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Shift‐share is a popular technique used by policymakers and researchers alike to decompose the change in a variable into within and between effects, intensive and extensive margins, or other comparable effects. One reason for the popularity of shift‐share is its relative simplicity compared to econometric techniques. However, often overlooked is that a shift‐share is actually an index number problem that uses differences instead of ratios. Techniques developed in index number theory accentuate the fact that the traditional shift‐share is biased. This paper proposes using the Bennet index to achieve unbiased measurements in shift‐share decompositions. In addition to solving the bias problem, the Bennet index removes the need for a residual and may be even simpler to calculate. While this paper is primarily theoretical, it also explores the differences between the traditional shift‐share and the Bennet index—both chained and fixed base—to measure the competitive and composition effects of Canada's export performance in the United States since 1990. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine how social media is used as a promotional tool for economic development at the municipal level through place marketing and branding, to identify and explore what specific tools are being used, and to discuss the strengths and limitations of use. Primary data was collected through in-depth interviews with 16 municipal economic development practitioners in the Province of Ontario, Canada. Additional data collected from municipal social media accounts was used to further reinforce the qualitative data and allow for triangulation and greater breadth of analysis. The findings suggest that social media is being used as a tool to promote local services and political information rather than communicate a brand position. Additionally, limited interaction with the audience reduces not only the effectiveness of place marketing efforts but also enhancement of place brands. While some findings are place specific (as study design limited research participants to municipalities in Ontario), these findings can be shared with other locales in advanced economies to provide them with information to make improvements in the way communication technology is utilised. This research paper provides a better understanding of how social media is being used by municipalities and how it fits into place marketing and place branding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research on rural depopulation and urbanization to large cities has dominated the literature for decades, small city growth has been largely ignored. Yet, small cities are important to the regional systems in which they are located, including serving as centres to their rural surround. This paper is concerned about growth and change in small cities. Using Brandon, Manitoba as an example, citizen perceptions of a range of specific aspects of city growth are analyzed. The study is based on a household postal survey conducted in May and June 2010 in which 2,500 randomly selected households in Brandon, Manitoba received questionnaires. The results are based on the 518 useable, completed questionnaires that were returned. Differences in perceptions of the pace of change in a range of aspects of development were found based on income, age, educational attainment, employment status, and home ownership. No differences were found based on gender. The paper concludes with comments about how city governments need to be aware of citizen perceptions when pursuing and managing development. The paper also illustrated the importance of citizen perceptions in understanding the pace and direction of change in small cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking at 135 Canadian urban areas over a 35-year period (1971-2006), the paper examines the relationship between initial specialisation (using employment) in resource industries and various growth indicators via a mix of descriptive statistics and econometric modelling. The paper differentiates between two resources sectors: resource extraction (mining, logging, etc.); primary resource transformation (paper mills, foundries, smelters, etc.). The evidence for a 'resource curse' is mixed. Resource transformation industries are found to be associated with slower population growth, also depressing growth in college-educated cohorts. However, no such relationship is found for resource extraction. We find no evidence for a durable Dutch Disease wage effect. Wages fluctuate in response to resource demand as do working-age populations. Many relationships hold only for the short run. In the end, we argue, the impact of resource specialisation depends on the particular resource and type of industry it spawns, as well as location. There is no generalisable resource curse, valid for all resources and all places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, tier-two fashion countries have been making gains in the global fashion industry, with hip young brands, buzz-worthy fashion weeks and export-oriented designers. The Canadian fashion industry, on the other hand, continues to fall behind and instead has experienced recent high-profile closures of leading domestic fashion names. This paper explores why this is the case by considering a wide range of factors from a historical and institutional perspective. We argue that Canadian fashion is facing a number of systemic problems relating to wider institutional and policy weaknesses, rather than a lack of talent and know-how within the entrepreneurs and businesses in the sector. While the fashion industry is indeed global, we argue that it is in fact national and local level factors-political, economic, and cultural-that structure and constrain the Canadian fashion industry for independent designers. Through exploring the experiences of this group of actors-entrepreneurial fashion designers-in this particular context, we not only learn about Canada as an economy but also what is needed in order to develop the fashion industry more broadly. We provide a framework for analysing the range of socio-economic, historical, and political factors at the national level which affect the performance of the fashion sector and the operation of fashion designers as the entrepreneurial actors at the heart of the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decreasing spatial transaction and trade costs have given rise to growing economic specialization of cities. While most studies focus on industries as the primary manifestation of urban specialization, a growing body of literature examines occupational functions, i.e., activities and tasks performed within a given industry or firm. This paper explores how the two dimensions (industries and functions) interact across the urban system and their relative importance over time. Is there a trend toward increasing functional specialization in the Canadian urban system? How much of this phenomenon is attributable to spatial shifts in regional industrial structures as opposed to spatial divisions within industries? The paper uses a unique data set drawn from Statistics Canada Census microdata files between 1971 and 2006. Based on the employed population, the data are spatially organized and cross-tabulated over industries and occupational groups. A decomposition methodology is used to compare the relative weights of industry and regional (functional) effects in accounting for the changing spatial division of functions across Canadian urban areas. Clear patterns of increasing functional specialization are found within the Canadian urban system. Regional effects are generally greater than industry effects, suggesting that spatial divisions of functions (spatial shifts within industries) are progressing more rapidly than regional shifts in industrial structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada, the U.S., and Australia have recently experienced an increased regional dispersion of entering immigrants. American research suggests that a mixture of economic push factors (away from states like California) and pull factors (toward states with growth of low-wage jobs) and changing government policies and regulations contributed to the development of the New Gateways. Very few studies have been conducted to determine why the regional dispersion of entering immigrants occurred in Canada. This paper assesses the extent to which changes in immigration selection programs, notably, the Provincial Nominee Programs, contributed to the regional dispersion of entering immigrants. Using data from immigrant landing records, this study shows that different factors accounted for changes in the share of immigrants settling in different destinations. Changes in immigration selection programs played the primary role in the increasing numbers going to Saskatchewan and Manitoba, although improving economic conditions may have played an indirect role. Shifts in immigrant source regions were an important factor in the decrease in immigration to Toronto and in the increase to Montréal. Economic conditions likely played a significant role in the changes in the shares of new immigrants going to Toronto, Montréal, Calgary, and Edmonton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper nuances our understanding of the ongoing transition within the North American music industry. It extends the existing analysis of the so-called ' MP3 Crisis' by exploring the ways in which digital technologies have challenged the entrenched power of the major record labels. In particular, new insights are offered based on interviews with music industry executives who have been active in shaping the industry's response to illegal file sharing. The paper also uses interview data from musicians to investigate the implications of restructuring at the macroscale on creative talent at the microscale. As such, it documents the structures and spatial dynamics of digitally driven independent music production in Canada for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the concept of national imaginaries as a means of foregrounding the continuing influence of ideas about the nation on understandings of commodity production and circulation. National imaginaries are of crucial importance to the home furnishings commodity network, flowing across sites of consumption, retailing, design, and production. Drawing upon the findings of a larger cross-national research project, the paper discusses three cases in which the characterisation of distinctive national design identities was particularly prominent. These include the representation of designers in the UK and Canada as “national heroes,” and the tendency to measure British and Canadian design against a third national imaginary: that of Italy. A final case considers discursive constructions of national economic trajectories—of “success” or “failure”—within accounts of the British and Canadian furniture industries. It is argued that future work on the differentiating advantages, which may accrue to creative or cultural industries in particular localities, also should be attentive to the ways in which the place of the nation is used to construct imaginative geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The connection between innovation and territory is increasingly being questioned as evidence shows that collaboration and information exchange are not necessarily localised. However, this general observation may differ depending on the industry and type of exchange studied: some types of information may be more transferable than others. This may particularly be the case in the wine industry which, especially in Canada, is concentrated in a few regions, each with its own climate, geography, and institutions. This paper examines the nature and geography of collaboration in this industry, with emphasis on the relative importance of different sources of knowledge, the spatial dimension of exchanges, and their relevance for innovation. We find that certain knowledge exchanges are localised, particularly those that are closely associated with local growing conditions, whereas other more generic industry-level exchanges occur at a wider spatial scale. Local knowledge transfers are characterised less by the type of knowledge exchanged than by the fact that it focuses on local conditions, and is therefore of little value outside the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Do exporters and foreign-controlled establishments pay their workers higher wages than non-exporters and domestic-controlled establishments? This paper draws on an employer-employee data set to explore the existence of exporter and foreign-owned wage premiums in the Canadian manufacturing sector. Results from wage regression models reveal that, on the whole, exporters and foreign-controlled plants do pay higher wages than non-exporters and domestic-controlled plants. These results hold even after controlling for other plant and worker characteristics, although the wage differentials are substantially smaller. Furthermore, while the impact of foreign ownership on wages is found to be widespread across industries and regions, that of exporting is not. At the industry level, the wage effects of export-market participation are strongest for workers in plants belonging to scale-based industries; regionally, they are strongest in Quebec and British Columbia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societies in many developed nations around the world are aging. Over the past decade, a growing body of research has emerged internationally in an effort to anticipate and prepare for the transport challenges posed by this unprecedented demographic change. This paper contributes to this line of research by offering new insights into senior travel behavior focusing on the recent Canadian experience. Using weekday data from the 1992 and 2005 General Social Surveys on time use, changes in the number of trips, the duration of trips, trip mode, and trip timing are evaluated for urban seniors. In contrast to the experiences of many other developed nations, analysis of the first three indicators of behavioral change refutes the notion that “automobility” has increased in Canada over the 13-year period. While this finding is encouraging, it is tempered by the fact that Canadian seniors who choose to travel by car are doing so increasingly during the morning and evening peak periods. The results from a peak versus non-peak departure-time model that pools data from both years offer important insights into factors driving this change. For instance, the results suggest that the propensity to start a trip during rush hour has increased over time for non-work trip purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local and regional employment growth is generally studied either by searching for local qualitative explanatory factors such as governance, synergy between firms, and milieu effects, or by searching for general growth factors using statistical techniques. The body of work that relies on this approach has tended, in keeping with economics’ nomothetic tradition, to assume that local and regional growth factors are constant over space. The focus of this paper is on exploring the spatial stationarity of employment growth factors in Canada, but it also seeks to clarify some of the broad principles behind spatial regression techniques in order to provide a point of entry and a conceptual framework for empirical researchers. To do so, we apply a recently developed technique, Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR), and we explore the method's advantages and limits for answering our research question. We find evidence that growth factors differ across Canada, but we also conclude that the GWR technique, given the number and shape of regions available for our analysis and given certain limitations that are currently inherent to the method, can only provide tentative and exploratory results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional economies are continually undergoing adjustment as their firm populations react to changing tastes, technologies, and the challenges of outside competition. Adjustment typically takes place as the stock of jobs is renewed in each industry. This micro-dynamic process of renewal has a substantial impact on the structure of national and regional economies. The primary objective of this paper is to measure the degree of renewal within the Canadian manufacturing economy as whole and within individual provinces. Using a longitudinal micro-data set—which covers the population of manufacturing plants in Canada from 1973 to 1996—the study shows that the manufacturing sector experienced considerable job renewal. Two-thirds of jobs in 1996 were newly created since 1973. There was considerable variation in provincial renewal rates. A decomposition analysis suggests this variation is not purely an artifact of the types of industries found in provinces, but reflects other characteristics of provincial economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper examines the competitive characteristics of small and medium-sized manufacturing firms (SMFs) in a Canada-U.S. cross-border region (the Niagara Frontier). Particular attention is given to the innovation and business performance of comparably-sized firms on both sides of the border. The results of two firm-level surveys are presented. A comparative analysis of the two groups suggests that Canadian SMFs exhibit significantly stronger export and innovation performance than their U.S. counterparts. The results also suggest that U.S. firms face tougher competitive difficulties arising from specific national and regional circumstances, including shortages of skilled labor, higher corporate tax rates, rising import competition, and a more complex regulatory environment. The implications of the empirical results are discussed in the context of policy options for regional economic development in crossborder zones such as the Niagara Frontier [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the Stratford Festival on employment within the community of Stratford, Ontario. The specific objective is to calculate the number of “secondary” jobs created in Stratford per “primary” job generated at the festival. This is achieved in three stages. First, primary employment is calculated from information provided by theatre personnel. Second, secondary employment is assessed from information collected in a survey of local business proprietors. Third, a festival-employment multiplier is derived. This reveals the number of secondary jobs created in the community per job at the festival. Results indicate that 1.6 jobs result in Stratford for every job generated at the theatre. This finding provides evidence that cultural organizations contribute positively to the economic climate of a community. The economic consequences of cultural events constitute an important argument for their continued support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]