AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF INTERREGIONAL PRICE LINKAGES*

ABSTRACT Vector autoregression models are used to analyze the relationships between Texas and Illinois corn prices, and the New Orleans export price. Decomposition of error variances suggests an increasing exogeneity in the recent years between the export market and the two U.S. markets. Impulse response functions indicate that the export price influences both the Illinois and Texas prices.     

Urban brownfields redevelopment in Canada: the role of local government

As in many U.S. and European cities, the legacy of a negligent past has left scars on Canada's urban landscape in the form of numerous under-used industrial and commercial brownfield sites. While governments in the U.S. and Europe have implemented a variety of policies and programs to help developers overcome the costs and risks associated with redeveloping these sites, there continues to be apprehension among stakeholders in Canada that efforts implemented by the different levels of government here have been deficient, fragmented and piecemeal in comparison. This paper examines the nature of the brownfields problem in Canadian cities and investigates the role of local governments in managing these problems 'on the ground'. Survey data from 24 cities, coupled with information gathered from four site visitations, reveal that brownfields are indeed a problem for many cities. The data suggest that even though perceptions of what is needed to better manage the problem locally are relatively similar throughout the country, managerial efforts remain disparate and somewhat limited because of diverse provincial policies and variable property markets.     

Going Against the Grain: Why Do Canada and the United States Market Wheat So Differently?

At the turn of the twentieth century, private grain exchanges settled the daily prices for North American wheat. By the end of the Second World War, the Canadian and US governments had intervened significantly in these markets. The Canadian government required farmers in its western provinces to deliver their product to the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), a single-selling-desk agency that, by then, had supplanted private wheat marketing in western Canada. Meanwhile, the United States government subsidized farm incomes with domestic-use taxes and import tariffs, but otherwise preserved private wheat marketing. In this article, I demonstrate that these disparate agricultural policies were broadly defined by immutable economic realities imposed on each country by global wheat-trade patterns and triggered by unprecedentedly severe agricultural crises. That is, amidst the precipitous fall in wheat prices in the early 1930s, each government crafted farm-support policies that reflected its domestic-consumption share of wheat production and the importance of wheat to its overall economy.     

A Methodology for Estimating Returns to Skills for Canadian Provinces and U.S. States

Differences in both regional skill prices and skill mix can explain interregional variations in wage distributions. We control for interregional differences in skill mix that permit us to compute key parameters of regional wage distributions including regional returns to skills. In addition to setting forth the methods in detail, we also present estimates for 48 U.S. states and 10 Canadian provinces. For both males and females, we find that regional mean wages (with controls for skills mix) in the U.S. and Canada are similar, but that the returns to skills are systematically higher in the U.S.     

Exploring the Canadian‐U.S. Unemployment and Nonemployment Rate Gaps: Are There Lessons for Both Countries?

The Canadian and U.S. economies are very similar. Yet, beginning in the 1980s, Canada experienced much greater relative unemployment rates followed in the 1990s by a declining share of population employed. Using state- and provincial-level data this study assesses why U.S. labor markets have recently performed relatively better than their Canadian counterparts. The empirical results indicate that more rapid U.S. employment growth explains a relatively small proportion of its lower joblessness. Structural causes including lower U.S. unionization and less generous unemployment insurance appear to be more important, at least in the long run. The Canadian labor market also appears to be less flexible to regional economic shocks.     

A Review of Volume 5 of the Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics,Parts III and IV

This paper reviews parts III and IV of the recent Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics. Many of the surveys within the Handbook relate to two phenomena of interest: the recent boom and bust cycle in U.S. housing markets, and the striking growth of home prices in a few global “Superstar Cities.” Real Estate and Urban economists have made progress in modeling these phenomena. There is considerable room for future research, however. There is no coherent story explaining U.S. home price movements in the 2000s that does not run afoul of important stylized facts. We also have not yet identified the relative importance of supply constraints and demand growth in the rise of Superstar City prices.     

战后马来西亚华人再移民：数量估算与原因分析

论文通过马来西亚方面的人口统计数据,并根据人口自然增长率,推算了马来西亚华人再移民数量;探讨了马来西亚华人再移民的分布与类型及马来西亚华人再移民的原因。结果显示,截至2010年,马来西亚华人再移民约达113万。二战后马来西亚华人因各种历史原因,比如在国内政治上遭受排斥和歧视,经济上受到限制和整治,教育和文化上的不平等政策,强迫同化的压力以及追求海外居住权或国籍等,他们大量二次移民至新加坡、英国、美国、加拿大和澳大利亚等地。欧美等发达国家以其相对宽容和公正的法律环境、积极的移民政策和经济一体化发展的前景持续赢得了马来西亚华人再移民的青睐。     

Participation and Environmental Policy in Canada and the United States: Trends Over Time

This article explores trends in participation and environmental policy in Canada and the United States over three time periods: from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s; from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s; and, finally, over the past few years. The article examines possible interactions among the two variables within each country over these periods and searches out overall tendencies toward convergence or divergence. The article argues that there was divergence between the two countries in the first period, with the U.S. providing more participatory opportunities earlier than Canada and establishing a more developed regulatory framework. An overview of progress over the second period, showing some convergence among the two countries, is then provided. Canada seemed to be catching up to its southern counterpart in terms of both participatory opportunities—although they took a distinctively Canadian form—and policy decisions. More recently, however, the trend has been toward divergence. The article explains that, over the past few years, participatory opportunities in Canada have been diminished and the environmental regulatory framework has been scaled back. Although there have been some changes in the U.S. case, the scale of these changes has not been as extensive. The final section of the article then attempts to relate these broader trends in participation and policy decisions to the political context in each country. It is argued that institutional frameworks in the two countries have played a key role in the identified trends. In particular, Canada's institutional structure—specifically the concentration of power in the executive and its federal structure—has hastened these recent developments, while the U.S. institutional framework—with its multiple power centers—has acted as a brake on those who advocate significant change to the existing environmental policy regime.     

20世纪60年代中加小麦贸易对中国的重要意义

1960年中国首次从加拿大进口粮食度荒,并由此改变此前的粮食自给自足现状。中 加小麦贸易不仅可以巩固粮食安全、促进农业改革,也可使中国重返加拿大与西方市场,使外贸渠 道多样化,同时还促进了中加建交、打破美国的封锁孤立政策。     

澳大利亚旅游网站信息流对旅游人流的导引:过程、强度和机理问题

这篇文章以澳大利亚旅游网站为对象,研究旅游网站信息流导引旅游人流的若干问题,旨在证实虚拟流动对现实流动的作用性。文章首先分析了旅游信息流因素的变化;而后透视了基于旅游网站功能性与服务性的信息流对旅游人流导引的过程;再后给出了旅游网站信息流对不同类型旅游人流导引的强度,最后从旅游网站使用比和旅游网站信息比两个方面揭示了旅游网站对旅游人流导引的机理。     

Teaching Canadian Literature

Abstract

Canada and the United States are two democracies on the North American continent sharing a common border, common British heritage, and for the most part a common language. At the same time, the two political systems abound with structural differences. Canadians, unlike voters in the U.S., cannot split their votes among various parties and candidates, and the single house Parliamentary system with tight party discipline renders an individual back-bench MP relatively powerless. The questions addressed by this article concern similarities and differences of Canadian and U.S. urban voters as they make electoral selections in these similar cultures and dissimilar, yet democratic, political systems. First, do social factors such as class, ethnicity, and religion provide similar bases for cleavage in Canada and the U.S.? Canadian society supposedly has a more easily defined class structure than the U.S. Does this difference carry over into the area of electoral choice? Do ethnicity and religion, as reported, differentiate party support in both countries? Second, individual factors such as the voter's party identification and impression of the party leaders (or presidential candidates) have been shown in the U.S. to be of dominant importance in predicting an individual's vote. What is the relative importance of these factors in determining voting choice in the two countries? The three-party Canadian context renders difficult any clear-cut comparisons to the two-party U.S., but useful avenues of speculation emerge. The NDP has a working-class base, but cannot attract the poor. Class does not significantly distinguish PC's and Liberals, the dominant parties, and on ethnicity and religion PC and NDP supporters bear a strong resemblance to each other. In the U.S. the expected associations obtain between Democratic vote and working class, Catholic religion, and foreign-born parentage. Party identification and attractiveness of the party leader, long recognized as important influences on voters in the U.S., seem from these data to play a similar role in Canada. Consequently, the individual electoral decision is dominated by more similarities than might be suggested from observing the differences in electoral and decision-making structures. Perhaps culture rather than political structure is dominant (within certain limits) in a voter's electoral decisions.     

The changing face of Canada: the uneven geographies of population and social change

This paper attempts to convey a sense of the increasing importance of the population question for the future of Canada and its social geographies. This future will be shaped as much by changes in population processes and living conditions as by economic and political factors. Specifically, four transformations are rippling through the country's social fabric and urban landscapes: slow growth and the demographic transition modifications to family forms and living arrangements; increasing ethnocultural diversity; and the shifting relationships among households, labour markets and the welfare state. There is increasing unevenness of population growth, juxtaposing localized growth and widespread decline, massive social changes, the concentration of immigration and new sources of diversity in metropolitan areas, and fundamental shifts in social attitudes concerning family, work and gender relations. Deepening contrasts in living environments and economic wellbeing flow from these trends, and the varied challenges they pose for private actors, governments and service-providers. Questions relating to the country's future population geographies and social structures are complex, analytically difficult, and politically charged, but are too important to ignore.     

The Autocracy of Love and the Legitimacy of Empire: Intimacy,Power and Scandal in Nineteenth‐Century Metlakahtlah

This paper examines the politics of intimacy, power, and scandal at Metlakahtlah, a Church of England mission village in northern British Columbia, Canada, from 1862 to 1885, in order to cast light on settler colonialism and its aftermath. It particularly examines Metlakahtlah's main missionary, William Duncan, his relationships with young female converts and missionary women, and, perhaps more importantly, the stories that were told about them. Stories of Duncan's relationships with young Tsimshian women that circulated throughout settler society reveal the central place of sexuality to both critiques and defences of imperialism, and cast new light on contemporary politics around the historical experience of Indigenous children in settler colonies like Australia and Canada.     

CANADA'S INDUSTRIAL PERFORMANCE AND PROSPECTS UNDER FREE TRADE

Canada is currently involved in renegotiating its tariffs in the present discussions on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (gatt). Although official policy seems to be cast in terms of sectoral tariff cuts, reflecting Canada's trading strengths and weaknesses, there has been strong advocacy by some economists that Canada should enter free-trade agreements with the United States or preferably on a multilateral basis (Daly and Globerman, 1976; Economic Council of Canada, 1975; Wonnacott, 1975). The recent books advocating free trade are persuasive in mood and argument but their authors follow "the established orthodoxy of most economists in this country over the past two decades: foreign investment is, of itself, not a problem except to the jaundiced eye of the (nationalist) beholder. The tariff is the real villain … There are no problems, in this view that a good dose of free trade and free capital markets will not cure" (Rotstein, 1972, 2). So, we are faced with a paradox: on the one hand some economists, including those working for the Economic Council, are strongly committed to the argument that free trade will lead to manufacturing success for Canada while on the other hand the nation is experiencing its worst negative balance for secondary manufactured goods. Canada's trading partners have indicated increasingly that Canada does not produce finished goods of the type they require at attractive prices. This anti-export syndrome is a product of the high exchange value of the Canadian dollar (till early 1977) and the high basic cost of Canadian goods.     

Trumping foreign policy: public diplomacy,framing, and public opinion among middle power publics

Even as the world’s sole superpower, the United States requires the cooperation of other states to achieve many of its foreign policy objectives. The President of the United States thus often serves as ‘Diplomat in Chief’ in public diplomacy efforts to appeal directly to publics abroad. Given Donald Trump’s antagonistic approach to foreign relations and widespread lack of popularity, what are the implications for support for US policy among publics abroad – particularly among middle power states allied to the US? While previous research on public opinion relying on observational data has found that confidence in the US President is linked to support for American foreign policy goals, the mechanisms at work remain unclear. Using original data from survey-based experiments conducted in Canada and Australia, this article seeks to clarify the effect of ‘presidential framing’ (presenting a policy goal as endorsed or not endorsed by Trump) on attitudes toward key policy issues in the Canada–US and Australia–US relationships. Results point to a negative ‘Trump framing’ effect in Canadians’ and Australians’ trade policy attitudes, but such an effect is not observed in other policy domains (energy policy in Canada, and refugee policy in Australia).     

加拿大和美国对古巴政策的分歧

由于加拿大与美国的特殊关系 ,使得它在处理战后一些重大的国际事务时不得不与美国保持一致 ,但惟独在古巴问题上与美国相悖。美国一贯视拉美为后院 ,视古巴为共产主义在拉美的桥头堡。加拿大公开反对美国对古巴的封锁政策。古巴问题显示出加美对外政策的纠葛     

A Dynamic Analysis of Interaction Data: U.S. Rail Freight Flows, 1972-81

The purpose of this paper is to extend Poisson regression to the analysis of spatial interactions over time. The methodology involves derivation of models using information methods and calibration using Poisson regression. Poisson regression is then used to analyze interannual variation in U.S. rail freight flows, 1972-81. Findings indicate that import and export variability is less important than is flow variability. Import and export variability is highest for the northeastern United States, but flow variability is highest for the southern and western United States. This has implications for the specification of dynamic models of commodity flow.     

The stretched rubber band: banks,houses, debt and vulnerability in Australia

This article analyses the development of residential capitalism and financialisation in Australia. It outlines the series of economic vulnerabilities developing in the financial system, centred on household debt and inflated property markets. It then analyses why policy-makers have done so little to restrict the growth of household debt and house prices. I argue that financial policy-makers have underestimated the financial vulnerabilities building up in Australia – as evidenced by the slow take-up of macroprudential policies. I outline four reasons: first, the excellent profit performance of the major banks; second, the policy predilection for idealised economic liberal regulation; third, the development of a politico-housing complex; and, finally, the growing role of household debt in ameliorating distributional conflict by underpinning growth.     

Going to war democratically: lessons for Australia from Canada and the UK

This article addresses the role of democracy in Australia’s foreign policy formation. It argues that public debate and deliberation on foreign policy is a normative good. When there is a lack of debate on a government decision, a democratic deficit occurs. Such a deficit is evident in the way Australia goes to war; however, the examples of Canada and the UK show that reforming parliamentary practice is possible. In the context of the ‘war on terror’, this article compares Australia, Canada, and the UK from 2001 to 2015 with regards to ‘war powers’. Drawing from debates recorded in Hansard, it finds that while Canada and the UK took steps to ‘parliamentarise’ their foreign policy formation, the war-powers prerogative of the Australian government remained absolute. It concludes that increasing the role of parliament may go a long way towards democratising the decision of when Australia goes to war. This has practical as well as normative benefits, since it may prevent governments from entering wars that are unsupported by the public. At minimum, it will compel governments to engage more thoroughly in public debate about their proposed policies, and justify their decisions to the nation.     

Winds and waves in the middle atmosphere at Saskatoon (52°N, 107°W), Collm (52°N, 15°E) and Badary (52°N, 105°E)

Winds data from three radar systems in the U.S.S.R. G.D.R. and Canada, which are well-spaced along the 52°N latitude circle, are used to illustrate longitudinal/regional variations in the dynamics of the upper middle atmosphere 80–97 km. Responses to the stratospheric warming of 1982/3 are noted at all three locations, but the zonal wind does not reverse at Badary, consistent with the flow there being eastward during all months of the year. Planetary wave period oscillations (2–30 days) are observed at all locations, and highly significant cross-spectral coherences exist between the three stations.