Call for Proposals -- Project on Canada/U.S. Labor Market Comparisons

From: James Poterba <poterba_at_nber.org>
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2015 11:16:16 -0400

Dear NBER Colleagues -
     I am writing to call your attention to a new NBER project on labor
market comparisons between Canada and the United States; a call for
proposals is below. If you are working on, or considering working on,
issues that might fall within the purview of this project, I hope that
you will reach and and tell David Card and Phil Oreopoulos about your
work so that we can try to include it in this research effort. Thank
you and all best wishes.
Jim Poterba

CALL FOR PROPOSALS -- Canada/US Labor Market Comparisons

With the generous support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the NBER
plans to hold a research meeting in late 2016, co-organized by David
Card and Philip Oreopoulos, on comparisons between the labor markets and
associated institutions in Canada and the United States._Small
Differences That Matter: Labor Markets and Income Maintenance in Canada
and the United States_ was the title of an NBER project in the early
1990s.The research studies that comprised this project were published in
a 1993 volume, edited by David Card and Richard Freeman. The volume
contained seven papers that explored and compared labor market policies
and outcomes between the two countries.Card and Freeman noted in their
introduction that the two countries are about as close economically and
socially as any pair of countries in the world.Yet, against this
backdrop, small differences in labor market policies and institutions
appear to have potentially large consequences for economic productivity,
inequality, and overall well-being.The mix of differences and
similarities creates a valuable set of 'natural experiments' that can
provide important insights on key economic and social issues important
to both countries.

More than twenty years have passed.Both Canada and the United States
have experienced turbulent labor market changes.Technological growth has
rapidly altered demand and supply for workers of various types and has
affected the return to both training, education, and 'soft-skills'.The
two countries have also experienced large economic shocks, with the
Great Recession in 2009 producing a rapid rise in unemployment in the
United States and to a lesser degree in Canada.Concerns about labor
market inequality have increased, and there is growing apprehension in
both countries about whether future decades will bring broadly-shared
improved prosperity or more unequal progress.

Topics for research studies that would be suitable for presentation at
the meeting would include, but are not restricted to: earnings and wage
inequality, immigration, the links between banking regulation and labor
market outcomes, occupational or industrial composition, job training,
and labor market dynamics.

Following the research conference in the fall of 2016, all papers will
be considered for a special issue of the _Journal of Labor Economics,_
subject to the journal’s usual refereeing process.Full manuscripts will
be due for submission on December 31, 2016.Authors will receive a modest
honorarium for participation and the NBER will cover the cost of two
authors per paper attending the research meeting.

Project proposals should be no more than three pages long, and must be
submitted to philip.oreopoulos_at_utoronto.ca no later than November 15, 2015.
Received on Fri Sep 11 2015 - 13:34:22 EDT