Date of Award
1990
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Abstract
The thesis examines the relative strengths of domestic and foreign (or "trade") shocks on sectoral employment change in Canada. Chapter 1 surveys several different approaches used in the past. Chapter 2 examines three of these using hypothetical time series data for an artificial economy with a three-industry small, open economy computational general equilibrium (CGE) model. The results show some of the weaknesses of these approaches and their potential for predictive error.;Chapter 3 sets out a similar CGE model to be applied to Canadian data. Competitive domestic industries produce goods that are assumed to be perfect substitutes for foreign goods. The calibration of the model to two data sets is explained and the 1972 and 1980 Canadian data sets used with the model are described.;Chapter 4 presents results of counterfactual calculations undertaken with the CGE model. The effects of a variety of shocks are examined: changes in world prices of traded goods ("trade shocks" in this model), technology, the aggregate labour force, tax rates, and tastes. Trade shocks, defined in this broad way, seem to have relatively large effects on employment in this model, whether compared with the net effects of all domestic shocks or separately with the different types of domestic shocks.;Changes in trade volumes or in the share of net imports in domestic consumption may also be defined as "trade shocks". To investigate their employment effects, counterfactual calculations are made for individual industries. Compared with the net effects of all other shocks, this definition of a trade shock leads to relatively small employment effects. This result parallels those of much cruder methods examined in Chapter 2.;A brief concluding chapter summarizes the results and discusses the limitations of the calculations.
Recommended Citation
Hill, Roderick, "Trade Shocks And Employment Change In Canada: 1972-1980" (1990). Digitized Theses. 1969.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/1969