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...

There is no proof that a new paradigm of economic theory has been enthroned, rending old economic laws invalid. According to followers of the new paradigm, knowledge creation transformed into new products of information industries should bring increasing returns, accelerate growth to rates...

This the inaugural issue of the International Productivity Monitor, a new publication produced by the Ottawa-based Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS). The objective of the Monitor is to focus atttention on the importance of productivity for improving living standards and quality of...

This paper analyzes the sources of recent U.S. productivity growth using both aggregate and industry-level data. The paper confirms the central role of information technology in the productivity revival during 1995-2000 and shows that it played a significant, although smaller, role after 2000....

This paper provides a new breakdown of past U.S. economic growth into its trend and cyclical components, using a mix of detrending methods. This decomposition is then used to interpret the extraordinary productivity performance of the U.S. economy since 1995 and especially since mid-2000. The...

Starting from the standard Gordon inflation model, which explains price changes by inertia, demand shocks, and supply shocks but excludes wages, the first part of this paper returns wages to the analysis by developing a model that includes both price and wage equations. The model allows for...