Francois Vaillancourt

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor Emeritus at Université de Montréal

In this chapter François Grin and François Vaillancourt assess the contribution of language economics to the question of what language (or languages) is (or are) used at work. After reviewing some essential cornerstones of language economics and its approach to language at work, they examine the determinants of language use in the workplace, and an...

This research1) summarize the intervention plan of canadian governments (federal and Provincial); 2) present the number of individuals at risk; 3) discuss the use of quality adjusted live years (QALY to assess health innovations; 4) present the number, age distribution and expected QALYs of lives saved from Covid-19; 5) value these QALYs; 6) and de...

Bridging Linguistics and Economics - edited by Cécile B. Vigouroux March 2020

Ce texte présente les mécanismes d'ajustement aux chocs économiques de deux zones monétaires avec structure fédérale -Canada et États-Unis- et fait ressortir quelques observations pertinentes pour la zone euro (ZE). La première partie présente brièvement quelques réflexions sur fédéralisme financier et zone monétaire optimale. La seconde partie por...

Capital gains taxation in Canada was introduced in 1972 following the recommendations of the Carter Commission. This article will trace the evolution of the system focusing in particular on the following three items: (1) the interaction between capital gains taxation and provincial succession duties as the latter were driven down to zero in the 197...

Le traitement des langues nationales se concrétise souvent par des exigences constitutionnelles. Il est plausible que dans certains cas que l'on dépense beaucoup par locuteur avec peu de résultats. Nonobstant ceci il est pertinent de maintenir des engagements fondateurs d'un pays La reconnaissance de droits linguistiques peut être vu comme une form...

Linguistic justice depends in part on the costs and benefits of the relevant language policies. This chapter presents a methodology that can be used in ascertaining the value of these costs and benefits. It illustrates its use with data from Canadian provinces focusing in particular on minority education.

Canadian provinces have always had tax-raising powers although these were surrendered for some years during and after the Second World War. Devolution in the United Kingdom did not initially include substantive taxation powers; rather there was a block grant from the centre. Tax powers have since been given to Scotland, with Wales due to follow; th...

The chapter is divided in three parts. The first describes the history of the main elements of the federal language policies then turns to the aggregate costs and benefits of the federal official language policy. The second presents the methodology used to allocate the benefits of the availability of French language services and their tax costs to...

In an era of globalization, issues of language diversity have economic and political implications. Transnational labor mobility, trade, social inclusion of migrants, democracy in multilingual countries, and companies’ international competitiveness all have a linguistic dimension; yet economists in general do not include language as a variable in th...

Although simplification is presumably the opposite of complexity, or at least a move in the opposite direction, tax simplification is complicated. It is complicated in part because tax complexity itself is complicated, and may be manifested in many ways with many different effects and many causes. Similarly, tax simplification may be undertaken for...

The question considered in this chapter is whether decentralization is likely to hurt or help national unity in “countries at risk.” We begin with a literature review, focusing on three particular questions: the size and number of nations; the determinants of decentralization; and, finally, and bearing most directly on our topic, the links between...

This chapter presents some of the main empirical methods used by economists who since the 1970s have contributed to the elaboration of language policies. This specific focus is the result of the theme of this book; it is more restrictive than discussions on the economics of language of the economics of language policy evaluation. Furthermore, this...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the economic policies adopted respectively by Canada and the United States following the economic and financial shocks that hit the entire world economy between 2007 and 2009. From the perspective of Europe, Canada and the United States are often presented as two countries whose policies are alike. Indeed, th...

The amalgamation and de-amalgamation period in Montreal (2001–2005) led to the creation of a city in 2006 with 19 decentralized boroughs integrated in a multi-tier metropolitan governance structure. Most recent work on Montreal municipal issues has focused on describing its complex governance structures. Very little attention has been given to the...

This paper shows that the quest for sovereignty in Quebec is explained by its role as the abode for a French-speaking minority in North America. It notes that there was no commonly agreed legal framework for the 1980 or 1995 referendums and that the attempt to impose one in 2000 has been rejected by Quebec. Using results from existing papers and or...

Our paper provides a comprehensive report of empirical research on tax compliance costs. Comparedto previous reviews, our focus is on average costs for sub-groups (individual taxpayers, small business-es, large businesses) and the composition of the cost burden with regards to different cost components(in-house time effort, external adviser costs,...

Concern about the size and the regressive nature of taxation compliance costs for small businesses has prompted many governments to introduce special tax concessions and regimes for that sector of the economy. This article reports on exploratory research conducted in four countries (Australia, Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom) in 2010-11...

This paper presents original results on the returns to language skills for men and women on the Quebec labour market for 2005 using 2006 Census data. We then compare these results to those obtained over the 1970–2000 period. One of the main findings for 2005 is that bilingualism increases the labour income for all language groups. When we compare r...

This paper presents original results on the returns to language skills for men and women on the Quebec labour market for 2005 using 2006 Census data. We then compare these results to those obtained over the 1970-2000 period. One of the main findings for 2005 is that bilingualism increases the labour income for all language groups. When we compare r...

Subnational tax autonomy is a cornerstone of a viable system of fiscal federalism. The underlying principle is that spending by constituent units in a federal or quasi federal country is paid for by revenues that are under the control of that unit. Economists recommend that the taxation base remain the same across all constituent units in a country...

The interest in the links between multilingualism and economic activity is relatively recent.

This article lays out the economists' view of why state and local government matters. To establish the economic framework, the article systematically works through the seminal contributions of Paul Samuelson's theoretical arguments of the importance of a public-sector role for efficiency in resource allocation; Charles Tiebout's thinking on the dif...

This paper presents an unusual inter-governmental financial arrangement: a payment by constituent units of a federation to the federal government to keep it out of a fiscal field and thus gain sole occupancy for themselves. This paper thus presents the history of the federal/provincial relationship in the gaming field in Canada focusing on the key...

The purpose of this paper is to present the various forms (administrative, political and fiscal) and the various types (deconcentration, delegation, devolution) of decentralization. We highlight the strength and weaknesses of these various forms of decentralisation, as well as examine the specific aspects of their implementation. We divide this tex...

Ce rapport présente une réflexion et des recommandations sur le financement des arrondissements de la Ville de Montréal. Une tournée de consultation des 19 arrondissements, des rencontres avec les intervenants clés des principaux services centraux et l’examen de plusieurs documents fournis principalement par le Service des finances ont permis d’éta...

This book proposes a path-breaking study of the economics of multilingualism at work, proposing a systematic approach to the identification and measurement of the ways in which language skills and economic performance are related.

The taxation of gambling in Africa as a whole appears to have been the object of little attention. In this paper, we first present the importance of gambling for Africa from a world perspective then disaggregate that within Africa. We then turn to the nature and importance of taxation of gambling, focusing on the major markets identified in the fir...

Ce rapport étudie l’évolution du bilan, soit l’actif et le passif, des particuliers et entreprises individuelles au Canada depuis 1961. Il est pertinent de faire une telle analyse étant donné les changements culturels et réglementaires, qui ont créé un accès privilégié au crédit et donc contribué à l’endettement, et l’innovation financière. Le prem...

L’objectif de ce rapport est de dresser l’état des lieux sur l’importance et les comportements des étudiants étrangers au Québec, d’examiner les impacts économiques de leur présence et de réévaluer les politiques publiques afférentes y compris le niveau des droits de scolarités et les forfaits. Nous définissons les impacts économiques à long et à c...

'Some think that decentralization has not gone "far enough" to be considered successful; others argue that it has already "failed". As the studies of decentralization in 15 developing countries in this volume clearly show, every case is different, and persuasive generalizations are hard to find. Fortunately, the introductory chapter usefully pulls...

Viewed from Canada, which conducts 70-80 percent of its foreign trade with the United States, the evolution of commercial flows is a major component in assessing the George W. Bush presidency. This study evaluates the impact of trade agreements on Canadian exports to the US, with a particular emphasis on the effects of measures taken by the Bush ad...

The purpose of this note is to examine the effect of belonging to a specific union on negotiated wage increases, given unionisation status. The data consist of all collective agreements with more than 500 employees, which were signed in Quebec (N=632) or Ontario (N=1349) during the 1985-2007 period. The model used is a standard wage equation with t...

The last two centuries have seen the rise of the nation-state as the dominant political institution around the world. However, “state” and “nation” are not always equivalent. In a surprising number of countries, autonomist and secessionist movements of varying strength and character remain active. The question we consider in this paper is whether d...

This study uses an original data set, combining information for all collective agreements covering more than 500 employees signed in Quebec or Ontario from 1985 to 2007 and information on payroll taxes and other variables, to measure the incidence of an increase in payroll tax. The results of this model show that that after one year, a one percenta...

This article examines the nature, importance and impact of federal grants on municipal capital expenditures in Canada. The first part recaps the history of federal grants to Canadian municipalities, focusing mainly on the last twenty years; the second presents some quantitative evidence on the amounts involved; and the third examines their impact o...

En choisissant Le Québec économique 2009 comme titre, nous ouvrions volontairement la voie à une analyse en deux temps. D’une part, nous souhaitions évaluer l’économie québécoise en mesurant le chemin qu’elle a parcouru au cours des dernières décennies jusqu’à aujourd’hui. D’autre part, nous tenions à accorder toute l’attention nécessaire à une ann...

Getting a university degree offers substantial financial returns, for women more so than men and for undergraduate degrees more so than advanced degrees. This report finds that high returns to education signal high labour demand in particular fields relative to supply, information which is helpful for policymakers who distribute funds and for stude...

Taxes levied by government to finance public services reduce the resources available to members of society both directly and indi- rectly. The direct cost is simply the tax itself while the indirect costs include distortions in behavior1 (the excess burden of taxation) and the resources consumed in the operation of the tax system. The goal of tax p...

This paper examines the challenges Madagascar has faced in decentralizing government activity since its independence in 1960. This is of interest as we will show that it has been plagued by a series of misstarts down that path. The paper is divided in three parts. The first one summarizes the key features of relevance to decentralization under five...

This paper examines,the evolution of the financing of post-sec- ondary institutions, particularly universities, in Québec for the 1961-2005 period, with comparisons with Ontario where feasible and appropriate. The first part describes the evolution of enrollment in post-secondary institutions in Québec. The second part presents indicators on the fi...

We review the evidence on the regional incidence of federal budgets in Canada, considering both aggregate results and some specific federal expenditure programs as well as some relevant issues (e.g., the regional effect of some regulatory programs) not captured in fiscal flows. The regional distributional pattern revealed in this analysis is both r...

The economic returns to knowing French in the Quebec labour market have increased steadily since 1970, while the returns to knowing English have decreased. The ability to speak both English and French has increased the earnings of anglophone men since 1980 and anglophone women since 1990, while the returns to bilingualism for francophone men and wo...

Ce texte a comme objectif de présenter une réflexion sur le lien entre décentralisation, compétition ou émulation intergouvernementale et efficacité, le tout dans le contexte du secteur des transports. Cet objectif est celui que nous a fixé l’organisateur de cette conférence. Pour l’atteindre, nous avons divisé le texte en trois parties. La premièr...

The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of the link between decentralisation, intergovernmental competition/emulation and efficiency in the context of the transport sector. To meet this objective, we have divided our paper into three sections. The first section briefly presents various definitions of decentralisation, recalls the princi...

This paper is divided into three main sections. In the first section, we set out briefly the standard theoretical case for both a general equalization transfer and for the incorporation of expenditure needs as a key factor in the design of such transfers and discuss how this case may be implemented. In the second section, we review how and to what...

In this paper, we examine the issue of the incidence of central government budgets in federal countries. In Section 1, we discuss a number of reasons why the picture painted of reality by even the best fiscal flow analysis is inevitably partial and hence inherently flawed to an unknowable extent. Despite these cautions, in Section 2 we review the e...

In this paper, following an introductory section setting out some salient characteristics of the country and its key institutions, we examine three aspects of Canada’s federal arrangements over the last half century. We have chosen these three examples to illustrate, first, an instance in which successful changes were gradually made over time to ac...

This contribution begins by summarizing the results of existing US studies on tax evasion, putting the emphasis on the impact of observable and predictable characteristics on the importance of hard to tax individuals (HTTI) and thus HTTY. We then turn to an examination of the trends in the number and importance (income) of the relevant types of tax...

Intergovernmental transfers are a major source of revenue for sub-national (regional and local) governments (hereafter SNG), representing 60 percent of their total revenue for developing countries and 33 percent for OECD countries (Shah, 2004). The continued and even growing decentralization observed in many countries calls for a better understandi...

I assess the role of wealth and systemic risk in explaining future asset returns. I show that the residuals of the trend relationship among asset wealth and human wealth predict both stock returns and government bond yields. Using data for a set of industrialized countries, I find that when the wealth-to-income ratio falls, investors demand a highe...

Résumé Cette étude porte sur l’évaluation de l’élasticité des revenus déclarés relativement au taux marginaux d’impôt sur le revenu au Canada. L’étude s’appuie sur des données provinciales agrégées de 1972 à 1996. Le modèle économétrique permet d’expliquer conjointement les parts de trois classes de revenus : 50 000 $ - 100 000 $, 100 000 $ - 150 0...

This contribution examines the effect of the explicit and implicit equalization activities of the Canadian federal government for the period 1981–2001. It deals with two programmes which transfer resources to provinces (the Equalization programme and the Canadian Health and Social Transfer); and two which transfer resources to individuals (the Empl...

This paper presents the Financial and Fiscal Features (FFF) of the three major types of Sub-National Governments (SNG) in Canada : provinces/territories, regional/urban/municipal bodies and school authorities. The paper is divided into three parts. The first one presents the institutional framework : numbers, size, taxation powers and so on. The se...

Canada is a large and regionally diverse country. Over the years complex intergovernmental fiscal arrangements have been developed in order to permit relatively uniform treatment of people living in very different provinces. These arrangements have on the whole been successful in delivering services effectively to a diverse population, but they hav...

Regional diversity may influence the nature and effectiveness of public sector activities through many economic and political channels. The most important and prominent manifestation of diversity in Canada has been the rise to dominance in the largely francophone province of Quebec of a political party advocating secession, but regional differences...

Taxpayers may respond to changes in income tax rates in several manners. One way to classify them is to distinguish between behavioural changes (changes in labour supply, changes in the weights of the different types of labour income, changes in saving behaviour, etc.) and income reporting changes (timing, evasion, ...). Consequently, there might n...

There appears to be an increasing trend in worldwide fiscal decentralization. In particular, many developing countries are turning to various forms of fiscal decentralization as an escape from inefficient and ineffective governance, macroeconomic stability, and inadequate growth. Fiscal Decentralization in Developing Countries: An Overview edited b...

There appears to be an increasing trend in worldwide fiscal decentralization. In particular, many developing countries are turning to various forms of fiscal decentralization as an escape from inefficient and ineffective governance, macroeconomic stability, and inadequate growth. Fiscal Decentralization in Developing Countries: An Overview edited b...

This lecture examines the issue of federal-provincial relations in the particular case of the Canada-Quebec relationship. The lecture is divided into three parts. The first one presents evidence on the relative strength of the provincial and federal governments in Canada in an attempt to assess if Canada is the most decentralized federation among O...

RÉSUMÉ Ce texte présente les résultats de 15 études traitant des coûts encourus par les firmes ou par les individus de se conformer aux exigences fiscales. On constate que les coûts décroissent avec la taille des firmes et croissent avec la complexité des sources de revenus.

PART I develops an analytical framework where language policy is viewed as a form of public policy. The framework is based on the economic approach to language and language planning, with a strong inter-disciplinary orientation. PART II reviews policy experience. Four revitalisation policies are examined (two in Wales, one in Euskadi, one in Irelan...

RÉSUMÉ Ce texte présente ce qu’est la décentralisation fiscale, fait ressortir ses forces et ses faiblesses et identifie les raisons de son succès, le tout dans le contexte de huit pays en développement en faisant appel à de l’information sur l’Argentine, la Chine, la Colombie, l’Inde, l’Indonésie, le Maroc, le Pakistan et la Tunisie. Le texte est...

The development of lakefront property in northern Wisconsin has prompted, in several towns, minimum frontage zoning stricter than the state standard. Such zoning generates an economic loss by constraining development (development effect), and an economic ...

This paper presents the various measurement tools used by economists to ascertain the socioeconomic status of French and Francophones in Quebec since 1960 and the findings thus obtained It then examines the nature and role of the determinants of this status and its evolution over time. This choice of emphasis and issues was made since it allows us...