Capping Study Permits: Evaluating the Impact of International Students on Real Rent Growth in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Housing affordability has become a critical policy issue in Canada as shelter costs have dramatically increased. This study examines the impact of international students on the growth of real rents in Canadian census metropolitan areas (CMAs) from 2004 to 2018. Using study permit data as a proxy for international student numbers, we establish a causal link between the influx of international students and real rent growth. To address endogeneity and control for CMA-specific factors, we employ an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model and a shift-share instrument. Our OLS estimates suggest that international student growth accounts for 1.15 percent of real rent growth. Further, using a two-stage least-squares (2SLS) model for robustness, we find that a 1 percent increase in per capita study permit growth (“dppr”) leads to a 1.31 percent increase in real rent growth (“grr”). These findings are significant for policy discussions on housing affordability and the potential impact of the 2024 study permit cap.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".