The engine or the caboose? Resource industries and twentieth-century Canadian economic performance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Queens University - Canada; Queens University - Canada
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 1-32
• 关键词: staple industries; GROWTH; manufacturers; HISTORY

摘要

The Canadian economy, already wealthy, diverse, and relatively industrial at the dawn of the twentieth century, had not yet outgrown its reliance on resource-intensive production. Empirical evidence indicates that the exploitation of Canada's natural resource endowment made direct and indirect contributions to the size and efficiency of the twentieth-century domestic economy. I conclude that the concentration of capital and labor in resource industries did not constrain the rate of change of Canadian real GNP per capita between 1900 and 1999, and it appears to have had a substantial positive impact on the level of real GNP per capita.