Three Essays on Labour and Public Economics
The first chapter studies how the nature of export-demand shocks shapes the adjustment of firms and workers. Using Canadian linked employer-employee data for 2005--2019, I construct firm-specific exposure to global demand shifts during the Great Recession and develop a decomposition of export shocks into destination-wide, product-wide, and firm-specific components. Destination shocks have much larger and more persistent effects than product shocks, reducing firm exports by about 0.7 percent and employment by 0.2 percent per one percent decline in foreign demand, roughly twice the impact of product shocks. Destination shocks also induce firms to diversify across markets, while product shocks lead to scope contraction. Despite firm recovery, workers experience lasting income losses. A one percent drop in destination demand lowers long-run earnings by about 0.4 percent, with product and firm-specific shocks generating effects about half as large. Although destination shocks account for a smaller share of total demand variation, their per-unit impact is far larger, revealing a structural vulnerability to geographic export concentration. The second chapter, co-authored with Stefan Staubli and Qiongda Zhao, studies the long-run effects of changing the early eligibility age (EEA) for old-age pensions, a common policy to alleviate fiscal pressure on public pension systems. While prior work has focused on short-term labor supply effects, we examine long-term impacts on economic well-being and poverty using two Canadian reforms in the 1980s that lowered the EEA from 65 to 60. Leveraging rich administrative tax data and a difference-in-differences design, we track affected cohorts throughout their retirement until death. We find that a one-year EEA reduction lowers the average claiming age by 0.23 years, with no effect on pension claiming among spouses or children. Early claiming raises short-term pension income but reduces it later, keeping lifetime pension income unchanged but spread out over more years. Total income is stable early in retirement and declines later due to lower pension payments. Overall, the EEA reduction in the 1980s compressed income disparities and significantly reduced elderly poverty among low-income retirees. The third chapter, co-authored with Jean-William Laliberté and Stefan Staubli, examines the multigenerational impact of children and whether the public provision of formal childcare lessens the earnings and employment impacts of children. We find that the arrival of a firstborn reduces employment and earnings of mothers and employment of grandmothers. Studying a universal childcare program in Quebec, we find that formal childcare increases the employment rates of mothers as well as that of grandmothers to a lesser extent. Examining heterogeneity of the program’s impact across census divisions, we find a negative correlation between the positive effects on mothers’ employment and the prepolicy supply of informal childcare by grandmothers.
labour economics, public economics, export shocks, firm adjustment, worker earnings, public pensions, financial well-being, child penalty, gender earnings gap, child care subsidies
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