued related research with Cheng Hsiao (University of Southern California).

 
• Frank Denton, Dean Mountain, Les Robb, Byron Spencer and research associate Christine Feaver have worked on simulation approaches to assessing the impact of electricity rate changes.

 
• Stuart Mestelman, Andy Muller and Ph.D. student Neil Buckley are 1) investigating the performance of different institutions and instruments for emission permit trading programmes, with particular attention to open-market and baseline-and-credit plans, and 2) with Stephan Schott (Carleton University) are evaluating the performance of output sharing as a regulatory mechanism for over-exploitation of common pool resources. (See Section 6)

• Andy Muller and Les Robb are extending the analysis of a contingent valuation survey of willingness-to-pay for improved air quality in Hamilton-Wentworth. The original data was gathered jointly with McMaster Ph.D. alumnus Alan Diener (Health Canada).

D.W. Butterfield, "Resource Depletion Under Uncertainty: Implications for Mine Depreciation, Hartwick's Rule and National Accounting," Resource and Energy Economics, forthcoming.

S. Mestelman, "Environmental Policy: Lessons from the Laboratory," unpublished, 2000.

R. A. Muller, "Experimental Methods for Research into Trading of Greenhouse Gas Emissions," Understanding the Design and Performance of Emissions Trading Systems for Greenhouse Gases, Resources for the Future, forthcoming.

R.A. Muller, A.L. Robb and A. Diener, "Inferring Willingness-to-Pay for Health Attributes of Air Quality Using Information on Ranking of Alternatives and Cognitive Ability of Respondents," Department of Economics Working Paper No. 2001-02, McMaster University, 2001.

Stephan Schott, Neil Buckley, Stuart Mestelman, and R. Andrew Muller, "Shirking for Dollars: Regulating the Exploitation of a Common Pool Resource," ACEA 2002 Papers and Proceedings.
 

12 Law and Economics / Political Economy

• Timothy Besley (London School of Economics) and Abigail Payne have studied the impact of state court judge selection methods on the decision to initiate a charge of employment discrimination.

 
• Abigail Payne has been studying the political economy of federal research funding to universities. With Aloysius Siow (University of Toronto) she has examined the effect of one dollar of research funding on research outcomes as measured by academic publications and patents. She has also studied the impact of congressional earmarking and agency set-aside programs on the distribution of research funding and on academic publications.

 
• With Jenny Williams (University of Melbourne) and Anne Piehl (Harvard University), Abigail Payne is working on several projects relating to the effect of state habitual criminal offender statutes. In one project, she is studying issues pertaining to policy diffusion and the effect of one state's enactment of a law on another state's adoption of a similar law. In another project, she is studying the effect of these statutes on the educational achievement by individuals, segregated by race and age.

 
• Jack Knott (University of Illinois) and Abigail Payne have worked on a series of papers that explore how state governance affects the management and performance of public universities. With Joanne Roberts (University of Toronto), Payne is also studying how state governance structures affect research activity at public universities.

 

T. Besley and A. A. Payne, "Judicial Accountability and Economic Policy Outcomes: Evidence from Employment Discrimination Charges," working paper, May 2003

J. Knott and A.A. Payne "State Governance Structures and the Management of Resources By Public Universities," in Patricia Ingraham and Larry Lynn, editors, forthcoming, Georgetown University Press.

J. Knott and A. A. Payne, "The Impact of State Governance Structures on Management and Performance of Public Organizations: A Study of Higher Education Institutions," forthcoming, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

A.A. Payne "Congressional Representation of Alma Maters and Districts: The Political Economy of Federal Funding to Research Universities," Economic Inquiry, vol. 41(2), 325-46, April 2003

_________, "The Role of Politically Motivated Subsidies on University Research Activities," Educational Policy, 17(1), 12-37,January/March 2003

_________, "Do Congressional Earmarks Increase Research Productivity at Universities?" Science and Public Policy, 29(5), 314-330, October 2002

_________, "Earmarks and EPSCoR: Shaping the Distribution, Quality, and Quantity of University Research," in David Guston and Daniel Sarewitz, editors, Shaping Science and Technology Policy: The Next Generation of Research, forthcoming, University of Wisconsin Press.

A.A. Payne and J. Roberts, "Government Oversight of Organizations Engaged in Multiple Activities: Does Centralized Governance Encourage Quantity or Quality?", working paper, July 2002
 

13 Housing and Urban Economics

• Thomas Crossley is studying life-cycle patterns of housing arrangements with former McMaster postdoctoral fellow Yuri Ostrovsky.

 
• Yorgos Papageorgiou, (Professor Emeritus in both Economics and Geography) has written a book about the monocentric city model with David Pines (Tel Aviv University).

 

T.F. Crossley and Y. Ostrovsky, "A Synthetic Cohort Analysis of Canadian Housing Careers," SEDAP Research Paper #107, 2003.

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