Perinatal Family Labour Supply: Historical Trends and the Modern Experience

The predominant perspective on perinatal family labour supply in the theoretical and empirical economics literature is that careers and children are simultaneous choices, so conditioning on the prenatal career ambitions of individuals, and particularly women, the event of a birth has little or no effect on labour market behaviour. There are, of course, many reasons to believe that this “allor- nothing” view, rooted in assumptions of perfect foresight, overlooks significant labour market effects of children and that due to various trends, including rising correlation in husband-wife earnings, these effects may becoming increasingly important. Using historical Canadian Census data and rich longitudinal microdata, I use nonparametric techniques to identify discontinuities in employment probabilities, hours of work and wage outcomes of parents, and particularly dualcareer couples, in the months just before and after a first birth. The evidence indicates that although the vast majority of new mothers and fathers who were employed prior to birth, maintain that employment, a non-trivial percentage of women (roughly 20%) appear to give up employment entirely after a birth and roughly half of them will not have returned to work 5 years later. More importantly, the percentage that drop out of the labour force is increasing and has been for at least the past two decades. This decrease is particularly evident among more educated and older women. Further, among new mothers and fathers who maintain their employment through the perinatal period, there is evidence of other types of labour supply adjustments including significant decreases (mothers) and increases (fathers) in both usual monthly hours of work and hourly wages. There is also evidence of increased probabilities of job changing in the year just before and after the birth for fathers, but not for mothers. Together these findings provide a much richer perspective on how today’s dual-career families balance work and child rearing. In terms of its policy relevance, the findings emphasize the importance of measures that support parents in balancing work and family time, as opposed to measures that are focused on enabling parents, and particularly women, to maintain uninterrupted careers while raising children.

The Impact of Sunday Shopping Deregulation an Employment and Hours of Work in the Retail Industry: Evidence from Canada

Using aggregate data on employmnet and hours of work from four Canadian provinces at two levels of the retail trade industry, I estimate a simple dynamic labour demand model in order to examine retail firm responses to Sunday shopping deregulation. The estimates suggest that among general merchandise stores deregulation resulted in long run increases in both the employment level and average weekly hours of work. In contrast, among more specialized retail establishments there is only evidence of an increase in average weekly hours. In addition, despite evidence of an immediate shortfall in the total labour input employed by general merchandise stores below the long run optimal level, the results suggest that these firms were unable to compensate by temporarily increasing the hours of their existing employees.

Immigrant Wage Assimilation and the Return to Foreign and Host-Country Sources of Human Capital

We compare predicted relative immigrant wage profiles based on returns to YSM and to foreign and host-country sources of schooling and experience. We find the biases inherent in inferring assimilation from a return to YSM appear more substantial than those emanating from the assumptions necessary to estimate foreign and host-country returns directly using standard data sources. Given the policy relevance of allowing entry effects and subsequent wage growth to depend on the foreign human capital immigrants bring and their post-migration schooling and work decisions, our findings suggest the predominance of YSM models in the literature is not well founded.Immigrant workers; wage differentials; human capital

Explaining the Deteriorating Entry Earnings of Canada’s Immigrant

The study explores causes of the deterioration in entry earnings of Canadian immigrant cohorts by estimating an empirical specification that nests a number of competing explanations found in the Canadian literature. To do this, we use the pooled sample of Canadian-born and immigrant men employed full-year, full-time from the complete 20 percent samples of the 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001 Canadian Censuses. Our results indicate that no more than one-third of the deterioration can be explained by compositional shifts in the knowledge of an official language, mother tongue and region of origin of recent immigrant cohorts. We also find little or no evidence that declining returns to foreign education are responsible. Roughly one-third of the deterioration appears to be due to a persistent decline in the returns to foreign labour market experience which has occurred almost exclusively among immigrants originating from non-traditional source countries. We are able to explain two-thirds of the overall decline in the entry earnings of Canada’s most recent immigrants without any reference to entry labour market conditions. When we also account for entry conditions, our results suggest that Canada’s immigrants who arrived in the 1995-1999 period would otherwise be enjoying entry earnings that were significantly higher than the entry earnings of the 1965-1969 cohort.immigration, entry earnings, cohort effects, earnings assimilation, credentials

Norwegian attitudes towards non-native accents of English

Denne masteroppgaven omhandler lærere og elever i den norske videregående skole sine holdninger til ulike uttalevarianter av Engelsk og sammenligner resultatene med tidligere studier med tilsvarende fokus. Fokuset i oppgaven ligger på forskjeller mellom kjønn, yrkesfag og studiespesialiserende, språkbakgrunn, reisebakgrunn og hvor mye tid respondentene bruker på engelsktalende medier. Oppgaven er unik i at den setter søkelys på videregående elevers holdninger til varianter av engelsk hvor taleren ikke har engelsk som morsmål. Studien blant elevene består av en indirekte og en direkte del, hvor den indirekte delen fokuserer på uttalevariantene og den direkte delen fokuserer på respondentenes egen språkbruk og hva de mener om visse uttalevarianter. Totalt fikk jeg inn 96 student svar på spørreundersøkelsen, og disse kom fra tre forskjellige skoler. Denne studien består av seks ulike uttalevarianter. De kommer fra Russland, Tyskland, Sverige, Saudi-Arabia, Tanzania og Trinidad. Disse er valgt på bakgrunn av hvor de er fra. Tre av uttalevariantene er fra Europa, med Sverige som den nærest relaterte til respondentenes egen uttalevariant. Videre har jeg inkludert en uttalevariant fra Asia, en fra Afrika og en fra Sør-Amerika. Resultatene av studien viser til en relativt nøytral holdning mot alle uttalevariantene. Den uttalevarianten som stod mest ut var den Svenske, som respondentene viste størst misnøye mot. Denne negative holdningen mot en uttalevariant så lik egen, er noe jeg håper vil bli forsket videre på ved en senere anledning. Studien så også på lærerens bruk av uttalevarianter i klasserommet og hvorvidt den påvirker elevenes holdninger. Dessverre var det vanskelig å få tak i lærerrespondenter, og jeg fikk samlet inn totalt 14 svar på denne delen av studien. Det største funnet i denne studien, er at om lag halvparten sier at de bruker amerikansk og halvparten britisk. Dette er ulikt tidligere, hvor hovedvekten av lærere brukte britisk i klasserommet.Engelsk mastergradsoppgaveMAHF-LÆFRMAHF-ENGENG35

Survival of PCN after SoilSaver steaming

The purpose of the experiment was to investigate whether the Potato Cyst Nematode (PCN) will survive steam treatment in SoilSaver. The results from the SoilSaver experiments show that heat treatment with steam affects PCN’s ability to hatch from the eggs. Juveniles who did hatch, died shortly after. No larvae or eggs that survived the treatment were found in any of the replications.Survival of PCN after SoilSaver steamingpublishedVersio

The Relative Labour Market Performance of Former International Students: Evidence from the Canadian National Graduates Survey

Canada is increasingly looking to international students as a source of postsecondary tuition revenues and new immigrants. By 2014, international students accounted for 10% of graduates from Canadian postsecondary institutions, up from 3% in 2000, and 11% of new permanent residents, up from 7% in 2010. This article compares the labour market performance of former international students (FISs) entering the Canadian labour market during the first decade of the 2000s to their Canadian-born-and-educated (CBE) and foreign-born-and-educated (FBE) counterparts. We find that FISs outperform FBE immigrants by a substantial margin and underperform CBE individuals graduating from similar academic programs by a relatively modest margin. We also find some limited evidence, particularly among women, of a deterioration in FIS outcomes through the 2000s relative to both comparison groups. We argue that this deterioration is consistent with a quality tradeoff as postsecondary institutions and governments have reached deeper into international student pools to meet their demands for students and new immigrants without a commensurate increase in their supply

Test performance of handheld pesticide application equipment or knapsack sprayers in practical use in Norway

contribution to session 2 Member States may apply different timetables and inspection intervals with exceptions following a risk assessment and exempt handheld pesticide application equipment or knapsack sprayers (according article 8/3

Immigration and Innovation: Evidence from Canadian Cities

We examine the effect of changes in skilled-immigrant population shares in 98 Canadian cities between 1981 and 2006 on per capita patents. The Canadian case is of interest because its 'points system' for selecting immigrants is viewed as a model of skilled immigration policy. Our estimates suggest unambiguously smaller beneficial impacts of increasing the university-educated immigrant population share than comparable U.S. estimates, whereas our estimates of the contribution of Canadian-born university graduates are virtually identical in magnitude to the U.S. estimates. The modest contribution of Canadian immigrants to innovation is, in large part, explained by the low employment rates of Canadian STEM-educated immigrants in STEM jobs. Our results point to the value of providing employers with a role in the immigrant screening process

Massehåndtering og potetcystenematode

Potetcystenematode (PCN) er en karanteneskadegjører som utgjør en stor risiko for norsk potetproduksjon, både fordi den vil gjøre stor skade og være svært vanskelig å bekjempe ved etablering. For å beskytte norsk potetproduksjon og unngå spredning til nye arealer forvaltes derfor PCN av et strengt regelverk.Massehåndtering og potetcystenematodepublishedVersio