The author argues that productivity should be raised by bringing the low productivity segment of the workforce closer to the median. Consequently, he argues that the most pressing task for Canadians is to foster basic skills, reduce the high school dropout rate, and raise the profile of...

The economic success story of the 1990s has been Ireland, with GDP per capita nearly doubling over the decade. In this article Pierre Fortin from the Université du Québec à Montréal and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research provides a detailed examination of the factors behind the...

Quebec’s relative growth performance with Ontario has always been an issue of concern for economic historians. In his paper Pierre Fortin discusses trends in Quebec’s real domestic income relative to that in Ontario over the last half-century. He finds that per capita real domestic income in...

A review of the two competing paradigms explaining inflation and unemployment fluctuations singles out the Keynesian Phillips curve as the clear empirical winner over its classic competitors. Reestimation of the Canadian Phillips curve for 1957-90 identifies a sharp structural shift toward a...

In addition to productivity levels, living standards, as measured by GDP per capita, are determined by both average hours worked per person employed and the share of employment in the total population employed. In this article, Pierre Fortin from the University of Quebec at Montreal examines...

Cyclical, policy changes, and structural factors have been put forward to explain the decline in labour force participation in Canada in the 1990s. In the first article in the symposium, Pierre Fortin and Mario Fortin attempt to determine the relative importance of these three types of factors...