Dr. David Green is the 2025-2026 Acting Director of the Stone Centre at the Vancouver School of Economics. After completing his PhD at Stanford University, Dr. Green settled in Vancouver with his family in 1990 and has been working for the VSE ever since. He has held several key roles at the school, including Professor, Head of the Department of Economics, Director of the VSE, and Associate and Acting Director of the Stone Centre. Dr. Green sat down with Research Assistant, Sophia Bertuzzi Samilski, to talk about his career, his research on inequality and impact through students.
As a labour economist, David Green studies labour markets and policies affecting inequality and employment outcomes. Throughout his journey, he became interested in how economics plays a role in establishing an equitable society. He’s explored questions such as: Do higher-paid union jobs have the potential to alter wage setting in non-union jobs? And should British Columbia adopt a basic income?
“I’ve always been interested in questions about justice and how we establish a just society. Economics, and in particular [labour] economics, is crucial for that,” Dr. Green told me.
Dr. Green recently returned to the VSE from a one-year sabbatical, where he split his time between the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), University College London, and Carlos III University of Madrid.
“[London] was sort of like being in a candy shop because a lot of people like to go to London. There are just all kinds of great economists coming through that you get to talk to.”
Inequality on a macro level
As an International Research Associate at the IFS, Dr. Green recently led the Canadian research in the The Deaton Review of Inequalities, a study aimed at understanding and examining the forces that drive inequality across 17 high- income countries. The study examined how labour market and income inequalities have evolved over recent decades, how they vary across education levels, and which forms of inequality have widened or narrowed. Doing so required a cross-national perspective, documenting trends and experiences across multiple countries, where Dr. Green contributed a deep understanding of the inequality landscape in Canada.
“By far, the common outcome among those countries over about the last 25 years is that inequality has not been growing. It’s stable in some places [or] it’s declining. Canada’s one of the places where it’s declining. Not as fast as we want, but to some degree.”
Dr. Green said an exception is the United States, a country that has maintained an ever-growing trajectory of inequality and one that is polarizing faster than any other economy.
“We have a tendency, especially as Canadians, to look at the U.S. and think that we’re looking in a mirror and think that what’s happening there is going to happen to us in ten years or is already happening here in a big way. My belief is a lot of that is not true, and that [it’s] very much within our power to choose a different path.”
Inequality on a micro level
Dr. Green is currently pursuing research on inequality within firms, focusing on how wage structures are set and whether employees in non-revenue generating roles experience wage spillovers after a positive shock. This can happen when a firm experiences productivity gains or increased demand.
“Think about an engineering firm…there are engineers, but also janitors and other people who are not engineers,” Dr. Green said. He used a pie analogy, where the pie represents the firm’s income, and a positive shock would increase the size of the pie along with everyone’s slice. However, this isn’t always the case.
In recent years, Dr. Green has observed a growing tendency for firms to outsource services like janitorial work. He is interested in whether outsourcing helps firms avoid the fairness argument to raise wages for those workers when the firm’s income rises.
“[Assume] in the past, janitors always got 1/100 of the pie,” he explained. “If there’s a shock … how do the [janitors] in the firm fare?”
Dr. Green explained that if the engineering firm outsourced the janitorial work, they would no longer feel pressure to pay them the same slice of the firm’s pie. The engineers would continue to pay them their previous wage while absorbing the additional income themselves.
“One of the reasons that might be happening is particularly because the engineers don’t want to share the rewards…they find it impossible to look in the face of the janitor that they hire and not pay them more, but they’re capable of doing it.”
“It’s more about this question of [whether] you’re going to share with other workers, even workers who are not directly productive in the outcome of the firm.”
Impact through students
According to Dr. Green, almost all economists – including himself – hope to see their research translated into policies that improve economic outcomes for people.
“That kind of dream that one day you walk into the office of the Prime Minister, and you say, ‘Here’s an idea that you’ve never thought of,’ and they say, ‘Great, let’s do that. We’re going to start doing that tomorrow,’ essentially never happens.”
Instead, much of the research Dr. Green and fellow economists conduct lays the groundwork for decision makers and policymakers to implement policies when opportunities arise. Dr. Green found that throughout his career, many of the government officials and staff who advocate for strong economic policies are former students.
“I honestly think that the biggest way we have impact is through our students, because our students go out there…They’re the ones on the other side of the table.”
He illustrated this to me by describing the time he met with former BC Premier, Gordon Campbell, after writing an open letter supporting the carbon tax. The tax was later implemented in 2008.
Campbell told Green that “We’re very interested in carbon tax, but we need help in selling the idea.”
“It wasn’t me going to him and saying, here’s something you’ve never thought of…People in his staff, people in the finance ministry knew about it and were already pushing for it within the government,” Dr. Green said.
“And those people were our students.”
Sophia Bertuzzi Samilski is an undergraduate student in the Bachelor of International Economics program at UBC and a Research Assistant at the Stone Centre.