This paper describes how the analytical program of Statistics Canada's productivity group is used to enhance the quality (relevance, coherence, interpretability) of its products.
This paper discusses the productivity program at Statistics Canada, covering topics such as international efforts to provide more comparable statistics, attempts to expand our knowledge of the factors behind productivity growth, and challenges facing the program.
The estimates of labour productivity (output per hour worked) that are produced by the Canadian Productivity Accounts are subject to 2 types of revisions. The 1st is a set of short-run revisions in gross domestic product (GDP) that take place over a four-year cycle as more and more data become available. The 2nd type of revision occurs less frequently, when major revisions are made in methodology or as a result of updates in concepts. This paper examines the revision cycle for labour productivity estimates over the period 2000-2003.
This paper examines the emergence of the knowledge economy by studying the increasing importance of high-knowledge occupations over 1971-2001. It uses data from the Census of Population to classify workers into the more knowledge-intensive occupations and then investigates how the share of these workers has varied across time & across sectors. The paper is organized around a key set of questions examining the following: whether the knowledge economy has grown dramatically only in recent years or has it been a continuous process over the study period; growth in different groups of knowledge workers; differences in increases in educational attainment of different knowledge worker groups; increases in relative earnings in the knowledge occupations; and differences among industrial sectors in the increase in importance of knowledge workers.
This paper examines the level of labour productivity in Canada relative to that of the United States in 1999. In doing so, it addresses two main issues. The first is the comparability of the measures of gross domestic product & labour inputs that the statistical agency in each country produces. The second is how a price index can be constructed to reconcile estimates of Canadian & US gross domestic product per hour worked that are calculated in Canadian & US dollars respectively. After constructing such an index and taking into account alternative assumptions about Canada/US prices, the paper provides point estimates of Canada's relative labour productivity of the total economy in 1999. The paper recommends a confidence interval to be applied to the estimates and notes the sensitivity of the interval to assumptions made about import & export prices.
Uses data from the 1999 Annual Survey of Manufactures to examine how the productivity growth of manufacturing plants has been influenced by their proximity to cities, and by certain characteristics of these urban areas.
This paper assesses the contribution that foreign-controlled plants make to the Canadian manufacturing sector by examining both whether foreign-controlled producers exhibit superior performance and whether their productivity growth spills over to domestic plants. In the first section, the performance of foreign-controlled plants is compared with domestic-controlled plants, using a variety of measures that include value added & gross output per worker, research & development, and technology used. The paper then asks whether foreign-controlled plants differ from those domestic producers that have foreign operations. The third section starts by measuring the contribution of foreign multinational enterprises to labour productivity growth in the Canadian manufacturing sector, then compares the importance of the contribution made by foreign-controlled plants to productivity growth in the 1990s to their contribution in the 1980s. At issue here is whether the relative importance of Canada as a destination for foreign direct investment declined during the 1990s as a result of two free trade agreements. Finally, the paper examines the following: whether productivity growth of domestic producers is higher when the market share of foreign producers is larger; the existence of a subset of domestic plants that benefits more from spillovers originating in foreign-controlled plants; and the presence of two mechanisms that generate spillovers: enhanced competition and the more intense use of advanced technologies by domestic firms.
This paper examines whether investment in information & communications technologies (ICT), combined with organizational changes & worker skills, contributes to better performance in Canadian firms. It first presents a review of the literature on the relationship between ICT, organizational changes, and firm performance. It then uses a comprehensive establishment-level micro data set, the Statistics Canada 1999 Workplace & Employee Survey, to empirically assess that relationship. It studies the interactions between ICT use, organizational changes in the areas of production practices, human resource management practices, and service- or product-related practices and human capital as drivers of better firm performance in the knowledge-based economy. The paper extends previous studies to include firms in both the manufacturing & service sectors.
This paper examines the variability of workers' earnings in Canada over the period 1982-1997. Using a large panel of tax file data, we decompose total variation in earnings across workers and time into a long-run inequality component between workers and an average earnings instability component over time for workers. We find an increase in earnings variability between 1982-1989 and 1990-97 that is largely confined to men and largely driven by widening long-run earnings inequality. Second, the pattern of unemployment rate and GDP growth rate effects on these variance components is not consistent with conventional explanations and is suggestive of an alternative paradigm of how economic growth over this period widens long-run earnings inequality. Third, when unemployment rate and GDP growth rate effects are considered jointly, macroeconomic improvement is found to reduce the overall variability of earnings as the reduction in earnings instability outweighs the widening of long-run earnings inequality.
The report examines employment, unemployment, work activity, earnings, industrial structure, industry concentration and diversity, and human capital and population growth due to immigration and inter-CMA mobility in census metropolitan areas (CMAs) between 1981 and 2001. The report uses the 1981, 1991 and 2001 censuses of Canada, and the 1987-2003 Labour Force Survey.
This paper measures the volatility of manufacturing employment in different Canadian regions for the period 1976-97. It first examines the structural characteristics of regional economies and relates them to their levels of employment volatility. The analysis then focuses on testing whether diversity, growth, plant size and export intensity are empirically related to volatility levels. The analysis also examines whether increases in export orientation of a region over the levels. The analysis also examines whether increases in export orientation of a region over the study period were associated with changes in industry specialization and employment volatility.
This paper outlines the trend followed by foreign control in the Canadian economy over the last 40 years, a period with substantial changes in commercial policy, in government regulation of foreign investment, and in economic conditions. After historical background on the period under study and a theoretical perspective on models of foreign ownership, the paper focusses on two measures of the importance of foreign investment: the percentage of assets or revenue that is under foreign control and the amount of foreign direct investment coming into the country. Using these measures, the paper asks whether there have been dramatic changes in foreign activity, whether these shifts in foreign activity correspond to changes in the regulatory regime surrounding the climate for foreign investment, and whether trends found at the aggregate level are found in most sub-sectors.
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