Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2016
INTRODUCTION
Productivity differences between the Canadian and U.S. manufacturing sectors are commonly attributed to smaller Canadian plant scale and levels of product diversity that are too large. However, there are relatively few studies that have actually investigated the extent of suboptimal scale. And those that have done so have either concentrated on a relatively small number of industries (Eastman and Stykolt, 1967; Gorecki, 1976; Scherer et al., 1975), have been beset by missing data observations (Caves et al., 1980) or have focused on Canada without comparing it to some international standard (Gupta, 1979; Dickson, 1979).
Respectively, Queen’s University and Economic Council of Canada.
This paper was based on research originally done for the Economic Council of Canada some of which was included in work prepared for the research program of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada. The views in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Economic Council of Canada. Elaboration on many of the points raised herein may be found in an earlier discussion paper (Baldwin and Gorecki, 1983b).