Cournot seminar – Étienne Lalé (York University of Toronto)

Event details :

We are pleased to welcome to the next session of the BETA Cournot seminar organised with the support of the FSEG on Friday 28/11 at 2:00pm:

Étienne Lalé (York University of Toronto)

who will present his paper entitled

When Neighbors Stop Knocking: The Impact of Canada’s 2025 Tourism Decline on U.S. Local Businesses

joint with André Kurmann (Drexel University) and Julien Martin (Université du Québec à Montréal)

Abstract: Escalating diplomatic tensions and new trade tariffs between Canada and the United States in early 2025 triggered a dramatic decline in Canadian tourism, with return trips falling 37% by car and 26% by air by June 2025. This sharp, exogenous shock provides a natural experiment to measure tourism’s domestic economic impact. We exploit the integrated Canada-U.S. mobile device ecosystem to construct highly granular, weekly measurements of Canadian tourist flows using foot-traffic data from Advan Research, combined with establishment-level employment data from Homebase. Our empirical strategy compares changes in exposure to Canadian tourists in 2025 relative to 2024, using instrumental variables based on natural amenities and distance to Canada. Preliminary findings reveal negative wage and hours effects in tourism-intensive U.S. regions, with heterogeneous impacts across industries and geographic areas but limited aggregate effects. These results provide timely evidence on how international trade disputes reverberate through local labor markets via reduced demand for non-traded services.