It\u27s all about what you do

In the Spring of 2001, I sat in Richard Florida’s kitchen poring over a list with him. “Yes, no, no, obviously, ..., of course, nope, nada, none of those, don’t think so, ..., Yes, what do you think? ...” Item by item, we looked through the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s Standard Occupational Codes’ occupation titles and identified the creative class

The Economic “Impact” of a Downtown Casino in Toronto

Permission to include report in Institute research repository granted by Kimberly Silk, Data Librarian, The Martin Prosperity Institute Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.This report will not add to the already overly abundant collection of completely meaningless numbers that are being thrown around and at the citizens of Toronto and Ontario. Rather, this report will ask questions — most of which have gone unanswered and unaddressed so far during this process. If the city of Toronto decides it wants to allow a casino in the downtown core of the city and on or dominating a significant place on the limited resource that is its waterfront, the city should be well-aware to what it is saying “yes”. The appendix provides a review of the peer-reviewed academic literature that has been published on the regional economic impact of casinos. That literature forms the basis for this report. It should be carefully noted that this report only focused on the economic impact. The social, moral, individual, and family impacts of casinos and legalized gambling are separate, but important, issues that should also be considered. However, this report only focuses on the potential regional (Toronto, GTA) impacts of a downtown casino. This report will focus on three areas: Jobs, Neighbourhood, and City.N

Immigrant Labour Market Outcomes and Skills Differences in Canada

Immigrant workers are more likely to be unemployed than Canadian-born adults, even when other factors such as skill levels were taken into account, according to this new study published at the University of Toronto. The probability of being unemployed declined among immigrants with higher levels of literacy and numeracy skills, as it did for all adults. When other controlling factors were considered, skill levels and immigrant status were both significant factors in determining employment status. On average, immigrants had lower skills scores than native-born Canadians. The study found that immigrants were more likely to have a post-secondary degree than Canadian-born adults and were more likely to have an education in STEM disciplines. However, immigrants had lower literacy and numeracy scores. The findings suggest that new approaches to skills assessment might provide an alternative to other forms of assessing international credentials, which previous research has shown are undervalued in the Canadian labour market, the authors conclude. They note that microcredentials, which offer credentialing and evidence of specific skills at a much more fine-grained level than typical certificates and degrees, might offer an alternative to skills testing.Government of Canada’s Adult Learning, Literacy and Essential Skills Program, Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU), Canadian Research Data Centre Network, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canadian Foundation for Innovation and Statistics Canada, Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO)

Are Some Firms Better at IT? Differing Relationships between Productivity and IT Spending

Although recent studies have found a positive relationship between spending on information technology and firm productivity, the magnitude of this relationship has not been as dramatic as one would expect given the anecdotal evidence. Data collected by the Bureau of the Census is analyzed to investigate the relationship between plant-level productivity and spending on IT. This relationship is investigated by separating the manufacturing plants in the sample along two dimensions, total factor productivity and IT spending. Analysis along these dimensions reveals that there are significant differences between the highest and lowest productivity plants. The highest productivity plants tend to spend less on IT while the lowest productivity plants tend to spend more on IT. Although there is support for the idea that lower productivity plants are spending more on IT to compensate for their productivity shortcomings, the results indicate that this is not the only difference. The robustness of this finding is strengthened by investigating changes in productivity and IT spending over time. High productivity plants with the lowest amounts of IT spending tend to remain high productivity plants with low IT spending while low productivity plants with high IT spending tend to remain low productivity plants with high IT spending. The results show that management skill, as measured by the overall productivity level of a firm, is an additional factor that must be taken into consideration when investigating the IT "productivity paradox."CES,economic,research,micro,data,microdata,chief,economist

Music Scenes to Music Clusters - the economic geography of music in the U.S., 1970-2000

Where do musicians locate, and why do creative industries such as music continue to cluster? This paper analyzes the economic geography of musicians and the recording industry in the U.S. from 1970 to 2000 to shed light on the locational dynamics of music and creative industries more broadly. We examine the role of scale and scope economies in shaping the clustering and concentration of musicians and music industry firms. We argue that these two forces are bringing about a transformation in the geography of both musicians and music industry firms, evidenced in a shift away from regionally clustered, genrespecific music scenes, such as Memphis or Detroit, toward larger regional centers like New York City and Los Angeles which offer large markets for music employment and concentration of other artistic and cultural endeavors which increase demand for musicians. We use population and income to probe for scale effects, and concentrations of other creative and artistic industries to test for scope effects, while including a range of control variables in our analysis. We use lagged variables to determine if certain places are consistently more successful at fostering concentations of musicians and the music industry and test for path dependency. We find some role for scale and scope effects and that both musicians and the music industry are concentrating in a relatively small number of large regional centers.musicians; recording industry; agglomerations

Creativity, connections and innovation: a study of linkages in the Montr�al Region

The importance of creativity as a driving force in regional economic growth and prosperity has been previously documented; however, the mechanisms of this relationship are less well understood. Earlier research suggests, but does not demonstrate, that high levels of density and creative-class employment create conditions under which innovations generated by the interactions between individuals are more likely to occur. The authors examine the specific interactions among the creative, technical, business, and design communities of the Montr�al region. It is demonstrated that such connections are possible and can have a positive impact on the innovative and total business activity across the region. A set of mechanisms through which creativity helps to achieve regional growth and prosperity benefits is demonstrated through specific examples.