The third issue of the International Productivity Monitor produced by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards contains six articles that deal with a wide range of issues in the productivity area. Topics covered are the contribution of the information and communications technology sector to...

The slower productivity growth in Canada relative to that experienced in the United States in the second half of the 1990s has been a matter of great concern to Canadians, with a wide variety of explanations put forward to account for this development. A key issue is whether this slower...

This article by Raynauld Letourneau and Martine Lajoie of Industry Canada provides a detailed regional analysis of levels of living standards, measured as output per capita, and productivity (output per worker) for the 1995-97 period, the most recent data currently available. They find that all...

Early 2001 saw the publication of two important contributions to the literature on productivity in Canada. In February, Statistics Canada released a research study entitled Productivity Growth in Canada, and in March, Industry Canada published a research monograph entitled Industry-level...

There has been much discussion of the differences in macroeconomic performance and prospects between the US, Japan and the euro area. Using Markov-switching techniques, in this paper we identify and compare specifically their major business-cycle features and examine the case for a common...