Robust GDP growth, declining unemployment, low and stable inflation, and a string of fiscal and current account surpluses -- it's a record to be envied. These outcomes in Canada owe much to sound macroeconomic policies, as well as to a favorable external environment. This book focuses on these...

This paper assesses productivity trends in Canada vis-a-vis the United States from two perspectives. The first one is based on estimates of total factor productivity. The second one decomposes productivity growth into two sources: investment-specific technical change, associated with...

This paper examines the role of financial development and financial structure in explaining cross-country diffusion of information communication technology (ICT). Using panel data for 76 emerging and advanced countries for the period 1990-2003, the paper finds that credit and stock market...

This Selected Issues paper on Euro Area Policies underlies global rebalancing of accounts. From a growth-accounting perspective, slower growth in the capital-labor ratio seems to be the main driver behind the deceleration in labor productivity. The increase in bilateral trade was accompanied by...

This Selected Issues paper examines the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in the recent acceleration of labor productivity growth in the United States. The analysis reveals that the increase of total factor productivity (TFP) growth is a broad phenomenon that encompasses...

This paper explores the factors that have led to a Canada-U.S. productivity gap using a sectoral growth accounting approach. Both fiscal and monetary policies have had significant effects on the saving rate. The Canadian dollar’s appreciation was followed by a protracted period of...

The contribution of the information and communication technology (ICT) sector to growth in Asian economies is clearly evident from the expenditure side (net exports) and became particularly significant in the second half of the 1990s. This paper employs an extension of the standard growth...

The information technology (IT) revolution has arrived, but how much will it change the world? It has been established that IT is contributing to labor productivity growth through both increases in the levels of IT capital per worker and total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the production...

By the end of 2007, Chile's total factor productivity was lower than ten years earlier, a performance that contrasted sharply with the previous decade, when productivity grew by a cumulative 30 percent. This paper assesses productivity trends in Chile, by decomposing productivity into...