IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sls/resrep/0410.html

The McKinsey Global Institute Productivity Studies: Lessons for Canada

Author

Listed:
  • Matt Kellison

Abstract

The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) is a think tank based in Washington, D.C. founded in 1990 with the objective of analyzing international productivity levels from both economic and management perspectives. MGI uses microeconomic analysis on a sectorby-sector level to study the effects that industry decisions ultimately have on national productivity. For the most part the productivity drivers identified by MGI can be grouped into three broad areas: competitive factors (concentration, trade protection, deregulation, minimum wages, work rules, and zoning laws); managerial factors (best practice, human capital, capital intensity, and information technology); and demand factors (average income, cyclical factors, and consumer preferences). This paper examines these factors in an attempt to shed light on the causes of Canada-U.S. productivity differences at the industry level. Competitive factors may explain the poor productivity performance of the Canadian financial and cultural service industries relative to their U.S. counterparts, and likewise may explain the high productivity levels of some natural resource industries in Canada relative to the United States. Managerial factors, especially the implementation of new technologies and related processes, may be important in explaining the poor productivity growth in Canada relative to the United States in service industries such as retail trade. Given the similarities between Canada and the United States, the findings of the MGI studies cannot be indiscriminately applied to Canada-U.S. productivity differences at the industry level. However, the MGI studies do put forward a number of useful working hypotheses for analyzing these differences.

Suggested Citation

  • Matt Kellison, 2004. "The McKinsey Global Institute Productivity Studies: Lessons for Canada," CSLS Research Reports 2004-10, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    • Handle: RePEc:sls:resrep:0410
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://csls.ca/research/the-mckinsey-global-institute-productivity-studies-lessons-for-canada/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://csls.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/csls2004-10-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas W. Ross, 2004. "Viewpoint: Canadian competition policy: progress and prospects," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(2), pages 243-268, May.
    2. Someshwar Rao & Jianmin Tang & Weimin Wang, 2004. "Measuring the Canada-U.S. Productivity Gap: Industry Dimensions," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 9, pages 3-14, Fall.
    3. Martin Neil Baily & Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, 2004. "Transforming the European Economy," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 353, January.
    4. Charles R. Hulten & Edwin R. Dean & Michael J. Harper, 2001. "New Developments in Productivity Analysis," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number hult01-1, December.
    5. Martin Neil Baily & Eric Zitzewitz, 2001. "Service Sector Productivity Comparisons: Lessons for Measurement," NBER Chapters, in: New Developments in Productivity Analysis, pages 419-464, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Lewis, William W., 2004. "The Power of Productivity," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226476766.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrew Sharpe, 2006. "Lessons for Canada from International Productivity Experience," CSLS Research Reports 2006-02, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrew Sharpe, 2006. "Lessons for Canada from International Productivity Experience," CSLS Research Reports 2006-02, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    2. H. Stephen Gardner & Lourenço S. Paz & John Ssozi, 2023. "The influence of international trade on labour productivity in services: The case of Brazil in the 1990s," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 268-290, February.
    3. Bart van Ark & Mary O'Mahoney & Marcel P. Timmer, 2008. "The Productivity Gap between Europe and the United States: Trends and Causes," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(1), pages 25-44, Winter.
    4. Jaan Masso & Priit Vahter, 2012. "The link between innovation and productivity in Estonia's services sector," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(16), pages 2527-2541, December.
    5. Michael Redmond & Willem Van Zandweghe, 2016. "The Lasting Damage from the Financial Crisis to U.S. Productivity," Macro Bulletin, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 1-3, March.
    6. Barry Eichengreen & Donghyun Park & Kwanho Shin, 2017. "The Global Productivity Slump: Common and Country-Specific Factors," Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press, vol. 16(3), pages 1-41, Fall.
    7. Andrew B. Bernard & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2006. "Multi-Product Firms and Product Switching," NBER Working Papers 12293, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Balland, Pierre-Alexandre & Broekel, Tom & Diodato, Dario & Giuliani, Elisa & Hausmann, Ricardo & O'Clery, Neave & Rigby, David, 2022. "Reprint of The new paradigm of economic complexity," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(8).
    9. Paul - Bogdan Zamfir, 2015. "The Stimulation Of Inovation In The Romanian Enterprises On The Coordinates Of Sustainable Development," Annals - Economy Series, Constantin Brancusi University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 3, pages 86-89, June.
    10. Mari Maté-Sánchez-Val & Antonia Madrid-Guijarro, 2011. "A spatial efficiency index proposal: an empirical application to SMEs productivity," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 47(2), pages 353-371, October.
    11. Crafts, Nicholas & Toniolo, Gianni, 2008. "European Economic Growth, 1950-2005: An Overview," CEPR Discussion Papers 6863, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    12. Victor E. Dike, 2015. "“Why Nations Fail†to Develop," SAGE Open, , vol. 5(4), pages 21582440156, October.
    13. Simona E. Cociuba & Alexander Ueberfeldt, 2008. "Driving forces of the Canadian economy: an accounting exercise," Globalization Institute Working Papers 06, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    14. Shuyun May Li, 2008. "Employment Flows with Endogenous Financing Constraints," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 1045, The University of Melbourne.
    15. Mark Chin & Thomas J. Kane & Whitney Kozakowski & Beth E. Schueler & Douglas O. Staiger, 2019. "School District Reform in Newark: Within- and Between-School Changes in Achievement Growth," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 72(2), pages 323-354, March.
    16. Sheng, Yu & Zhao, Shiji & Yang, Sansi, 2021. "Weather shocks, adaptation and agricultural TFP: A cross-region comparison of Australian Broadacre farms," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    17. Marquis, Milton H. & Trehan, Bharat, 2008. "On using relative prices to measure capital-specific technological progress," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1390-1406, December.
    18. J.Ph. Boussemart & K. Kerstens & S. Blancard & W. Briec, 2007. "Technology Adoption in French Agriculture and the role of Financial Constraints," Post-Print hal-00287974, HAL.
    19. Greenwood, Jeremy & Krusell, Per, 2007. "Growth accounting with investment-specific technological progress: A discussion of two approaches," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1300-1310, May.
    20. Nikita Céspedes & Nelson Ramirez-Rondán, 2014. "Total Factor Productivity Estimation in Peru: Primal and Dual Approaches," Revista Economía, Fondo Editorial - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, vol. 37(73), pages 9-39.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sls:resrep:0410. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CSLS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cslssca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.