The study of economic growth focusses primarily on capital accumulation and advances in productivity. These fundamental forces determine how much the real incomes of people increase over time, and an understanding of such increases is the basic motivation behind the study of economic growth. What determines the rates of advance in productivity recorded in modern economies remains the subject of debate. This debate extends also to how advances in productivity should be measured.

Single-factor productivity measures – when labour is the factor – are commonplace. Despite the difficulties associated with the measurement of output, labour input, and the construction of index numbers, measures of changes in output per unit of labour are now published on a regular basis by many statistical agencies and help in our understanding of the processes of economic growth.

More general measures of productivity advance have also long been available from private and academic researchers. They may be called measures of multifactor productivity. They measure the increases in efficiency with which an economy uses all (measurable) economic inputs, not just labour. This study shows that general measures of productivity advance – when, in particular, theoretically appropriate measures of “capital” and its contribution to growth have been formulated – are feasible for Canada and other nations. Our new measures of multifactor productivity advance may be called the Harrod–Robinson–Read measures. Another set of multifactor measures, which may be called the traditional, Hicksian, or neo-classical, are also provided.