This tenth issue of the International Productivity Monitor produced by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards contains six articles. Topics covered are: the puzzling recent behaviour of labour productivity in Canada; an international perspective on Canada's productivity performance since the...

The ninth issue of the International Productivity Monitor published by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards contains six articles. Topics covered are: the magnitude of the Canada-U.S. productivity gap at the industry level; productivity puzzles facing researchers; the link between...

This paper develops an Index of Economic Well-being (IEWB) for the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Norway and Sweden for the period 1980 to 2001 which recognizes four components: Current effective per capita consumption flows; Net societal accumulation of stocks of...

In this chapter, Lars Osberg and Andrew Sharpe provide an overview of trends in a number of dimensions of economic well-being (consumption flows, stocks of wealth, income equality, and economic security) from the lens of the Index of Economic Well-being, a new composite measure of economic...

This study focused on the choice of functional forms and their parametrization (estimation of free parameters and calibration of other parameters) in the context of CGE models. Various types of elasticities are defined, followed by a presentation of the functional forms most commonly used in...

This paper carries out a survey of CGE and Microsimulation models used in the evaluation of issues related directly or indirectly to incomes distribution. Different model structures are discussed which have been employed for country-specific, multi-country and region-specific studies. The paper...

This paper studies the impact of changes in the external balance of a developing economy (Pakistan). We explain that the economic growth achieved during the past decade is highly dependent on the improvements in external balance. Between 2001 and 2007 Pakistan has benefited from, an increase in...

Based on case studies, it is confirmed beyond doubt that the problem of infectious disease of ‘poverty' especially among the majority (accounting for more than 75 percent of rural population) of debt-ridden peasant farmers who are perpetually poverty stricken, has not been tackled with any...

In this paper, we propose the use of new stochastic dominance tests to achieve a more robust analysis of relative welfare levels in the study of income distributions. In particular, we propose applying the theory of descending stochastic dominance to enrich results that are obtained using the...

On the basis of a conditional contribution experiment conducted in Benin and Uganda, we argue that a conditional u-shaped profile exists, at least in poor communities. Under this profile, individuals invest considerably in public goods when nobody else does, reduce their commitment in reaction...