{"title":"Random choice and market demand","authors":"Javier A. Birchenall","doi":"10.1111/caje.12687","DOIUrl":"10.1111/caje.12687","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper examines a statistical model of choice in which individual decisions have no preferential basis or optimizing behaviour. Individual consumption is chosen at random, while respecting a linear budget set. All the properties of classical demand theory, including symmetry and negative (semi)definiteness of the Slutsky matrix, are shown to be generally satisfied by mean (i.e., market) demands. Despite the fact that individuals are “irrational,” mean demands can be rationalized as the outcome of utility-maximizing behaviour, even when demands are interior. The severity and frequency of revealed preference violations are unable to reject economic rationality in irrational individuals.</p>","PeriodicalId":47941,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of Economics-Revue Canadienne D Economique","volume":"57 1","pages":"165-198"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135266087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Angela Daley, Sujita Pandey, Shelley Phipps, Barry Watson
{"title":"From the Food Mail Program to Nutrition North Canada: The impact on food insecurity among Indigenous and non-Indigenous families with children","authors":"Angela Daley, Sujita Pandey, Shelley Phipps, Barry Watson","doi":"10.1111/caje.12688","DOIUrl":"10.1111/caje.12688","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Food insecurity is prevalent in northern Canada, especially among Indigenous peoples. As one approach to address this issue, the federal government subsidizes the shipping of necessities to remote northern communities, initially through the Food Mail Program and then Nutrition North Canada as of April 2011. We use the Canadian Community Health Survey (2007 to 2016) and a difference-in-differences model to estimate the impact of the policy change on food insecurity, testing for heterogeneity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous families. Our results, which withstand several robustness checks, indicate that the policy change increased the likelihood of overall food insecurity by 8.9 percentage points (77.3% relative to the sample mean) and moderate/severe food insecurity by 7.1 percentage points (89.3% relative to the sample mean). It also increased severe food insecurity among Indigenous families by 7.3 percentage points (more than three times the sample mean). There was, however, variation across regions and subsamples of families with children. Specifically, the policy change was particularly harmful to Indigenous families in the territories and Inuit Nunangat. The detrimental impact was also heightened in the presence of children, especially when considering severe food insecurity among Indigenous families.</p>","PeriodicalId":47941,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of Economics-Revue Canadienne D Economique","volume":"57 1","pages":"27-54"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135645735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cross-border technology investments in recession","authors":"Juliana Yu Sun, Huanhuan Zheng","doi":"10.1111/caje.12686","DOIUrl":"10.1111/caje.12686","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Utilizing industry-level foreign direct investment (FDI) from 72 source markets to 122 destination markets between 2003 to 2018, we evaluate how cross-border technology investments respond to economic recessions. We find that FDI embedded with intensive research and development (R&D) drops when the destination market is in a recession and the source market is in a normal state and recovers to the pre-recession levels when both destination and source markets are in recession. However, there is little evidence that recessions affect cross-border investments in other aspects of technology measured by the penetration of robots, intellectual property products and information and communications technology (ICT). The response of R&D-intensive FDI to recessions is particularly pronounced in deep and long recessions, during the propagation stage of recessions and in destination markets with relatively weak institutional protection of intellectual property and rule of law, loose FDI regulation and high financial development. Our findings are limited to advanced markets: there is no evidence that R&D-intensive FDI from or to emerging markets responds to either destination or source market recessions.</p>","PeriodicalId":47941,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of Economics-Revue Canadienne D Economique","volume":"57 1","pages":"297-330"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135740080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
André de Palma, Gordon M. Myers, Yorgos Y. Papageorgiou
{"title":"Imperfect public choice","authors":"André de Palma, Gordon M. Myers, Yorgos Y. Papageorgiou","doi":"10.1111/caje.12683","DOIUrl":"10.1111/caje.12683","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We model imperfect governments with public choices that are sequential, myopic and not free of error. We first use this framework to explore governmental incremental budgeting. We argue that a model of bounded rationality is required to capture the empirical reality of incremental budgeting. We then provide a model that integrates bounds errors and systematic errors. We argue that the empirical evidence is that bounds errors and systematic errors are inextricably intertwined—some level of bounded rationality is required for systematic errors to emerge. We use this to explore political information lobbying. A testable hypothesis is that lobbyists will focus efforts on policy-makers of low ability. We show that choosing leaders with high ability, that is Madison's wisdom to discern, is important, especially when policy decisions concern dangerous products (rifles) or dangerous environments (pandemics).</p>","PeriodicalId":47941,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of Economics-Revue Canadienne D Economique","volume":"56 4","pages":"1413-1429"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135790093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tax compliance and firm response to electronic sales monitoring","authors":"M. Martin Boyer, Philippe d'Astous","doi":"10.1111/caje.12685","DOIUrl":"10.1111/caje.12685","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper analyzes how firms respond to an Internet of Things technology that reduces significantly the tax authorities' marginal cost of monitoring firm activity. More precisely, we analyze how mandating every restaurant of a single Canadian province to have sales recording modules (SRMs) affects restaurant sales, expenses and profits. We estimate that SRMs increase reported sales by 5.8% to 9.8% on average and that this increase is almost completely offset by an equal increase in expenses, including wages. As a result, the firms' taxable income remains mostly unchanged. Our results suggest that sales tax remittance enforcement at the firm level spills over to other firm stakeholders, such as employees and suppliers. Overall, the one-time cost of the device needed to monitor sales more efficiently is small compared with the recurring benefits for tax authorities.</p>","PeriodicalId":47941,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of Economics-Revue Canadienne D Economique","volume":"56 4","pages":"1430-1468"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135831083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Followers of the pied piper of pensioners","authors":"Conrado Cuevas, Dan Bernhardt, Mario Sanclemente","doi":"10.1111/caje.12684","DOIUrl":"10.1111/caje.12684","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Using survey and administrative data, we study followers of H&L, a massively popular Chilean pension advisor, establishing that financial literacy is not a panacea for poor retirement decision-making. We detail the dynamics of who followed H&L and why. H&L differentially drew financially sophisticated investors, and exposure to H&L causally increased financial sophistication. Nonetheless, followers earned mean annual returns below all buy-and-hold strategies and were aware of this underperformance. Moreover, performance did not materially affect renewal rates. Most followers renew, citing high returns, loss minimization and trust as reasons for following. We show followers gained information about financial matters that had clear, tangible value, and they acted on this information. We posit that followers attributed this to H&L's skill, thus continuing to follow despite the underperformance.</p>","PeriodicalId":47941,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of Economics-Revue Canadienne D Economique","volume":"56 4","pages":"1517-1550"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135352879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Royalty taxation under tax competition and profit shifting","authors":"S. Juranek, D. Schindler, A. Schneider","doi":"10.1111/caje.12682","DOIUrl":"10.1111/caje.12682","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Multinational corporations increasingly use royalty payments for intellectual property rights to shift profits globally. This not only threatens the tax base of countries worldwide but also affects the nature of tax competition. Against this background, our theoretical analysis suggests a surprising solution to the problem of curbing profit shifting without suffering major outflows of capital: a strictly positive withholding tax on royalty payments is both the Pareto-efficient solution under international coordination <i>and</i> the optimal unilateral response. If internal debt is sufficiently responsive, governments can even implement optimal targeting. Then, the royalty tax closes the profit-shifting channel, while all competition for mobile capital is relegated to internal-debt regulation. Our results question the ban on royalty taxes in double tax treaties and the EU Interest and Royalty Directive.</p>","PeriodicalId":47941,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of Economics-Revue Canadienne D Economique","volume":"56 4","pages":"1377-1412"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/caje.12682","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135488733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anne-Célia Disdier, Carl Gaigné, Cristina Herghelegiu
{"title":"Do standards improve the quality of traded products?","authors":"Anne-Célia Disdier, Carl Gaigné, Cristina Herghelegiu","doi":"10.1111/caje.12678","DOIUrl":"10.1111/caje.12678","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine whether standards raise the quality of traded products. Matching a panel of French firm–product–destination export data with a data set on sanitary and phytosanitary measures and technical barriers to trade, we find that such quality standards enforced on products by destination countries: (i) favour the export probability of high-quality firms provided that their productivity is high enough, (ii) raise the export sales of high-productivity, high-quality firms at the expense of low-productivity and low-quality firms and (iii) increase the quality supplied by firms if their productivity is high enough. We then develop a simple new trade model under uncertainty about product quality in which heterogeneous firms can strategically invest in quality signalling to rationalize these empirical results on quality and selection effects.</p>","PeriodicalId":47941,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of Economics-Revue Canadienne D Economique","volume":"56 4","pages":"1238-1290"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126581328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Macroeconomic tail risk, currency crises and the inter-war gold standard","authors":"Chanelle Duley, Prasanna Gai","doi":"10.1111/caje.12680","DOIUrl":"10.1111/caje.12680","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We introduce macroeconomic tail risk into the canonical global game model of currency crises. The exchange rate peg is attacked if fundamentals reach a critical threshold, or if there is a sufficiently large public shock. Large shocks generate doubt amongst investors about both the state of the world and about what others know, giving rise to multiple equilibria. We find a non-monotonic relationship between tail risk and the probability of (a fundamentals-based) crisis and show how this effect depends on the magnitude and direction of public shocks. We consider the implications of policy intervention and identify conditions under which active intervention produces doubt about the level of fundamentals and, hence, how others will respond. Our analysis clarifies how financial contagion in Europe precipitated the sterling crisis of 1931.</p>","PeriodicalId":47941,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of Economics-Revue Canadienne D Economique","volume":"56 4","pages":"1551-1582"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/caje.12680","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126134193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Skill-replacing process innovation and the labour market: Theory and evidence","authors":"Wenbo Zhu","doi":"10.1111/caje.12681","DOIUrl":"10.1111/caje.12681","url":null,"abstract":"<p>I study the differential impacts of product innovation and process innovation on the labour market. Using European data from 2000 to 2018, I find that industries with proportionally more firms reporting product innovation than process innovation also tend to exhibit a lower income share of low-skilled workers. To better understand the mechanism, I develop a dynamic growth model in which firms conduct both types of innovation endogenously. In the model, product innovation introduces new intermediate goods, which tend to require high-skilled workers to implement. Process innovation simplifies existing production technologies and thereby allows firms to replace high-skilled workers with low-skilled ones. I calibrate an extended version of the model to the largest two industries in UK in 2014 and 2018, respectively. I find that product innovation has become less costly but increasingly demanding for skills, and the cost of process innovation has increased on average and become more diverse across firms.</p>","PeriodicalId":47941,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Journal of Economics-Revue Canadienne D Economique","volume":"56 4","pages":"1583-1614"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128201930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}