Mirroring the railroad industry of the 1940's and 1950's, the trucking industry today appears to be achieving impressive productivity gains. But it is easy to confuse true productivity advances in transportation industries with changes in ton-miles per unit of input that are due simply to...

This paper examines the relationship between the use of advanced technologies such as ICT, and outcomes such as productivity, the skill mix of the workforce and wages using micro data for the U.S. and Germany. We find support to the idea that U.S. businesses engage in experimentation in a...

In many industries, competition is far from perfect and managerial efficiency (or a fixed cost) varies among firms. However, traditional measurement of technological progress assumes perfect competition and no fixed cost. This paper incorporates these two factors in the technological-progress...

Understanding the causes of the slowdown in aggregate productivity growth is key to maintaining the competitiveness of advanced economies and ensuring long-term economic prosperity. This paper is the first to provide evidence that investment in Knowledge-Based Capital (KBC), despite having a...

This paper examines the role of skilled labor in the growth of total factor productivity. We use panel data from manufacturing industries to assess the extent to which productivity growth in yearly cross section is tied to industry shares of skilled labor inputs. We find robust evidence that...

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...

This report aims to accomplish three objectives: provide an assessment of Canada’s productivity performance; provide a synthesis of the productivity studies conducted by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS) and the McKinsey Global Institute; and develop a framework for unbundling...

This article, by Ian A. Stewart, is a review of the recently released Industry Canada research volume Productivity Issues in Canada, edited by Someshwar Rao and Andrew Sharpe. Stewart begins by noting that at over 900 pages and 25 papers the volume represents an important contribution to the...

Despite the rapid pace of innovation in information and communications technologies (ICT) and electronics, aggregate US productivity growth has been disappointing since the 1970s. We propose and empirically explore the hypothesis that slow growth stems in part from an unbalanced sectoral...