The impact of demographic developments on productivity is still a little-explored subject. The authors find a strong and unexpected link between slow labour productivity growth and rapid labour force growth over the period from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s. They situate this finding in the...

Estimates produced by the OECD indicate that labour productivity levels are higher in a number of European countries than in the United States, implying that Europe and not the United States is the world technological leader. The author argues that a structural measure of labour productivity,...

A key lesson from the U.S. literature on the impact of ICT on productivity is that ICT can only be effective if appropriate organizational structures are in place. This article by Surendra Gera of Industry Canada and Wulong Gu of Statistics Canada provides Canadian evidence to support this view....

Arguably the most important development in the Canadian workplace in recent years has been the massive introduction of information and communications technologies (ICT). The impact of this development on a range of variables, including productivity and wages, are manifold, but are still poorly...

In this lead article, Peter Nicholson, who until recently served as advisor to the Secretary General at the OECD and is currently serving as policy advisor to the Prime Minister, Paul Martin, discusses the long-run economic performance, prospects in Canada, and policy priorities based on the...

The fundamental importance of skills for productivity advance is being increasingly recognized. In this article, Someshwar Rao, Jianmin Tang and Weimin Wang of Industry Canada provide additional evidence of this relationship through a detailed examination of the dynamics of innovation and...

The fourth issue of the International Productivity Monitor produced by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards contains five articles. Topics covered are: recent productivity developments in the United States and Canada and implications for the Canada-U.S. productivity and income gaps; the...

In this second contribution to the Symposium included in this volume on Future Productivity in Canada, Tiff Macklem of the Bank of Canada compares sources of recent productivity growth in Canada and the United States. Macklem sees aggregate labour productivity growth in Canada advancing at...

This report presents a framework for decomposing aggregate productivity growth into within-sector effects and sectoral reallocation effects. This framework is used to analyze productivity growth in 12 Canadian industries for the 1961-2007 period and for several subperiods. The results do not...

The recession left its mark on global productivity, which fell in 2009. The productivity growth differential between the United States and Europe increased dramatically in 2009. Average long-term growth of labour productivity in advanced economies has stalled since 2000. The gradual improvement...