Torben Drewes

Postsecondary Education in Canada: Returns to University, College and Trades Education

By international standards, the level of educational attainment in Canada is exceptionally high, with the proportion of adult Canadians holding postsecondary educational certificates being more than twice the OECD average. This remarkable ranking is primarily the result of high participation in non-university postsecondary educational sectors: colleges, trades institutions, and other vocational educators. While the non-university postsecondary education (PSE) sector is clearly important in terms of both the quantity and the qualitative nature of human capital it produces, it has received very little attention in the academic literature , which has tended to focus on the outcomes of university graduates. This paper uses Census data from 1980 to 2000 to examine the evolution of the earnings premia to university, college, and trades educat i o n over a 20-year period of rapid economic change. Examining this evolution is a prerequisite to understanding the behaviour of participation in the various postsecondary education streams and to the appropriate conduct of educational and labour market policy.

Are there biases in German bilateral aid allocations

This paper presents new evidence on the nature of German bilateral foreign aid allocations. In particular, the paper focuses on the question of whether there are population and middle-income biases present in the disbursement of German assistance. Using data on German bilateral aid to 85 countries from 1973 to 1995 evidence supporting existence of a population bias is found, but no evidence is found of a middle-income bias. A bias, however, associated with a recipients coverage under the Lomé Convention is found.

Biases in the allocation of Canadian official development assistance

A strong inverse relationship between per capita assistance and population of aid-receiving countries is found in an examination of Canadian bilateral foreign aid to 33 countries over the period 1982-92. However, the middle-income bias present in aid allocation of some other countries is not found in the case of Canada. Instead, there is a bias associated with the recipients membership to the Commonwealth.

Internal and external labour mobility in Canada

Quasi-longitudinal Canadian microdata was used to compare the movement of individuals between employers with job changes taking place within firms. Internal mobility is found to be much less common than job changing between firms. Workers changing jobs within a firm are more likely to be older and have higher wages and longer tenures in the jobs they leave than individuals employers. This provides some support for the job-matching hypothesis underlying recent research on the causes of individual mobility, although it is also clear that workers in large or unionized firms are more likely to have the opportunity for internal promotion. While wage gains obtained through internal mobility are smaller than those achieved through external mobility, wage levels are higher for individuals moving within the firm. It is argued that this observation is consistent with a dual labour markets interpretation of mobility patterns.