Action Economics? Working with Citizen Groups in Revelstoke, BC to Evaluate the Impact of a Living Wage.
John Janmaat
Department of Economics, Philosophy and Political Science
The University of British Columbia – Okanagan campus
Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
Lindsay Harris
Community, Culture and Global Studies
The University of British Columbia – Okanagan campus
Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
Kenneth Carlaw
Department of Economics, Philosophy and Political Science
The University of British Columbia – Okanagan campus
Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
Mike Evans
Community, Culture and Global Studies
The University of British Columbia – Okanagan campus
Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
Abstract
Participatory action research has enabled communities to develop knowledge informed solutions to local challenges, challenges often involving difficult trade offs in the face of resource constraints. The challenges are typically defined by the local context, limiting both availability of data and generalizability of insights. We undertook an action economics approach with a group of Revelstoke community members to deepen the collective understanding of the impacts that may result from adoption of a living wage policy. An EXCEL™ workbook with macros enabled community members to contemplate possible costs and benefits (by business sector) associated with the implementation of living wages within the community. This tool clearly demonstrated the heterogeneity of business impacts, and allowed participants to track the likely consequences to businesses instituting living wage benefits when and as underlying assumptions about the economic context were varied. Through this collaborative process stakeholders gained direct access to the economic model developed, and the capacity to trace the consequences for specific sectors of varying assumed values of key factors within the model. There are many context sensitive policy challenges that can benefit from an economic perspective, and this sort of action economics can be an effective approach for doing so.