Canada: Life Beyond the Looking Glass

Abstract

Canada's population, a tenth that of the United States, is perched close to the U.S. northern border, tightly but asymmetrically tied to U.S. information networks. However, trade, capital and population mobility remains an order of magnitude tighter among provinces than between provinces and states. This separating effect of the national border is not primarily due to barriers, but to networks of contacts, trust and institutions that make it efficient to concentrate economic activity within national borders. This separation combines with quite different histories to explain why Canadian economic, social, education and health care policies remain distinct from U.S. policies, often closer to those in Northern Europe.

Canada's Agricultural Trade in North America: Do National Borders Matter?

“…The second reason is that Canadians have better networks in the U.S. market than U.S. exporters have in the Canadian market. Helliwell (2001) argues that because the U.S. market is more important to Canada than the Canadian market is to the United States, social networks are stronger from Canada to the United States than vice versa. If it is the case as Helliwell (2001) suggests, imports would be more restricted than exports at the Canada-U.S. border.…”

“…Helliwell (2001) argues that because the U.S. market is more important to Canada than the Canadian market is to the United States, social networks are stronger from Canada to the United States than vice versa. If it is the case as Helliwell (2001) suggests, imports would be more restricted than exports at the Canada-U.S. border. Table 7 shows the estimated model for Mexican-Canadian total agricultural trade (we did not estimate a separate equation for each of the four categories because of the scarcity of trade in some years).…”

Medical student indebtedness and the propensity to enter academic medicine

“…During roughly the same period Canada also was going through retrenchment. Indeed, Helliwell [49] notes that 'Canada's health care spending as a share of GDP has been restricted more than in almost any other industrial country. .…”

“….' These reductions may have lowered the quality of medical care and left newly trained doctors without jobs in Canada [49], which in turn may have led to a brain drain to the US. Moreover, at the same there have been major tuition increases at Canadian medical schools.…”