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...

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...

This study reexamines the evidence for the Balassa-Samuelson effect for the 1985-2007 period. Cointegrating relationships between the real exchange rate and productivity, real price of oil and government spending are estimated using the Johansen and Stock-Watson procedures. The findings show...

Why have the real (consumption) wages of U.S. workers risen since the nineteenth century? Some economists answer that increases in real wages have followed increases in labor productivity over time. In this paper, this hypothesized association is confronted with annual observations of changes in...