Productivity research is Canada has traditionally focused on narrow economic issues. In our view, it has given inadequate attention to the broader ramifications of productivity, both in terms of shedding light on the importance of productivity for the advancement of various aspects of social...

In this chapter, Andrew Sharpe provides a comprehensive non-technical introduction to the productivity issue, including discussion of productivity concepts, measurement issues, trends and prospects. He begins by noting that productivity is the relationship between the output of goods and...

In this chapter, Kathleen Day and R. Quentin Grafton explore the relationship between the economy and the environment. One approach sees economic growth leading to environmental degradation by imposing stresses on limited natural resources and ecosystems and by increasing emissions of...

In this chapter, Jim Stanford agrees that measures were needed to eliminate the deficit. But he argues that Paul Martin's program spending cuts were larger than necessary and caused real pain in many areas of Canadian life. He shows that a strategy in which program spending was frozen in nominal...

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...

In the third paper on taxation, Jack M. Mintz and Thomas A. Wilson consider the best way to allocate the “fiscal dividend”. This is the amount available to the government that can be used for tax cuts or expenditure increases within the framework of a balanced budget. In their view, although...

The North-South gridlock is explored in more depth in the paper by Kathleen Macmillan. She notes that statements from Western political leaders, under pressure from increasingly vocal protestors, emphasizing the potential of trade liberalization to alleviate poverty in the developing world, have...

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...

Skills, innovation and human capital as they feature prominently on the policy agenda of industrialized countries concerned with productivity and competitiveness issues. Not surprisingly, formal education is the preferred and most conventional policy instrument of governments in pursuing these...