The first section of the article reviews general measurement problems associated with measuring sectoral total factor productivity. Secondly, the article argues that the production accounts in the present System of National Accounts (SNA) need to be extended somewhat in order to be suitable as a...

This 13th issue of the International Productivity Monitor produced by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards contains five articles. In contrast to the last issue on the Boskin Commission Report after a decade, this issue has a strong Canadian flavour. Topics covered are the benchmarking...

Since 2000, productivity growth in Canada and the United States have followed markedly different paths. In the second article, Andrew Sharpe of the Centre for the Study of Living Standards finds that the remarkable productivity growth experienced in the United States in the past two years is...

The slower productivity growth in Canada relative to that experienced in the United States in the second half of the 1990s has been a matter of great concern to Canadians, with a wide variety of explanations put forward to account for this development. A key issue is whether this slower...

A key objective of economic policy in Canada is to reduce the productivity gap with the United States. The development of appropriate policies to attain this goal requires a thorough understanding of the nature of the gap, including its industry dimensions. Unfortunately, statistical agencies do...

The measurement of government productivity poses a challenge for economists. The lack of a marketed output and the multidimensional nature of objectives for government agencies in particular make the measurement of productivity in government more difficult than in the business sector. This...

In this article, as part of the symposium on total factor productivity, Erwin Diewert of the University of British Columbia provides a comprehensive discussion of what is needed to develop reliable measures of total factor productivity in terms of output and the different classes of inputs. He...

The author argues that productivity should be raised by bringing the low productivity segment of the workforce closer to the median. Consequently, he argues that the most pressing task for Canadians is to foster basic skills, reduce the high school dropout rate, and raise the profile of...

The economic success story of the 1990s has been Ireland, with GDP per capita nearly doubling over the decade. In this article Pierre Fortin from the Université du Québec à Montréal and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research provides a detailed examination of the factors behind 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,...