The paucity of econometric analyses of the demand for consumer durables stands in sharp contrast to the number of studies involving the demand for non-durables, and for agricultural commodities in particular. The neglect of durables undoubtedly reflects in part the greater difficulty of obtaining the necessary data, especially data on stocks, and in part the heterogeneity of most durables, such as houses or automobiles. Econometric analysis in the post-war period has also been centred around the construction of large-scale macro-economic models. Until rather recently, however, such models were relatively highly aggregated, and seldom involved examination of particular durables markets by themselves. Moreover, where an equation for the housing market has been included, it has often been a hybrid of supply and demand forces, intended to serve in a “forecasting” role, presumably in the hope that appreciable structural change would not occur during the forecast period.

The present study will, it is hoped, cast some light on the controversy generated in the United States over the size of demand elasticities for housing with respect to income. The results of the econometric techniques employed here may also assist in evaluating the appropriateness of alternative estimating techniques for the study of demand for durables.

An econometric analysis of the demand for housing immediately raises two questions. First, is it a flow or a stock demand that is to be analysed? Here it is the demand for a long-run equilibrium stock, the “desired stock” of housing, that is the focus of concern.

The primary purpose of this article is to perform a statistical test of the popular contention that interest rate differentials have been important determinants of the relative decline of the Canadian chartered banks in the competition for personal savings deposits. The Report of the Royal Commission on Banking and Finance, in listing the various factors that influence the distribution of savings deposits among depository institutions, stated that, “the rate paid on deposits is also a very important factor in attracting funds. …” The Commission also commented that the fact that the banks have not paid as high rates as their competitors on personal savings deposits “has without question contributed to their relatively slow rate of growth.” In support of these assertions the Commission stated that, “there is evidence suggesting the force of interest rate competition. As an example, market rates and rates paid on such claims as trust and loan company liabilities rose quite sharply in 1959 while the banks' rate held steady as 2¾%. In that year the share of personal savings deposits in the ‘market’ … declined more sharply than in previous years.”

The Commission's evidence, it may be suggested, falls into the post hoc ergo propter hoc category. For example, the fact that the number of trust company outlets increased 5.3 per cent during 1958–59, compared to only 0.2 per cent on the average during the previous six-year period, can just as easily be presented as the reason for the relative increase of trust company savings in 1959.

Previous studies have noted that Canadians tend to support one political party at the provincial level of government and another party at the federal level, yet no attempt has been made to discover which voters switch their electoral support. This study is concerned with an examination of one electoral district as both a federal and a provincial constituency in two 1964 elections to determine (a) the nature and degree of vote switching from one election at one level of government to a second election at another level and (b) the characteristics of the people who switched their votes.

The city of Saskatoon was selected for the study for two closely interrelated reasons. First, two elections were held remarkably close together in time: a provincial general election on April 22, 1964, followed by a federal by-election on June 22, 1964. Second, Saskatoon had returned CCF members to the provincial legislature since 1944, but had elected as its member of parliament the Progressive-Conservative candidate since 1957. The Conservative candidates had a poor record in provincial elections, generally running a modest third, while in federal elections the party's candidate polled more votes than his combined opposition in 1958, 1962, and 1963. As Table I indicates the voters of Saskatoon had on six occasions in the period from 1956 to 1963 consistently supported the CCF provincially and the Progressive-Conservatives federally. The 1964 elections followed basically the same pattern The main differences were that provincially the Liberals and Progressive-Conservatives improved their position considerably in comparison with past elections (with the Liberals electing one member in the five-member district), while federally the Progressive-Conservative vote dropped substantially with a lower voter turn-out than had been the case in recent federal elections (see Table II).