Volume 57, numéro 3, juillet–septembre 1981 21^e Congrès annuel de la Société Canadienne de Science économique

EN :

This paper examines, using the human capital framework, the relationship between family background and the knowledge of English by Quebec francophones. Using the Probit method and 1978 data we find that the level of schooling and the mother tongue of both father and mother, the occupation of the father and his ethnic origin, the sex of the individual and where he was born, all have an impact on the likelihood of knowing English.

EN :

In this article, we look at the impact of both supply and demand of labour on the determination of the unemployment rate. The analysis is conducted with annual data by 12 demographic groups over the period 1956-1978. All the data prior to 1976 from the Labour Force Survey were adjusted to the definition of the new Survey.

A few differences in the reaction of demographic group unemployment rate are noticeable: (a) in general, male unemployment rates react much more to demand side evolution while female rates are more influenced by movements in the supply of labour; (b) some groups clearly exhibit "discouraged worker" behaviour when facing adverse economic conditions, (namely youths, women aged 25 to 34 and older men); (c) due to a lower sensitivity to economic conditions of many of their jobs, adult women present a fairly stable situation of employment, so their growing unemployment rates are the result of higher competition stemming from an increasing desire to participate in the work world; (d) together these findings have some implications for government policies; more specifically, they emphasize the limitations of demand policy and point to the need for selective measures and a diversification of job opportunities for women.

EN :

The main purpose of the paper is to illustrate the use of a dummy variable interpretation of the predictive Chow test against structural change. After describing how the predictive Chow test against structural change in linear regression models can be viewed as a test on the coefficients of a set of dummy variables, it is shown that these can provide useful additional information on the importance and timing of structural changes. Then, the approach is illustrated by applying it to a version of the St. Louis equation (in rate-of-change form) estimated over the period 1953/I-1976/IV: we detect some instability in the 1970's but find it is rather localized, being linked mainly to two quarters (1973/IV and 1975/III).

EN :

The analysis of the question of structural stability in the growth model with exhaustible resources consists essentially in the examination of the long term values of capital and consumption as they result from parametric variations. The parameters used in this study relate to ethic (discount rate) and to technology (elasticity of substitution between resource and capital and technical progress). Considering the structural stability, the already known results are generalized in two directions. First, a general description of production technology is made. Second, a special attention is given to the question of technological innovation. An analysis of the form of the Hicksian neutral technical progress is made considering an economy with a Cobb-Douglas production function.

EN :

This article is devoted to an improved estimation of the seasonal factors in the X-11-ARIMA method given the presence of outliers in the unadjusted series. The series are modelled by an ARIMA process and the outliers are identified relative to the fitted values of the model. They are then replaced by their corresponding function values. A good replacement of the outliers improves both the performance of the ARIMA model fitted to the modified series and the revisions to the seasonal factors, especially the latter.