Over the past three decades, tariff barriers have fallen significantly, leading to an increasing integration of Canadian manufactures into world markets and especially the U.S. market. Much attention has been paid to the effects of this shift at the national scale, while little attention has...

This paper examines the effect of trade liberalization on plant scale, production-run length and product diversification. We first develop a model of trade in differentiated products with multi-product plants. We then present empirical evidence using a large panel of Canadian manufacturing...

This paper examines the investment performance of Canada and the United States, exploring similarities and differences in investments in fixed assets over the 1990-to-2011 period. This is a period when the two countries experienced different shocks. The United States suffered from a major...

In order to study the importance of material offshoring (defined in this paper as the use of intermediate imported materials) at the industry level, it is generally assumed that the import share of each input commodity for a particular industry is similar to that for the economy as a...

Labour productivity growth in the Canadian business sector slowed substantially after 2000. Most of the slowdown occurred in the manufacturing sector. This paper examines how this slowdown was associated with the restructuring that occurred in manufacturing as a result of the increase in excess...

This paper proposes a method for measuring the impact of plant turnover on productivity growth and outlines how this contribution has changed in Canada as a result of substantial trade liberalization in the 1990s.

This paper studies the impact that a small country joining a regional trade agreement, but particularly a small country, might be expected to gain from the exploitation of scale economies. It makes use of the experience of Canada when it entered into the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement...

This paper investigates the extent to which productivity growth is the result of firm turnover as output is shifted from one firm to another, driven by the competitive process. Turnover occurs as some firms gain market share and others lose it. Some of the resulting turnover is due to entry and...

This paper has three main objectives. First, it presents the long-term trends in outsourcing and offshoring across Canadian industries. Second, it examines the relationship between offshoring and changes in trade patterns at the industry level. It focuses on two major drivers that some have...

This paper examines the determinants of innovation and the role of innovation in productivity growth, shifts in market share and survival in the Canadian manufacturing sector. It presents a model that examines the effect of innovation on plant performance and plant survival.