Confessions of a Serial Productivity Researcher

With an ageing population and declining labour force growth productivity is becoming increasingly important as a source of economic growth. Despite this importance, governments fear the productivity word because of public misunderstanding of its meaning. For many years the author believed that Canada’s weak productivity performance reflected inappropriate public policy. Despite most of the public policy agenda that was put forward to improve productivity being implemented, productivity growth in this country since 2000 has actually deteriorated. This suggests that the private sector bears more responsiblity for Canada’s productivity malaise than previous thought. A research agenda with a focus on firm behaviour from a micro approach is needed to obtain a deeper understanding of Canadaès terrible productivity record and to develop actions to boost productivity growth.