Productivity and Economic Performance

An Overview of the Issues

by Marc T. Law

Contents

• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Growth accounting: determining the sources of economic growth
• Empirical growth accounting: what do the data tell us?
• Growth theory: the causes of economic growth
• Productivity growth an deconomic performance in Canada
• What next? Prospects for policy and research.
• Appendix 1: The Algebra of growth accounting
• Appendix 2: And overview of recent policy papers on productivity
• References
• Footnotes

Acknowledgments

This study was completed while I was a visiting research fellow at The Fraser Institute during the summer of 1999. My deepest thanks go to Jason Clemens, who initiated the study and pushed it through the editing process. Joel Emes, Herbert Grubel, Michael Walker, and Martin Zelder provided many helpful comments. All remaining errors are my own.

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Last Modified: Tuesday, June 8, 1999.