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- Surveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 15-206-X2013031Description:
This paper describes the evolution of the Multifactor Productivity Program launched at Statistics Canada in 1987 and the improvements made in multifactor productivity measurement since then. The improvements were made in response to developments in the economic literature, better data sources, and the needs of the user community. The paper also summarizes research that uses alternate data and methodologies to assess the accuracy of the Multifactor Productivity Program and to provide insights into areas that traditional international multifactor productivity programs omit. Finally, the paper outlines future directions that are being contemplated to further improve the measurement of productivity at Statistics Canada.
Release date: 2013-05-28 - Surveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 15-206-X2010027Description:
Measures of productivity are derived by comparing outputs and inputs. The System of National Accounts (SNA) in Canada provides a useful framework for organizing the information required for comparisons of this type. Integrated systems of economic accounts provide coherent, consistent alternate estimates of the various concepts that can be used to measure productivity.
Release date: 2010-06-29 - Articles and reports: 15-206-X2009025Description:
Baldwin and Gu (2008) provide an overview of the productivity program at Statistics Canada and a brief description of Canada's productivity performance. This paper provides an update of Canada's productivity performance in more recent years and analyses the sources of weak productivity performance in Canada since 2000.
Release date: 2009-08-04 - Articles and reports: 15-206-X2008021Description:
This paper makes use of a growth accounting framework to examine the importance of public capital for private sector productivity growth. Most measures of multifactor productivity consider only the inputs of the business sector. This paper produces an alternate measure of multifactor productivity for the business sector that incorporates the impact of public capital. It uses the estimate of the elasticity of business sector output with respect to public capital derived from Macdonald (2008). Over the period, the conventional estimate of MFP growth averages 0.4% per year. About half of this growth is attributable to public capital.
Release date: 2009-01-14 - Articles and reports: 15-206-X2008022Description:
Many historical comparisons of international productivity use measures of labour productivity (output per worker). Differences in labour productivity can be caused by differences in technical efficiency or differences in capital intensity. Moving to measures of total factor productivity allows international comparisons to ascertain whether differences in labour productivity arise from differences in efficiency or differences in factors utilized in the production process.
This paper examines differences in output per worker in the manufacturing sectors of Canada and the United States in 1929 and the extent to which it arises from efficiency differences. It makes corrections for differences in capital and materials intensity per worker in order to derive a measure of total factor efficiency of Canada relative to the United States, using detailed industry data. It finds that while output per worker in Canada was only about 75% of the United States productivity level, the total factor productivity measure of Canada was about the same as the United States level - that is, there was very little difference in technical efficiency in the two countries. Canada's lower output per worker was the result of the use of less capital and materials per worker than the United States.
Release date: 2008-12-23 - Articles and reports: 11F0027M2008053Geography: CanadaDescription:
This paper examines firm turnover and productivity growth in the Canadian retail trade sector. Firm turnover occurs as the competitive process shifts market share from exiting firms and existing firms that contracted to entering firms and existing firms that expanded. There is considerably more firm turnover in the retail sector than in the manufacturing sector and more of it comes from entry and exit. Moreover, contrary to the manufacturing sector where only part of overall productivity growth comes from firm turnover and the re-allocation of resources from the less to the more productive, all of the aggregate productivity growth comes from this source in the retail sector. This suggests that the much-discussed Wal-Mart effect on retail sector productivity mainly comes from the Wal-Mart-created competitive pressure that shifts market share from exitors and declining incumbents to entrants and growing incumbents. Foreign-controlled firms contributed 30% of labour productivity growth and 45% of multifactor productivity growth in the retail trade sector in the period from 1984 to 1996, which are mainly due to the entry of foreign-controlled firms and expansion of more productive foreign-controlled existing firms.
Release date: 2008-12-08 - Articles and reports: 15-206-X2008020Description:
This paper compares the productivity growth of a set of Canadian and U.S. regulated industries. Using data from Statistics Canada's KLEMS database and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the paper examines productivity growth in transportation services (which includes air and rail), broadcasting and telecommunications, and financial services (which includes financial intermediation and insurance), over the period from 1977 to 2003. The majority of these provide the foundational networks on which other industries rely. These sectors were quite heavily regulated in Canada at the beginning of the period of study (1977), experienced partial deregulation during the period and still faced various types of regulation at the end (2003). Deregulation also occurred in the United States, but regulation has generally been less restrictive there over most of the period.
The evidence shows that many of the Canadian industries that underwent deregulation experienced faster labour productivity growth and multifactor productivity growth than did the aggregate Canadian business sector and had similar or higher productivity growth than did their counterparts in the United States over the 1977-to-2003 period. Those industries include rail transportation, broadcasting and telecommunications, financial intermediation and insurance carriers. The airline industry had slower productivity growth in Canada than in the United States over the 1977-to-2003 period.
Release date: 2008-11-26 - 18. Relative Multifactor Productivity Levels in Canada and the United States: A Sectoral Analysis ArchivedArticles and reports: 15-206-X2008019Description:
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 productivity differences between the two countries. Third, it traces the overall MFP difference between Canada and the United States to its industry origins and estimates the contributions of the goods, services and engineering sectors to the overall MFP gap.
Our main findings are as follows. First, the overall capital intensity is as high in Canada as in the United States; but there are considerable differences in Canada's capital intensity across asset classes. Canada has considerably less machinery and equipment, about the same amount of buildings and considerably more engineering construction. Second, most of the differences in labour productivity between Canada and the United States are due to the differences in MFP. Third, our industry results show that the levels of labour productivity and MFP in the goods and the engineering sectors are closer to those of the United States. But, the level of labour and multifactor productivity in the services sector is much lower in Canada. The lower levels of labour productivity and MFP in the Canadian services sector account for most of the overall productivity level difference between the two countries.
Release date: 2008-07-21 - Articles and reports: 11F0027M2008050Geography: CanadaDescription:
This paper examines whether or not the long-term government bond rate could reasonably be employed as the rate of return on public capital when calculating public sector gross domestic product. It finds that the rate of return on public capital is lower than often reported and is roughly consistent with the rate of return on private capital. Given that there is a range of estimates that are plausible, the paper concludes that the long-run government bond rate could be used as a conservative estimate for the rate of return for public infrastructure.
Previous studies have shown that production function estimates tend to find rates of return that are implausibly large, while cost function estimates appear more reasonable. This paper shows that public capital and total factor productivity (TFP) growth behave similarly, and argues that production function estimates for the impact of public capital overstate its impact as a result, catching part of what belongs in estimates of TFP. It also shows that the similarity between the growth in public capital and TFP leads to a large confidence interval around public capital elasticity estimates derived from the production function framework. The paper then proceeds by generating a confidence interval from the production function estimated first with and then without TFP growth. It then uses a cost function to pinpoint more precisely estimates for the marginal cost savings from public capital. Importantly, the estimate derived from the cost function is found in the lower part of the confidence interval derived from the production function. The rate of return associated with the overlapping estimates is then shown to cover a range that extends from the average long-run government bond rate to the rate of return on private capital.
Release date: 2008-04-15 - Surveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 15-206-X2008017Description:
This paper provides an overview of the productivity program at Statistics Canada and a brief description of Canada's productivity performance. The paper defines productivity and the various measures that are used to investigate different aspects of productivity growth. It describes the difference between partial productivity measures (such as labour productivity) and a more complete measure (multifactor productivity) and the advantages and disadvantages of each. The paper explains why productivity is important. It outlines how productivity growth fits into the growth accounting framework and how this framework is used to examine the various sources of economic growth. The paper briefly discusses the challenges that face statisticians in measuring productivity growth. It also provides an overview of Canada's long-term productivity performance and compares Canada to the United States - both in terms of productivity levels and productivity growth rates.
Release date: 2008-02-25
Data (1)
Data (1) ((1 result))
- Data Visualization: 71-607-X2021011Description:
The Multifactor Productivity application is an analytical tool that provides custom aggregation and custom tabulation of productivity statistics based on the series in CODR table 36-10-0211. The application permits custom aggregation across industries for all published variables, data transformations such as growth rate calculations, log-transformations and index re-basing, correlation and density analysis and visualization of retrieved outputs. The output values from calculations are available as .csv files. Visualizations can be downloaded as .png files. The data in the application are annual values beginning in 1961 and ending with the most recent data available.
Release date: 2021-08-16
Analysis (24)
Analysis (24) (0 to 10 of 24 results)
- Articles and reports: 11F0019M2020001Description:
Multifactor productivity (MFP) declined in Canada from 2000 to 2009 and then recovered after. The movements in productivity since 2000 have attracted great attention from researchers and policy makers because productivity is important both for economic growth and for improvements in living standards. This paper applies the stochastic frontier framework to decompose each firm’s MFP into two parts: its technological frontier and its technical efficiency. Change in the aggregate technological frontier refers to improvements in the productivity potential of an economy, i.e., the maximum productivity of an economy if all firms are fully efficient. Aggregate technical efficiency reflects the economy’s capacity to achieve that potential. The results of this decomposition can show whether the movements in productivity after 2000 in Canada were mainly the result of changes in the technological frontier and productivity potential or of changes in the technical efficiency.
Release date: 2020-01-17 - 2. Environmentally Adjusted Multifactor Productivity Growth for the Canadian Manufacturing Sector ArchivedArticles and reports: 11F0019M2019013Description: The need to measure both the desirable outputs (goods and services) and the undesirable outputs (emissions of greenhouse gases [GHGs] and criteria air contaminants [CACs]) from economic activity is becoming increasingly important as economic performance and environmental performance become ever more intertwined. Standard measures of multifactor productivity (MFP) growth provide insights into rising standards of living and the performance of economies, but they may be misleading if only desirable outputs are considered. This study presents estimates of environmentally adjusted multifactor productivity (EAMFP) growth using a new comprehensive database. This database contains information on GHG and CAC emissions, as well as on the production activities of Canadian manufacturers.Release date: 2019-05-08
- Articles and reports: 11F0019M2018409Description:
Labour productivity growth and multifactor productivity (MFP) growth slowed in Canada and other advanced economies after 2000. Several measurement challenges have been suggested as potential explanations for this trend. These include the measurement of intangible capital in a digital economy, the measurement of natural resource capital in the resource extraction sectors, the effect of infrastructure capital and the effect of cyclical fluctuations in the utilization of capital in industries adversely affected by world demand. This paper focuses on the role of these measurement issues in the slower productivity growth observed in Canada.
Release date: 2018-10-29 - Articles and reports: 11F0019M2015372Description: This paper presents a growth accounting framework in which subsoil mineral and energy resources are recognized as natural capital input into the production process. It is the first study of its kind in Canada. Firstly, the income attributable to subsoil resources, or resource rent, is estimated as a surplus value after all extraction costs and normal returns on produced capital have been accounted for. The value of a resource reserve is then estimated as the present value of the future resource rents generated from the efficient extraction of the reserve. Lastly, with extraction as the observed service flows of natural capital, multifactor productivity (MFP) growth and the other sources of economic growth can be reassessed by updating the income shares of all inputs, and then, by estimating the contribution to growth coming from changes in the value of natural capital input. This framework is then applied to the Canadian oil and gas extraction sector.Release date: 2015-12-14
- Articles and reports: 11F0027M2015097Description:
Canada’s aggregate productivity performance has closely tracked changes in Canada’s trading environment. To gain a better understanding of the link, the Economic Analysis Division of Statistics Canada has conducted a set of studies that investigate whether and how changes in the trading environment, brought about by trade liberalization policies and exchange-rate movements, contributed to productivity growth. The firm-level analysis provides insights into the productivity dynamics that arise from within-industry growth and restructuring as resources are shifted from declining to growing industries. The paper provides an overview of the key Canadian empirical findings over the last two decades.
Release date: 2015-06-16 - Articles and reports: 15-206-X2014038Description:
This paper provides an overview of the productivity program at Statistics Canada and a brief description of Canada’s productivity performance. The paper defines productivity and the various measures that are used to investigate different aspects of productivity growth. It describes the difference between partial productivity measures (such as labour productivity) and a more complete measure (multifactor productivity) and the advantages and disadvantages of each. The paper explains why productivity is important. It outlines how productivity growth fits into the growth accounting framework and how this framework is used to examine the various sources of economic growth. The paper briefly discusses the challenges that face statisticians in measuring productivity growth. It also provides an overview of Canada’s long-term productivity performance and compares Canada to the United States—both in terms of productivity levels and productivity growth rates.
Release date: 2014-09-15 - Articles and reports: 15-206-X2014037Description:
This paper presents estimates of effective multifactor productivity (MFP) growth for Canada, the United States, Australia, Japan and selected European Union (EU) countries, based on the EU KLEMS productivity database and the World Input-Output Tables. Effective MFP growth captures the impact of the productivity gains in upstream industries on the productivity growth and international competitiveness of domestic industries, thereby providing an appropriate measure of productivity growth and international competitiveness in the production of final demand products such as consumption, investment and export products. A substantial portion of MFP growth, especially for small, open economies such as Canada’s, is attributable to gains in the production of intermediate inputs in foreign countries. Productivity growth tends to be higher in investment and export products than for the production of consumption products. Technical progress and productivity growth in foreign countries have made a larger contribution to production growth in investment and export products than in consumption products. The analysis provides empirical evidence consistent with the hypothesis that effective MFP growth is a more informative relevant indicator of international competitiveness than is standard MFP growth.
Release date: 2014-09-09 - Articles and reports: 15-206-X2014035Description:
This paper highlights revisions to multifactor productivity (MFP) growth and related variables in the business sector and in individual industries, which resulted from the historical revision of the Canadian System of National Accounts (CSNA) released October 1, 2012, revisions to the labour productivity accounts released October 12, 2012, and changes in the estimation of capital input that were made in order to improve its consistency in industry MFP growth estimates.
The multifactor productivity program produces indexes of MFP and related measures (output, capital input, labour input and intermediate inputs) for the business sector, broad economic sub-sectors, and their constituent industries. The MFP program divides growth in labour productivity into its key determinants: capital intensity (changes in capital per hour worked), investment in human capital, and MFP, which includes technological change, organizational innovation and economies of scale.
Release date: 2014-07-08 - Articles and reports: 11-626-X2013031Geography: CanadaDescription:
This article in the Economic Insights series reports the impact of correcting for variations in capacity utilization on multifactor productivity growth in Canadian business industries. It is based on a recently released Statistics Canada research paper. Results show that multifactor productivity growth is procyclical for almost all business industries, and that such pro-cyclicality largely reflects variations in capacity utilization in some industries, especially in manufacturing and mining.
Release date: 2013-10-04 - Articles and reports: 15-206-X2009025Description:
Baldwin and Gu (2008) provide an overview of the productivity program at Statistics Canada and a brief description of Canada's productivity performance. This paper provides an update of Canada's productivity performance in more recent years and analyses the sources of weak productivity performance in Canada since 2000.
Release date: 2009-08-04
Reference (9)
Reference (9) ((9 results))
- Surveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 15-206-X2013031Description:
This paper describes the evolution of the Multifactor Productivity Program launched at Statistics Canada in 1987 and the improvements made in multifactor productivity measurement since then. The improvements were made in response to developments in the economic literature, better data sources, and the needs of the user community. The paper also summarizes research that uses alternate data and methodologies to assess the accuracy of the Multifactor Productivity Program and to provide insights into areas that traditional international multifactor productivity programs omit. Finally, the paper outlines future directions that are being contemplated to further improve the measurement of productivity at Statistics Canada.
Release date: 2013-05-28 - Surveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 15-206-X2010027Description:
Measures of productivity are derived by comparing outputs and inputs. The System of National Accounts (SNA) in Canada provides a useful framework for organizing the information required for comparisons of this type. Integrated systems of economic accounts provide coherent, consistent alternate estimates of the various concepts that can be used to measure productivity.
Release date: 2010-06-29 - Surveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 15-206-X2008017Description:
This paper provides an overview of the productivity program at Statistics Canada and a brief description of Canada's productivity performance. The paper defines productivity and the various measures that are used to investigate different aspects of productivity growth. It describes the difference between partial productivity measures (such as labour productivity) and a more complete measure (multifactor productivity) and the advantages and disadvantages of each. The paper explains why productivity is important. It outlines how productivity growth fits into the growth accounting framework and how this framework is used to examine the various sources of economic growth. The paper briefly discusses the challenges that face statisticians in measuring productivity growth. It also provides an overview of Canada's long-term productivity performance and compares Canada to the United States - both in terms of productivity levels and productivity growth rates.
Release date: 2008-02-25 - Surveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 15-206-X2007014Description:
The Canadian Productivity Accounts (CPA) of Statistics Canada maintain two multifactor productivity (MFP) programs.
The Major Sector Multifactor Productivity Program develops the indexes of MFP for the total business sector and major industry groups in the business sector.
The Industry Multifactor Productivity Program or the Industry KLEMS Productivity Program develops the industry productivity database that includes MFP indexes, output, capital (K), labour (L), energy (E), materials (M) and services (S) inputs for the individual industries of the business sector at various levels of industry aggregation. This paper describes the methodologies and data sources that are used to construct the major sector MFP indexes and the industry productivity database (or the KLEMS database). More specifically, this paper is meant to:provide a background of the major sector MFP program and the industry KLEMS productivity program;present the methodology for measuring MFP;describe the data sources and data available from the MFP programs;present a quality rating of the industry KLEMS productivity data; anddescribe the research agenda related to the MFP program.
Release date: 2007-12-06 - 5. Multifactor Productivity in Canada: An Evaluation of Alternative Methods of Estimating Capital Services ArchivedSurveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 15-206-X2007009Description:
This paper examines the effects of alternative specifications of the user costs of capital on the estimated price and volume indices of capital services. It asks how sensitive the results are to the use of exogenous versus endogenous rates of return, to alternate ways of including capital gains, and to whether corrections are made for tax rates. The paper also examines the effect of the various user cost formulae on the measured multifactor productivity growth.
Release date: 2007-04-04 - Surveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 11F0026M2005004Description:
A statistical agency faces several challenges in building Productivity Accounts. Measures of productivity require that outputs be compared to inputs.
This paper discusses the challenges that a statistical agency faces in this area -as illustrated by the Canadian experience. First, it examines the progress that has been made in developing a system that integrates the Productivity Accounts into the overall System of National Accounts. It also discusses deficiencies that still need to be overcome. Finally, the paper focuses on the need to consider whether the SNA manual should be extended into the area of productivity measurement. The paper argues that the advantage of integrating productivity accounts into the general accounts is sufficiently great that it is time to include more detail on the nature of productivity accounts in the general SNA framework.
Release date: 2005-04-28 - Surveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 15-002-M2001001Description:
This document describes the sources, concepts and methods utilized by the Canadian Productivity Accounts and discusses how they compare with their U.S. counterparts.
Release date: 2004-12-24 - Surveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 11F0026M2004002Description:
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.
Release date: 2004-08-06 - 9. The Micro-Economic Analysis Division: The Role of Analysis in Delivering Information Products ArchivedSurveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 11F0026M2004001Description:
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.
Release date: 2004-07-08
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