The Productivity Commission released a Staff Working Paper ‘Can Australia Match US Productivity Performance?’ (by Ben Dolman, Dean Parham and Simon Zheng) in March 2007. The paper considers whether it is feasible for Australia to match the US level of productivity. While other countries have...

Market sector productivity — the output produced per hour worked — grew at an annual rate of 3.2 per cent during the five years to 1998-99, which was the fastest rate on record. In the five years to 2003-04, productivity growth eased to 2.2 per cent per year, which is around the average rate...

Previous studies have shown that countries trade and invest more with partner countries from which they have received more migrants, presumably because migrant networks provide information on financial opportunities abroad. This literature focusing on migrants within individual countries is...

"Australia's productivity has grown 1 percentage point per year slower in the current decade than in the 1990s. This article shows that almost one-half of the slowdown is related to unusual developments in the mining industry, the effects of drought and the overstatement of productivity growth...

'Creating Markets for Ecosystem Services' by Greg Murtough, Barbara Aretino and Anna Matysek, was released on 19 June 2002. The paper investigates how well environmental problems related to salinity, biodiversity and climate change can be addressed by creating markets for ecosystem services. The...

On 28 August 1998 the Treasurer referred the impact of competition policy reforms on rural and regional Australia for inquiry and report within 12 months of receiving the reference. The Commission was to assess the impact (both transitional and ongoing) of the competition policy and related...

The Productivity Commission was asked to report on the Implementation of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) by Commonwealth Departments and Agencies. The inquiry was to cover all Commonwealth departments and agencies with major responsibility for implementing EDS, or whose activities...

This Productivity Commission staff working paper, 'Modelling Water Trade in the Southern Murray-Darling Basin', was released in November 2004. It examines the likely economic impacts of expanding water trade in the southern Murray-Darling Basin. The paper uses TERM-Water, a bottoms-up regional...

The labour market research report, Work Arrangements in the Australian Meat Processing Industry, was released on 9 October 1998. Four appendices (C, D, E and F), which were not released as part of the original report, were added to the web version of the report on 11 December 2001. Meat...

'Assessing Environmental Regulatory Arrangements for Aquaculture', was released on 10 February 2004. The paper reviews existing planning and environmental regulatory arrangements for aquaculture in Australia. It reveals significant differences in the way that aquaculture is regulated and...