This twelth issue of the International Productivity Monitor, published by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, differs from past issues. Five of the six articles address one topic, namely the impact of the Boskin Commission after one decade on price measurement. A final article...

In early 2003, the OECD released a major report entitled The Sources of Growth in OECD Countries. In the seventh and final article, Martin Neil Baily from the Institute for International Economics, and former Chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers reviews the report. Baily notes that...

The author summarizes the report’s methods, findings, and recommendations, and then reviews the comments and criticisms that appeared soon after the report was issued. Changes in CPI methodology are also summarized and assessed, as is recent research on related issues. Based on recent...

This eighth issue of the International Productivity Monitor produced by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards contains eight articles. Topics covered are: a progress report on endogenous growth theory; recent productivity developments in Canada and the United States; monetary policy in...

In this article, Someshwar Rao, Jiamin Tang and Weimin Wang of Industry Canada examine the impact of capital accumulation on Canada's recent productivity record. A key finding is that the widening of the Canada-U.S. labour productivity gap in both the business sector and in manufacturing in the...

Since 1995, productivity growth has accelerated significantly in the United States. Information technology has always been thought to be the driving force behind this development. In this article by Kevin Stiroh of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York provides strong empirical support for this...

Historically, per capita income in the United States has exceeded those in Canada and this difference has reflected higher labour productivity levels south of the 49th parallel. In this article, Andrew Sharpe of the Centre for the Study of Living Standards provides estimates of the size of the...

The author provides a BLS response to the Boskin Commission from the perspective of ten years following the release of the report. He documents the research on price indexes done at the BLS in the first half of the 1990s that pointed to upward CPI bias, and discusses how these results eventually...

The author highlights the extremely salutatory effect the Boskin Commission has had on international price statistics, promoting open discussion of price measurement issues, engendering dialogue between statistical agencies and users, and encouraging research. Less positive in the author'sview...

The author supports the type of the back-of-the-envelope calculations of CPI bias that the Commission used so effectively to attract public attention to its report. In the area of quality adjustment, however, he criticizes the Boskin Commission for what he calls “premature extrapolation,”...