The Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History Project

Everybody loves a murder mystery. Of all the historical situations researchers encounter nothing has quite the same impact as discovering an innocent person hanged, a guilty person going free. Co-directors of the GREAT UNSOLVED MYSTERIES IN CANADIAN HISTORY project located at the University of Victoria, John Lutz (Department of History, University of Victoria) and Ruth Sandwell (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto), have just received funding from the Canadian Content Online Program (CCOP) of the Canadian Heritage Ministry to move ahead with phase two including two new mysteries “What happened to Aurore Gagnon?” (Peter Gossage, Research Director) and “Nobody Knows His Name: Klatssasin and the Chilcotin Massacre” (John Lutz, Research Director) to complement the pilot “Who Killed William Robinson?”

On the Possibility of Credit Rationing in the Stiglitz-Weiss Model

Contrary to what is consistently assumed in the literature, the return function cannot be hump-shaped in the Stiglitz-Weiss (1981) model. This has important consequences for the possible occurrence of credit rationing and redlining. With a single class of borrowers, banks offer credit in two stages. Demand possibly exceeds supply in stage one, but not in stage two. With several observationally distinguishable borrower classes, the firms in a borrower class are redlined only under circumstances which imply that they would not get credit in a perfect capital market either. Die Rendite-Funktion kann im Stiglitz-Weiss- (1981) Modell nicht - so wie das in der Literatur durchgängig angenommen wird - hügelförmig sein. Das hat wichtige Implikationen für die Möglichkeit von Kreditrationierung einerseits und für die Möglichkeit des Ausschlusses ganzer Kreditnehmergruppen vom Kapitalmarkt andererseits. Mit nur einer Klasse von Kreditnehmern erfolgt die Kreditvergabe in zwei Stufen. Während auf der ersten Stufe eine Übernachfrage vorliegen kann, herrscht auf der zweiten Stufe Markträumung. Bei mehreren unterscheidbaren Kreditnehmerklassen wird eine Klasse nur unter den Bedingungen vom Kreditmarkt ausgeschlossen, bei deren Vorliegen sie auch in einem vollkommenen Kreditmarkt keinen Kredit erhalten würde

Technology in Canada Through the Lens of Labour History

This is an extended review essay which examines contributions of recent labour history to the history of Canadian technology. It argues that three recent books: Heron's Working in Steel, Sager's Seafaring Labour, and Parr's Gender of Breadwinners have bridged the longstanding gap between the two sub-disciplines. The review suggests some future directions for a more 'complete' history of technology which incorporates both the social and technical aspects of production.Cet essai critique examine trois contributions récentes de l’histoire du travail à l’histoire de la technologie canadienne : Working in Steel de Heron, Seafaring Labour de Sager et Gender of Breadwinners de Parr. Ces ouvrages comblent le fossé qui existait entre deux sous-disciplines. Nous suggérons également diverses pistes de recherche pour une éventuelle histoire « complète » de la technologie qui incluerait tant les aspects sociaux que techniques de la production

Nouvelles brèves – Interventions publiques

The Canadian Historical Association joined dozens of national organizations from cultural groups to business lobbies in protesting the Conservative government’s sudden and unpopular decision to cancel the mandatory long form census. CHA President Mary Lynn Stewart wrote Minister Tony Clement commenting on the lack of consultation and pointing out that the census is a critical tool for historians. She outlined our main concerns as historians: the abandonment of a random sample and so skewing of census data, especially with regard to the under-representation of women, immigrants, indigenous people, and those with low incomes, and the lack of comparability with other censuses.La Société historique du Canada s’est jointe à des douzaines d’organisations nationales, de groupes culturels aux groupes de pression de gens d’affaires, pour s’opposer à la soudaine et impopulaire décision prise par le gouvernement conservateur d’éliminer le formulaire de recensement obligatoire détaillé dans le cadre de notre recensement national. La présidente de la SHC, Mary Lynn Stewart, a noté l’absence de consultation dans cette décision et a indiqué que le recensement est un outil crucial pour les historiens dans une lettre adressée au Ministre Tony Clement. Elle a énuméré les principales inquiétudes des historiens : l’abandon d’échantillons aléatoires qui fausse les données du recensement, particulièrement en ce qui concerne la sous-représentation des femmes, immigrants, la population indigène et ceux à faible revenu ainsi que l’incapacité de comparer avec d’autres recensements

A Note on the Determinants and Consequences of Outsourcing Using German Data

Using German data from the Institute for Employment Research Establishment Panel, this paper constructs two main measures of outsourcing and examines their determinants and consequences for employment. There are some commonalities in the correlates of the two measures of outsourcing, as well as agreement on the absence of adverse employment effects across all industries. For one specification, however, some negative effects are reported for manufacturing industry, balanced by positive effects for the services sector for another. But there are no indications of survival bias. This is because the association between outsourcing and plant closings is predominantly negative, albeit poorly determined.outsourcing, organizational change, employment change, plant closings, value added

A Note on the Determinants and Consequences of Outsourcing Using German Data

Using German data from the Institute for Employment Research Establishment Panel, this paper constructs two main measures of outsourcing and examines their determinants and consequences for employment. There are some commonalities in the correlates of the two measures of outsourcing, as well as agreement on the absence of adverse employment effects across all industries. For one specification, however, some negative effects are reported for manufacturing industry, balanced by positive effects for the services sector for another. But there are no indications of survival bias. This is because the association between outsourcing and plant closings is predominantly negative, albeit poorly determined.outsourcing, organizational change, employment change, plant closings, value added

The Demand for Labor: An Analysis Using Matched Employer-Employee Data from the German LIAB. Will the High Unskilled Worker Own-Wage Elasticity Please Stand Up?

This paper uses matched employee-employer LIAB data to provide panel estimates of the structure of labor demand in Germany, 1993-2002, distinguishing between highly skilled, skilled, and unskilled labor and between the manufacturing and service sectors. Reflecting current preoccupations, our demand analysis seeks also to accommodate the impact of technology and trade in addition to wages. The bottom-line interests are to provide elasticities of the demand for unskilled (and other) labor that should assist in short-run policy design and to identify the extent of skill biases or otherwise in trade and technology.labor demand, own-wage/cross-wage elasticities, trade, technology and organizational change, linked employee-employer data, panel estimates