Event Details: 

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The Canadian Women Economist Committee (CWEC/CFEC) is pleased to present the brownbag seminar schedule for winter/spring 2026. The seminars are held on the last Monday of every month (10 AM PT/11 AM MT/12 PM CT/1 PM ET/2 PM AT).

Our Program for January to April 2026

January 26

Bisma Khan, University of Toronto, Public Transit, Residential Sorting and Labor Supply: Theory and Evidence from Lahore Bus Rapid Transit System

Abstract: Public transit can transform how people live and work, yet its distributional effects remain unclear, particularly in developing cities where most households rely on low-quality transit. This paper studies the establishment of the Lahore Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system to examine how mass transit reshapes residential sorting and household labor supply. Using a novel geo-spatial dataset,and exploiting the staggered roll-out of the planned BRT lines, I show that younger, nuclear, non-college-educated households relocate closer to BRT corridors, with greater labor force participation of men in these households. Women’s labor market participation, however, remains largely unchanged—consistent with tied-mover dynamics. To interpret these patterns, I build a spatial model that incorporates gender specific constraints, age-based mobility, and endogenous amenities and provides a framework for evaluating the distributional welfare consequences of transit infrastructure in developing-country contexts.

Josephine Gantois, Univeristy of British Columbia, The Efficacy of Conservation Expenditures: Evidence From Local Ballot Measures

Abstract: What should we expect if we increase biodiversity financing, as global treaties are calling for, by $200 billion a year? To better inform conservation expenditure policies, we estimate the effect of conservation expenditures on local biodiversity and land cover using voting data on local ballots that allocate funding towards a variety of conservation purposes. Our analysis compares ballots that narrowly passed or failed using a dynamic regression discontinuity design. We estimate that following a conservation ballot passing, bird abundance increases by 0.3 standard deviation, and green vegetation cover increases by five percent. In dollar terms, we estimate that increasing conservation expenditures by $25 million leads to approximately 0.2 standard deviations higher bird abundance and three percent higher green vegetation. Further analysis reveals that one state, which accounts for roughly 20 percent of the ballots, is solely driving this result: New Jersey. Our findings highlight that conservation spending can have meaningful impacts on biodiversity, however, context and institutional details are highly important.

February 23

Andrea Craig, University of British Columbia-Okanagan, Rapid Transportation and Dwelling Prices: Proximity and Market Access

Epio Odette Bayala, Université de Sherbrooke, Environmental Shock and Children’s health: The Case of Toxic Waste Dumping in Ivory Coast

March 30

Yin Shi, University of Victoria, Forecasting Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Canada: An Empirical Macroeconomic Framework

Nwakego Eyisi, Telfer School of Management, Measuring Front-End Innovation in Data-Constrained Economies: A New Index and Its Application to the FEI–Trade Nexus in Emerging Markets

April 27

Justine Guillochon, Laval University, Green Tax Pass-Through to Retail Fuel Prices and Firm Heterogeneity: Evidence from France

Apoorva Babbar, University of Calgari, Generative AI in Corporate Settings: Does Gender Matter?