Enrollment Responses To Labour Market Conditions: A Study Of The Canadian Market For Scientists And Engineers

Katsumi Shimotsu and Sumon Majumdar

No 1105, Working Paper from Economics Department, Queen's University

Abstract: As Canada increasingly structures itself towards a "knowledge based economy", the supply of high-skilled professionals such as engineers and other science graduates acquires more importance. Following the theoretical framework developed by Ryoo and Rosen(2004), we develop and estimate a dynamic supply and demand model for engineers and scientists in Canada. We find that the estimated stock-flow dynamics are supportive of the theoretical model. The relative employment of engineers is quite sensitive to research and development (R&D) expenditures as a fraction of GDP, particularly after 1997. We then use the estimates to develop a dynamic impulse response function. Looking at the impact of a permanent increase in allocation towards R&D, we find that the adjustment process is relatively smooth and the market adjusts in about 2 to 8 years (plus the four years of natural lag in production) to within 80% of the final steady state. For a one-time improvement in R&D allocation, we find that under rational expectations, there is an initial increase in the number of science graduates, but then it falls to below the steady state value and remains there for a long period as the initial increase works its way through the market.

Keywords: dynamic supply and demand; engineers and scientists; R & D expenditure; adjustment dynamics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J23 J24 J31 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2006-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino and nep-knm
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qed:wpaper:1105

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