This report provides a detailed analysis of the productivity performance of the manufacturing sector in New Brunswick. Part one of the report provides a detailed overview of the manufacturing productivity in New Brunswick from 1997 to 2019. This part identifies a major turning point in the province's manufacturing productivity performance in 2004, after which output per hour of manufacturing plummetted from 109 percent of the national average to 75 per cent of the national average. Part two of the report attempts to shed light on this important development from different angles, namely, a growth accounting perspective, an industry perspective, a labour perspective along with a fourth section which examines additional explanations.
This paper examines whether economic analysis can help provide firmer foundations for the adjudication of human rights claims in establishing monetary awards for injury to dignity and, in accommodation cases, better capturing benefits for society. In relation to injury to dignity, it explores the prospects for establishing an objective evidentiary baseline through a program of independent economic research. In the area of accommodation, the paper considers if the wider use of Cost-Benefit Analysis could help prevent undervaluation of accommodation and whether governments should help cover the incremental cost of accommodation in some cases.
The explosive growth in Chinese imports to Canada over the last two decades has had both negative and positive effects. In this paper, we look at the impact of Chinese imports on the prices Canadians pay for household consumption goods. We find Canadians have benefited from lower prices on some goods and lower inflation overall. To quantify the importance of Chinese imports for individual consumer products and map them to consumer price data, we construct concordance between products in the consumer price index (CPI) and commodities in the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System. We estimate that over the 2001-2011 period, cumulative inflation would have been 1.17-percentage-points higher for the total CPI had there been no change in the Chinese share of total imports in Canada. This assumes other factors are held constant. The average annual inflation for the total CPI was 2.1 per cent over the 2001-2011 period, implying that annual inflation would have been about 0.12-percentage-points higher if there had not been a surge in imports from China.
The distribution of the gains of economic growth among workers and corporations has evolved over time. While an extensive body of literature has studied the fall in the share of labour income in the gross domestic product (GDP), less attention has been paid to the development of the components of its counterpart, the capital share. In the system of National Accounts, the capital share of income can be broken down into net operating surplus and net mixed income (which includes corporate profits before taxes, net interest paid, net other payments and inventory valuation adjustment, and net mixed income) and capital consumption allowances (CCA). This report contributes to the discussion on the rising capital share by studying the evolution of the Canadian corporate profit share in the past three decades using both financial and national accounts data. We analyze trends at the aggregate and sectoral level and compare the aggregate trends to those in the United States during the same period. We also provide an overview of the structural factors affecting the corporate profit share in Canada. According to national accounts data, the corporate profit share before tax in Canada rose 3.8 percentage points between the 1961-1999 and 2000-2017 periods, an increment that significantly enhanced the surge in the capital share of income. Similarly, the financial corporate profit share of income increased by 7.2 percentage points between 1997 and 2017. This development was widespread, with the profit share increasing in all sectors except mining, quarrying and oil, and gas extraction. It was also concentrated. We find that the financial sector, which accounts for less than one tenth of GDP, was responsible for 33 per cent of the increase in the corporate profit share. Complete time series of the profits data used in this report can be found in a profits database developed as part of this research project.
This literature review of government-funded refugee services identifies the issues related to refugee resettlement programs; settlement location; housing; mental health services and employment services in different Canadian provinces and cities. It then summarizes the best practices related to refugees’ integration in Canada or in other refugee resettlement countries. Wherever possible, the report mentions relevant policy recommendations addressed to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) in the different journal articles, papers or reports.
