Gilles Grenier

The Effects of Language Characteristics on the Wages of Hispanic-American Males

This paper reports an investigation of the extent to which the language handicap of Hispanic Americans explains their low economic status. Wage equations which include language attributes among the explanatory variables are estimated for a sample of Hispanic and non-Hispanic white males drawn from the 1976 Survey of Income and Education. It is found that language attributes have a significant effect on wages and that they explain an important proportion of the mean wage differential between non-Hispanics and Hispanics.

Interindustry Wage Differentials and Efficiency Wages: Some Canadian Evidence

Using the 1986 Labour Market Activity Survey as their major source of data, the authors estimate interindustry wage differentials in Canada at the one- and two-digit levels of industry aggregation for various types of workers. The major findings are that substantial interindustry wage differentials exist and are relatively stable over time; that the pattern of interindustry wage differentials is very similar for different kinds of workers; and that these differentials cannot be explained easily by compensating factors. The differentials seem to be consistent with the rent-sharing explanations of the labor market, such as those based on the notion of efficiency wages.

An economic perspective on learning a second language

The goal of this paper is to examine, with the help of human capital theory, individual decisions with respect to learning a second language. In the first part of the paper, we examine, in a non‐technical fashion, the human capital theory and how it can be used to examine the decision to become bilingual. In the second part of the paper, we present the survey data on the francophones from Quebec and the Hispanics from the United States used in the study. Finally in the third part of the paper we present our empirical results: they show that family background and environmental variables have an impact on the likelihood of an individual being bilingual or not.

Language, employment, and earnings in fhe United States: Spanish-English differentials from 1970 to 1990

This article analyzes employment and earnings differentials between Spanish Speakers and English Speakers in the United States, using data from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 US censuses. The results show that Spanish Speakers, both men and women, do not perform as well in the labor market as English Speakers. The results also reveal that Spanish-English earnings and unemployment differentials increased slightly in the 1970s, most likely because of rapid growth in the number of Spanish Speakers. By contrast, these differentials increased sharply in the 1980s, also a period of rapidly increasing supply. However, there is no evidence that the widening of differentials in the 1980s reflects an increase in the labor market rewards to English language proficiency. Rather, they appear to be the result of Spanish Speakers having relatively little of those labor-market characteristics, most notably education, whose market value increased dramatically during the 1980s.

Human capital quality and the immigrant wage gap

We propose a new methodology for analyzing determinants of the wage gap between immigrants and natives. A Mincerian regression framework is extended to include GDP per capita in an immigrant’s country of birth as a proxy for the quality of schooling and work experience acquired in that country. We find that Canadian immigrants’ returns to schooling and work experience significantly increase with the GDP per capita of their country of birth. The contribution of quality of schooling and work experience to the immigrant wage gap is also examined. Lower human capital quality completely negates the endowment advantage that immigrants have in the areas of schooling and work experience. Since data on GDP per capita are available for most countries over long periods, the proposed methodology can be applied to analyze immigrant wage gaps for a large set of countries for which common statistics on natives and immigrants are available.JEL codesJ20, J24, J15, J61

Performance Differentials in the National Hockey League: Discrimination Versus Style-of-Play Thesis

William D. Walshs article contains many criticisms of our explanation of performance differentials in professional hockey, as evidenced by his 39 citations of Lavoie et al.1 We shall deal here only with the major arguments and show that Walshs reasoning is based on very shaky grounds. Actually, Walshs main point was already considered in another article of ours (Lavoie, 1989). There, the stacking of Francophones and their favourable performance differentials were examined using hypotheses: the discrimination thesis, which is ours (Coulombe and Lavoie, 1985a; 1985b; Lavoie, Grenier and Coulombe, 1987; 1989) and that of David Marple (1975); the linguistic fluency thesis, which is basically that of Michael Krashinsky (1989);2 the reservation wage thesis, which was put forth by Marple and P. Pirie (1977) and Michel Boucher (1984); and finally the style-ofplay thesis, put forth by many sportswriters. Under the style-of-play thesis, Lavoie (1989:20-22) considered four variants: 1/ Francophones are reluctant to fight, 2/they lack work ethics, 3/they are too offence oriented, 4/ they are too small. Walshs analysis is mainly concerned with the third and fourth variants.3

Linguistic and Economic Characteristics of Francophone Minorities in Canada: A Comparison of Ontario and New Brunswick

This paper analyses and compares the Canadian francophone minorities of Ontario and New Brunswick in order to see how well they have done in preserving their identity and in achieving economic success.

An analysis of the first marriage patterns of Canadian women

The authors use the Coale-McNeil marriage model to study the evolution and determinants of female 1st marriage patterns in Canada with data from the 1971 and 1981 censuses. The results indicate a tendency toward a stabilization of the mean age at 1st marriage and toward a decline in the proportion ever-marrying for younger cohorts. However the changes that are reported are not as large as those shown in recent marriage vital statistics data. A major reason for that difference is that the 1981 census data include some common law marriages. An analysis of the determinants of marriage patterns shows that French mother tongue birth in Quebec and in foreign countries Catholic religion education and urban residence effect positively the mean age at 1st marriage while birth in Quebec Catholic religion education and urban residence affect negatively the probability of ever-marrying. (authors)

6 – The Economics of Sex Preference and Sex Selection

This study reviews the economists approach to the study of sex preference and sex selection and presents an economic analysis of the subject. In the past economists focused primarily on: 1) the existence and significance of sex preferences 2) interfamily differences in the intrinsic probability of having a boy 3) differences in the costs and benefits of boy and girl children and 4) the effect of prior uncertainty associated with the sex of a child. The existing state of knowledge seems to be that sex preferences are prevalent in many parts of the world although the extent to which preferences carry through to behavior has been weakly demonstrated at best especially for developing countries. Also it is well established that there is interfamily variation in the intrinsic probability of having a boy child implying that sex preferences can affect aggregate sex ratios. To the extent that major advances in sex selection technology and wider acceptability of such technology are in the foreseeable future the potential for sex preferences to affect aggregate sex rates and household fertility behavior will be substantially increased. An economic model of household fertility is presented focusing on sex and risk preferences and its sequential nature. Even under fairly nonrestrictive assumptions about household behavior the probability of having an additional child is negatively related to the strength of the households sex preferences the degree of the households aversion to risk the probability of occurrence of the non-preferred outcome the degree of balance in the sex composition of existing children and the magnitude of the difference in the price of boy and girl children. Some areas of research might be: 1) to specify the stochastic elements in an economic model of fertility 2) to investigate the sex preference effect on interbirth intervals 3) to study interfamily differences in the intrinsic probability of having a boy 4) more careful models of household sex preferences and 5) work on the extent to which sex preferences are reflected in actual fertility behavior.

Quality of Work Experience and Economic Development: Estimates Using Canadian Immigrant Data

This paper presents a methodology to measure the contribution of human capital quality to economic development using immigrant data. We document the fact that immigrants from poor countries earn lower returns to schooling and work experience than immigrants from rich countries. We argue that this fact is most consistent with a model in which a country’s human capital quality depends on its level of income. Then we use results from regressions of immigrants’ earnings to estimate the contribution of human capital quality to economic development. An important finding is that work experience quality is more important than schooling quality for economic development.