Nicole M. Fortin (born 1954) is a Professor in the

Vancouver School of Economics The Vancouver School of Economics (also known as VSE) is a school of the University of British Columbia located in Vancouver, BC, Canada. The school ranks as one of the top 25 in the world and top in Canada. The school exhibits research activity ...

(VSE) at

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

, where she obtained her Ph.D. in Economics. Before moving to

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

, B.C. in 1999, Fortin taught at

Université de Montréal The Université de Montréal (; UdeM; ) is a French-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university's main campus is located in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce on M ...

for ten years in her hometown. She was the President of the Canadian Women Economic Network (CWEN) in 2013–2014. Her research focus is placed on three main themes, including the linkage between labour market institutions and wage inequality, issues related to the economic progress of

gender equality Gender equality, also known as sexual equality, gender egalitarianism, or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making, an ...

, as well as contributions to decomposition methods. Notably, Fortin contributed to the ground-breaking research presented in the 2015

World Happiness Report The World Happiness Report is a publication that contains articles and rankings of national happiness, based on respondent ratings of their own lives, which the report also correlates with various (quality of) life factors. Since 2024, the r ...

by examining how various factors (e.g. gender and age) impact feelings of happiness for individuals, and societal well-being overall, across the globe.

Education and work

Nicole Fortin earned a B.Sc. in

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

in 1976, two M.Sc. in

operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...

and environmental sciences in 1978 and 1981 from the

and Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres, respectively. Thereafter, she did a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

. After her graduation in 1988, she became an assistant professor of

but moved to Vancouver for the

in 1999. There, she was promoted to full professor in 2004. In addition to her academic position, Fortin joined IZA Institute of Labor Economics as a research fellow in February 2011, and was a research fellow in the Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being (SIIWB) program of the

Canadian Institute for Advanced Research The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is a Canadian-based global research organization that brings together teams of top researchers from around the world to address important and complex questions. It was founded in 1982 and is su ...

from 2007 to 2017. Furthermore, she has also involved herself in referee activity for various journals, such as ''

American Economic Review The ''American Economic Review'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal first published by the American Economic Association in 1911. The current editor-in-chief is Erzo FP Luttmer, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College. The journal is ...

, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics,

Canadian Journal of Economics The ''Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal of economics published quarterly by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Canadian Economics Association. In 1967 the journal was established from ...

Econometrica ''Econometrica'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal of economics, publishing articles in many areas of economics, especially econometrics. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Econometric Society. The current editor-in-chief is ...

Industrial and Labor Relations Review ''Industrial and Labor Relations Review'' (ILR Review) is a publication of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. It is an interdisciplinary journal publishing original research on all aspects of industrial relations. The ...

Journal of Applied Econometrics The ''Journal of Applied Econometrics'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering econometrics, published by John Wiley & Sons. It focuses on applications rather than theoretical issues. It was established in 1986 and is published seven times p ...

Journal of Econometrics The ''Journal of Econometrics'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering econometrics. It was established in 1973. The editors-in-chief are Michael Jansson (University of California Berkeley) and Aureo de Paula (University College Lon ...

Journal of Human Resources ''The Journal of Human Resources'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering empirical microeconomics. It was established in 1965 and is published by The University of Wisconsin Press. The editor-in-chief is Anna Aizer (Brown Univers ...

Labour Economics Labour economics seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the Market (economics), markets for wage labour. Labour (human activity), Labour is a commodity that is supplied by labourers, usually in exchange for a wage paid by demanding ...

Quarterly Journal of Economics ''The Quarterly Journal of Economics'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Oxford University Press for the Harvard University Department of Economics. Its current editors-in-chief are Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan ...

'' and '' World Bank Review''.

Scholarship and selected publications

Nicole Fortin's research focus revolves around three main themes: # Wage inequality and its links to labour market institutions and public policies # Economic progress of women and

# Contributions to decomposition method

Research on labour market institutions and wage inequality

"Top Income Inequality and the Gender Pay Gap: Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom" (2017)

To explore the consequences of the under-representation of women among top-earners for the overall

gender pay gap The gender pay gap or gender wage gap is the average difference between the remuneration for men and women who are Employment, employed. Women are generally found to be paid less than men. There are two distinct measurements of the pay gap: non ...

, Nicole Fortin, Brian Bell and Michael Boehm employ administrative annual earnings data from three different countries, namely

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

, and the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. They apply the approach used when analysing the earnings inequality among top incomes, and reweighting techniques, to the exploration of the gender pay gap. They argue that substantial "swimming upstream" effects were the result of the recent rise in top incomes, therefore accounting for differential progress in the gender gap in wages across time and an expanding gap that could not be explained by traditional factors.

"Foreign Human Capital and the Earnings Gap between Immigrants and Canadian-born Workers" (2016)

Nicole Fortin,

Thomas Lemieux Thomas Lemieux (born August 10, 1962) is a Canadian economist and professor at the University of British Columbia. Lemieux belongs to the world's foremost labour economists in terms of research output, in particular on wage inequality. Educati ...

and Javier Torres use new information regarding the location of the

immigrant Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...

study available in the 2006

Canadian Census Statistics Canada conducts a national census of population and census of agriculture every five years and releases the data with a two-year lag. The Census of Population provides demographic and statistical data that is used to plan public servi ...

to estimate the returns to Canadian and foreign

human capital Human capital or human assets is a concept used by economists to designate personal attributes considered useful in the production process. It encompasses employee knowledge, skills, know-how, good health, and education. Human capital has a subs ...

. They find that controlling the source of human capital (Canadian vs. foreign) explains a large part of the wage gap between immigrants and

natives There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

. They also demonstrate that the commonly used imputation procedures (e.g. Friedberg, 2000) that allocate national and foreign education according to age at arrival is more likely to overestimate the returns to foreign education and underestimate the returns to foreign work experience. They also argue that the wage gap between immigrants and natives is very heterogeneous across all places of birth, even after including the location fixed effects, although this inclusion significantly reduces the negative effects of the country of origin in countries such as

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

and

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. The authors also observe a substantial

heterogeneity Homogeneity and heterogeneity are concepts relating to the uniformity of a substance, process or image. A homogeneous feature is uniform in composition or character (i.e., color, shape, size, weight, height, distribution, texture, language, i ...

in the mobility of human capital.

"Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992: A Semiparametric Approach" (1996)

John DiNardo John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second Ep ...

and Nicole Fortin employ the

semiparametric regression In statistics, a semiparametric model is a statistical model that has parametric and nonparametric components. A statistical model is a parameterized family of distributions: \ indexed by a parameter \theta. * A parametric model is a model ...

approach to analyse the impacts of various institutional changes and labour market factors on wage distribution. The procedure provides a visually clear representation of where in the density of wages these various factors exert the greatest impact. Using data from the

Current Population Survey The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly survey of about 60,000 U.S. households conducted by the United States Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS uses the data to publish reports early each month called the Em ...

(CPS), they find similar results as in previous research. De-unionization and supply and demand shocks were key factors to account for the increasing wage inequality from 1979 to 1988. Moreover, they find that a decline in the real value of the minimum wage during the 1980s contributes to a massive proportion of a wider

despite a nominal rise in the minimum wage, where the effect is found to be more significant among women.

Research on economic progress of women, gender equality and gender issues in education

"Computer Gaming and the Gender Math Gap: Cross-Country Evidence among Teenagers" (2018)

Fortin co-authored this research with

Yann Algan Yann Algan (born in Paris April 3, 1974) is a French economist, Associate Dean of Pre-experience Programs and Professor of Economics at HEC Paris. He was previously and until 2021 a Professor of Economics of Sciences Po, where he was dean of the ...

. They employ the

Programme for International Student Assessment The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year ...

(PISA) surveys to determine whether the gender gap in math test scores correlates with computer (digital devices) gaming. Using a decomposition based on a pooled hybrid specification, they find that 13% to 29% of the gender math gap exists due to gender differences in the incidence and returns to intense gaming. They argue that there is a potential role for gaming network effects as they compare and contrast the negative and positive girl-specific effects found for collaborative games and single-player games.

"Leaving Boys Behind: Gender Disparities in High Academic Achievement" (2015)

Fortin, Philip Oreopoulos, and Shelley Phipps employ three decades of data from the "Monitoring the Future" cross-sectional surveys to show that the mode of girls' high school

GPA Grading in education is the application of standardized measurements to evaluate different levels of student achievement in a course. Grades can be expressed as letters (usually A to F), as a range (for example, 1 to 6), percentages, or as num ...

distribution has shifted from "B" to "A" from the 1980s to the 2000s. This essentially leave boys behind as the mode of boys' GPA distribution remains the same at "B". In a reweighted OB decomposition of achievement at each GPA level, they find that gender differences in

tertiary education Tertiary education (higher education, or post-secondary education) is the educational level following the completion of secondary education. The World Bank defines tertiary education as including universities, colleges, and vocational schools ...

expectations, controlling for school ability, and as early as 8th grade are the most crucial factor to account for this trend. They find that the growing population of girls aiming for a postgraduate degree are adequate to explain the rise in the proportion of girls obtaining "A's" over time. The relatively greater share of boys receiving "C" and "C+" can be accounted for by a more frequent misbehaviour at school, as well as a greater portion of boys only aiming to finish a two-year college degree.

Research on decomposition methods

"Decomposing Wage Distributions using Recentered Influence Function Regressions" (2018)

Nicole Fortin co-authored with Sergio Firpo and

to explain an extension of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method that can be applied to various distributional measures. First of all, it requires the division of distributional changes into a wage structure effect and a composition effect using a reweighting method. Second of all, it requires the further division of the two components into the contribution of each explanatory variable using recentered influence function (RIF) regressions. They demonstrate the practical aspects of the procedure by exploring how factors, such as de-unionization,

education Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...

occupations Occupation commonly refers to: *Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment * Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces *Military occupation, t ...

, and industry changes, impacted the polarization of U.S. male wages from the late 1980s to the mid 2010s.

"Decomposition Methods" (2010)

This chapter, authored by

, Sergio Firpo and Nicole Fortin, provides an overview of decomposition methods that have been developed after the seminal work of Oaxaca and Blinder in the early 1970s. These methods could be applied to decompose the divergence in a distributional statistic between two groups, or its change over time, into various explanatory factors. While the original work of Oaxaca and Blinder considered the case of the mean, their main focus is placed on other distributional statistics aside the mean (e.g.

quantile In statistics and probability, quantiles are cut points dividing the range of a probability distribution into continuous intervals with equal probabilities or dividing the observations in a sample in the same way. There is one fewer quantile t ...

s, the

Gini coefficient In economics, the Gini coefficient ( ), also known as the Gini index or Gini ratio, is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income distribution, income inequality, the wealth distribution, wealth inequality, or the ...

or the

variance In probability theory and statistics, variance is the expected value of the squared deviation from the mean of a random variable. The standard deviation (SD) is obtained as the square root of the variance. Variance is a measure of dispersion ...

). They also discuss the assumptions required in order to identify the various decomposition elements, different estimation methods are also proposed in the chapter. The authors also demonstrate how these methods work practically by discussing existing applications and working through a set of empirical examples.

Research grants and awards

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fortin, Nicole Canadian economists Living people Université de Montréal alumni Academic staff of the University of British Columbia 1954 births University of British Columbia alumni