In this chapter, William Watson challenges Heath's interpretation of the benefits of productivity growth, but agrees with Richard Harris' views on the state of our knowledge about the potential contribution of social programs to productivity growth. Watson tackles Heath's assessment of the...

The Impact of Interprovincial Migration on Aggregate Output and Labour Productivity in Canada, 1987-2006

Canada’s living standards have been falling relative to those in the United States in recent years. The Chairman and CEO of the TD Bank Financial Group, Charles Baillie (2001) has suggested that Canadians adopt as a societal goal not only the reversal of this downward trend, but that Canadian...

To achieve efficient allocation of resources in the health care sector, accurate measures of health care output and productivity are essential. According to official estimates of productivity produced by Statistics Canada, labour productivity in the business sector of the health care (excluding...

The Canadian service sector has performed well in recent years in terms of labour and multifactor productivity growth, both in absolute terms and relative to the United States, offsetting much of the poorer performance of the manufacturing sector. Service sector labour productivity growth has...

This paper explores the linkages between productivity and social development from the perspective of synthesizing the findings of projects undertaken by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards in three related areas. The first is a project exploring the linkages between productivity and...

It is widely recognized that machinery and equipment investment intensity is less in Canada than in the United States. What is less well know is that it is information and communications technology (ICT) investment that largely accounts for this gap. The author documents trends in ICT investment...

The issue of sustainability of natural capital and implications for economic growth ranks high in the interests of both policy makers and the general public, as manifested by the intense debate on Canada's ratification of the Kyoto accord. In this chapter, Nancy Olewiler makes an important...