Well-Being, Social Capital and Public Policy: What's New?

This paper summarizes recent empirical research on the determinants of subjective well-being. Results from national and international samples suggest that measures of social capital, including especially the corollary measures of specific and general trust, have substantial effects on well-being beyond those flowing through economic channels. Cross-national samples (supported by parallel analysis of suicide data) show large well-being effects from social capital and from the quality of government. Finally, Canadian life-satisfaction data show that several non-financial job characteristics, and especially the climate of workplace trust, have very large income-equivalent effects.

Economic Growth and Social Capital in Asia

The paper reviews the growth performance of different groups of Asian economies, confirms the role of openness as a key factor explaining the growth differences among the Asian economies, and undertakes a preliminary investigation of the role of social capital and institutions. The role of openness in explaining growth differences among the Asian economies appears to be if anything greater than has been established in global samples. Various measures of social capital and institutional quality were not found to add explanatory power, perhaps because of the shortage of comparable data for the Asian economies. It is conjectured that the prospects are good for the technological catchup that has taken place in South-East Asia to be repeated elsewhere in Asia, and especially South Asia, partly in response to recent increases in openness. The role of social capital and institutions in facilitating this catchup remains to be established.

National Borders, Trade and Migration

The paper first extends and reconciles recent estimates of the strikingly large effect of national borders on trade patterns. Estimates comparing trade among Canadian provinces with that between Canadian provinces and U.S. states show interprovincial trade in 1988-90 to have been more than twenty times as dense as that between provinces and states, with some evidence of a downward trend since, due to the post-FTA growth in trade between Canada and the United States. Using approximate data for the volumes and distances of internal trade in OECD countries, the 1988-92 border effect for unrelated OECD countries is estimated to exceed 12. Both types of data confirm substantial border effects, even after accounting for common borders and language, with the directly-measured data for interprovincial and province-state trade producing higher estimates." Initial estimates from a census-based gravity model of interprovincial and international migration show a much higher border effect for migration, with interprovincial migration among the Anglophone provinces almost 100 times as dense as that from U.S. states to Canadian provinces. Effects of migration on subsequent trade patterns are found for international but not for interprovincial trade, suggesting the existence of nationally-shared networks the large national border effects for trade flows.

From Flapper to Bluestocking: What Happened to the Young Woman of Wellington Street?

Helliwell traces the changes that have occurred at the Bank of Canada since the early 1960s, when he first began a long and extensive relationship with the institution and its staff. He begins with his work on the Royal Commission on Banking and Finance (the Porter Commission) and continues over the next 40 years, giving particular focus to the Bank's analytic and research activities. Although he is careful to note the benefits of alternative analytical and information-gathering techniques, such as the extensive mail and direct interview survey that he and his colleagues conducted as part of the Royal Commission, Helliwell devotes most of his attention to the Bank's econometric modelling efforts, starting with RDX1 and RDX2 in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He cites some of the internal, as well as external, obstacles that had to be overcome as the Bank's modelling efforts advanced, and how shifting trends in the economics profession have sometimes posed a challenge. Helliwell concludes that these developments helped the Bank to come of age and take its place in the front ranks of the world's evidence-based policy-research institutions.

The Effects of Fiscal Policy on International Imbalances: Japan and the United States

Evidence from three multicountry models is used to assess the current account effects of U.S. and Japanese fiscal policies. Asymmetries in the effects of U.S. and Japanese policies are analyzed in some detail, and attributed to differences in country size, in trade patterns (which have only a small effect) and in the extent to which induced changes in real exchange rates switch demand from domestic to foreign output. Fiscal policy has substantial current account effects in the models. For example, switching $50 billion of sustained government spending from the United States to Japan would, in the third year, improve the U.S. current account by$24 billion and worsen that of Japan by $20 billion. Induced changes in nominal exchange rates are found to play a relatively small role in determining the effects of fiscal policy on the nominal current account.