Closing the 49th Parallel: An Unexplored Episode in Canadian Economic and Political History

James Davies and Stanley Winer ()

No 20083, University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute Working Papers from University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute

Abstract: We draw attention to, and begin to consider the implications of the severe restrictions on emigration by Canadians to the United States introduced under the U.S. Immigration Act of 1965. These restrictions came into effect in 1968 and lasted until mobility began to increase under the free trade agreements in the early 1990's. This is an unusual episode in Canadian history, one whose implications for public policy have received little attention. The near closing of the border during this period likely led to a decrease in the elasticity of labour supply in Canada. We derive the implications of such a change in a competitive political model where the political costs and benefits of levying taxes on different activities are distinguished. Increased reliance on, and changes in the structure of, labour income taxes, and an increase in the size of the public sector are predicted. We show that these predictions are consistent with what occurred over the two decades after the near closing of the U.S. border.

Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-mig and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1047&context=economicsepri_wp (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
Journal Article: Closing the 49th Parallel: An Unexplored Episode in Canadian Economic and Political History (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uwo:epuwoc:20083

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://economics.uw ... itting_ordering.html
The price is Paper copy available by mail at a cost of $10.00 Canadian each.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute Working Papers from University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute Economic Policy Research Institute, Social Science Centre, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C2.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().