In 2005, the CSLS published a report that examined spending on information and communication technology (ICT) in Canada and the United States between 1987 and 2004. It found that Canadian firms lagged considerably behind US firms in ICT spending and that this situation accounted to some extent...

In 2008, Statistics Canada, for the first time, made available estimates of information and communication technology (ICT) investment by province. Given the importance of ICT investment for productivity growth, these data are important for the comparative analysis and understanding of...

It is widely recognized that machinery and equipment investment intensity is less in Canada than in the United States. What is less well know is that it is information and communications technology (ICT) investment that largely accounts for this gap. The author documents trends in ICT investment...

In recent years, interest in aggregate or composite indicators of economic and social well-being at the community, national and international levels has grown greatly. For example, the release each year of the United Nations?Human Development Index (HDI) generates considerable media interest,...

In this chapter, Andrew Heisz, Andrew Jackson and Garnet Picot provide an incisive and comprehensive analysis of the distributional changes that have occurred in Canada in the 1990s as well as useful comparative perspectives both in terms of trends over time and the particular patterns that can...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough discussion of the definitional and data issues associated with the measurement of aggregate labour productivity growth in Canada and the United States. The paper examines all data sources for output, employment and hours estimates in the two...

This paper develops an Index of Economic Well-being (IEWB) for the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Norway and Sweden for the period 1980 to 2001 which recognizes four components: Current effective per capita consumption flows; Net societal accumulation of stocks of...

The objectives of this report are to examine the characteristics of manufacturing in Atlantic Canada and to shed light on the factors behind the productivity gap between Atlantic Canada and Canada in the context of the manufacturing sector. A number of possible factors contributing to the...

In contrast to the decline in labour force participation in Canada in the 1990s, the aggregate participation rate in the United States actually rose slightly (up 0.5 percentage points between 1989 and 1997). This US experience provides a useful benchmark for the analysis of the Canadian...

Productivity and income growth rates and differentials vary widely among OECD countries. In this chapter, Bart van Ark develops a framework for the understanding of these productivity and income differences. The framework breaks GDP per capita into two basic drivers: labour supply and labour...