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Recent Submissions

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    The effect of house prices on fertility: Evidence from Canada
    (University of Waterloo, 2016) Clark, Jeremy; Ferrer, Ana
    To the extent that families' fertility decisions respond to economic factors, the price of housing is an important and relatively neglected candidate for consideration in fertility decisions. In theory, the effect of changes in housing prices on family size will depend on the quantity of housing that a family already owns, and its elasticity of substitution between children and other "goods". For renters, rise in rental costs associated with higher housing prices imply only a substitution effect that should reduce their likelihood of having additional children. Home-owners are predicted to have more children in response to higher house prices if they have sufficient housing and low substitution, but fewer children otherwise. In this paper, we combine longitudinal data from the Canadian Survey of Labour Income and Dynamics (SLID) and average housing price data at real estate board (REB) level from the Canadian Real Estate Association to estimate the effect of house prices on fertility. We following non-moving women aged 18-40 (with their associated families) over time to ask whether changes in lagged housing price affects either total number of children, or the probability of a family having an additional birth. We differ from previous studies in employing person- rather than region-fixed effects, in covering both rural and urban areas, and in exploring the effect of housing price changes on total number of children vs. the probability of having an additional child. For home owners, we find that lagged REB housing prices are positively associated with the probability of a birth in the previous year under pooled cross section or fixed effects. Housing prices are significantly negatively associated with total fertility measures under pooled cross section, but positively associated with umber of children in the home under fixed effects. For renters, we find that lagged REB housing prices are not significantly negatively associated with either total or marginal fertility measures.
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    Speeding up for a son? Fertility transitions among Asian migrants to Canada
    (University of Waterloo, 2016-03) Adsera, Alicia; Ferrer, Ana
    We use the 2001 and 2006 Canadian Census to study how the sex-ratios at second birth, conditional on both the spacing between the first two children and the gender of the first, vary across place of birth or religious affiliation. We find that South Asian women give birth to a higher proportion of boys after a first-born girl compared to both natives and other immigrant groups with girls and also to South Asians with a first-born boy. Across religious groups, Sikhs present a similar behavior. These abnormal sex-ratios are particularly skewed when the time span between the first two births is short. This clearly indicates that sex-selective abortion happens more frequently after conceptions that occur fairly close to the birth of a first girl. Sex ratios return (close) to normal for these groups if live-births are spaced three years or longer.
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    Design and Implementation of Probabilistic Programming Languages for Sound and Scalable Inference
    (University of Waterloo, 2026-07-14) Li, Jianlin
    Probabilistic programming languages (PPLs) provide a powerful framework for specifying and solving complex Bayesian inference problems using general-purpose programming constructs. However, the same linguistic expressiveness that makes PPLs appealing also introduces challenges for performing sound and scalable inference. This thesis explores the design and implementation of PPLs by developing novel compilation strategies targeting different inference methods and compilation artifacts. This thesis centers on four major systems. Fidelio addresses deep amortized inference by generating neural guide programs via a type-preserving and dependence-aware translation, ensuring soundness with respect to absolute continuity; Mappl targets exact inference via variable elimination, compiling probabilistic programs with bounded recursion to factor functions guided by an information-flow type system; Geni enables scalable exact inference for discrete models by compiling to generating functions, offering a mathematically principled and efficient representation; Tessa reframes probabilistic model checking for step-bounded reachability as tensor computations, enabling sound compilation into JAX programs and accelerator-backed execution for substantial speedups. The central thesis is that the compiler perspective leads to sound, scalable ways to automate probabilistic inference for a rich class of probabilistic models.
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    The case against child labor bans
    (University of Waterloo, 2016-01) Gonzalez, Francisco M.; Rosales, Irving
    We argue that enforcing blanket child labor restrictions in developing economies, as advocated in the ILO Convention 138, is harmful even in the long run. The social return to child labor can be higher than its private return if laws against crime and laws in favor of compulsory education are not enforced, in which case child labor crowds out both child crime and crime against children.
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    Can skilled immigration policy raise innovation? Evidence from the Canadian 'points system'
    (University of Waterloo, 2017-12) Blit, Joel; Skuterud, Mikal; Zhang, Jue
    We examine the effect of changes in skilled-immigrant population shares in 98 Canadian cities between 1981 and 2006 on per capita patents. The Canadian case is of interest because its 'points system' for selecting immigrants is viewed as a model of skilled immigration policy. Our estimates suggest that the impact of increasing the share of university-educated immigrants on patenting rates is smaller than the impact that both native-borns have in Canada and immigrants have in the U.S.. The modest contribution of Canadian immigrants to innovation is largely explained by the fact that only about one-third of Canadian STEM-educated immigrants finds employment in STEM jobs (relative to two-fifths of the Canadian-born and one-half of immigrants in the U.S.). Consistent with this, we find a large and significant effect of STEM-educated immigrants when we also condition on STEM employment. Our results suggest potential benefits from giving employers a role in the selection of skilled immigrants.