The objective of this article is to evaluate the impact of the oil and gas industry on labour productivity growth in Canada since 2000 through an exploration of the various channels, both direct and indirect, by which the oil and gas sector affects aggregate productivity. The article sheds light...

The Canadian service sector has performed well in recent years in terms of labour and multifactor productivity growth, both in absolute terms and relative to the United States, offsetting much of the poorer performance of the manufacturing sector. Service sector labour productivity growth has...

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...

In this chapter, Andrew Sharpe provides a comprehensive non-technical introduction to the productivity issue, including discussion of productivity concepts, measurement issues, trends and prospects. He begins by noting that productivity is the relationship between the output of goods and...

After accelerating in the second half of the 1990s, aggregate labour productivity growth in Canada has fallen off significantly since 2000. This paper examines the factors behind this development, which is puzzling given the recent acceleration of productivity growth in the United States and the...

Puzzles intrigue and motivate researchers and focus research effort, and the productivity area is fortunate in having many unresolved issues. In the second article, Andrew Sharpe of the Centre for the Study of Living Standards puts forward and briefly discusses what he sees as the ten most...

In 2012, business sector software investment per worker in Canada was 40.7 per cent of that in the United States. The objective of this report is to deepen our understanding of the reasons for which Canadian businesses invest substantially less in software than their U.S. counterparts. The...

The Centre for the Study of Living Standards has released new estimates of labour, capital and multifactor productivity growth and levels at the market sector, two-digit, and three-digit NAICS industry level for the Canadian provinces during the 1997-2007 period. This article exploits this...

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...

What have we learned about productivity in the past two decades? In this article, Andrew Sharpe from the Centre for the Study of Living Standards reviews a recently published NBER volume entitled New Development in Productivity Analysis, edited by Charles R. Hulten, Edwin R. Dean, and Michael J....