Average weekly working hours in most industrialized economies have displayed steady declines since the 1970s. Changes in working hours may have two contrasting effects on hourly productivity: a "fatigue effect" and a "learning effect." An increase in working hours may lead to the accumulation of...

Because of gaps in existing surveys and methodological problems with the computation of productivity measures, outsourcing and offshoring result in an overstatement of labor productivity and multifactor productivity growth in manufacturing. Although it is impossible to fully characterize the...

This paper asks how the performance of self-employed unincorporated businesses affects the size of the gap in labour productivity between Canada and the United States. To do so, the business sector in each country is divided into unincorporated and corporate businesses, and estimates of labour...

ICT capital is an important driver of productivity growth. Using data from the EUKLEMS growth accounts, we show that ICT has made smaller contributions to labour productivity growth in the EU-15 than in the US, both at the macro level and at the level of individual sectors. At the same time,...

This paper has three main objectives. First, it examines the level of multifactor productivity (MFP) in Canada relative to that of the United States for the 1994-to-2003 period. Second, it examines the relative importance of differences in capital intensity and MFP in accounting for the labour...

This paper compares long-run growth in labour productivity in Canada and the United States from 1961 to 2006. Over the entire period labour productivity in both countries grew at about the same rate. But Canadian growth exceeded that of the United States up to the early 1980s. Since then, U.S....

This study examines Canadian productivity performance over the period from 1961 to 2005. It investigates labour productivity growth and the sources of improvements therein - multifactor productivity growth, capital intensity and skill upgrading. It also examines the contribution that...

This paper examines the various products associated with the quarterly labour productivity program. It outlines the nature of the volatility in the very short-run estimates and examines properties of the revisions made to the estimates of Canadian labour productivity and its components (gross...

This paper examines the impact of the revisions to labour productivity estimates and related variables covering the revision cycle of the National Accounts from 2003 to 2006 for Canada and from 2004 to 2006 for the United States