My Profile

Biography:

Research interests are in Labour Economics, Macroeconomics and Applied Econometrics. Current research revolves around two major themes, one funded by the SSHRC and a second funded by the CLLRNet. The first project, deals with the issue of nominal and real wage rigidity. The focus is on the extent to which these phenomena can be observed in data based on large surveys (such as Canada's Labour Market Activity Survey and the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics) as well as in data drawn from collective bargaining agreements. Information from these sources is first used to establish wage-change distributions. This information is then examined, using a variety of parametric and non-parametric techniques, for evidence of nominal and real rigidities. The second project deals with another aspect of the wage determination process, namely the extent to which language proficiency is rewarded in the marketplace. This work deals with the Canadian experience and the extent to which individuals who are bilingual (English and French) earn more than otherwise identical unilingual individuals. One aspect of this work deals with rewards prevailing in the federal public service (which is subject to the Official Languages Act) relative to those in the rest of the economy. Another, deals with the impact of French Immersion programs. A third explores the issue of heritage languages.

He has served as Hallsworth Fellow at the University of Manchester, and as a visitor at the LSE, the Jagiellonian University and at the Universities of Essex, Oxford, and Munich. He referees for a number of journals, the SSHRC, and for National Science Foundation. He has been a consultant to several government departments. He is a Research Associate of CESifo (Germany) and CLLRNet. He is a member of the American Economic Association, the Canadian Economic Association and the European Economic Association.