This Working Paper challenges two widely held views: first that trade performance has been the primary reason for the declining share of manufacturing employment in the United States, and second that recent productivity growth in manufacturing has actually been quite rapid but is not accurately...

Manufacturing has received increased attention in recent years, as it has enhanced its importance in the economy with output and employment gains and as a driving force of U.S. exports. Nonetheless, the sector faces serious challenges as well as opportunities. The challenges are weak global...

This paper shows that, counter-intuitively, a higher elasticity of substitution in model production function can lead to reduced economic resilience and larger vulnerability to shocks in production factor prices. This result is due to the fact that assuming a higher elasticity of substitution...

The U.S. growth experience in the 1990s and the perceptions of a new economy contrast sharply with trends in bandwidth use and pricing across the 1990s. Dramatic increases in bandwidth use and dramatic reductions in bandwidth prices that were predicted to occur in the second half the 1990s did...

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...

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...