With sound framework conditions, fine universities, good infrastructure and policies friendly towards foreign direct investment, Ireland scores high in international innovation scoreboards. Overall, policies to boost innovation and entrepreneurship are on the right track, but investment in knowledge-based capital could be made a more dynamic source of growth and jobs.

As Mexico seeks to boost economic growth, pressures on its natural resources and environmental outcomes may intensify, jeopardizing the sustainability of that growth and the well-being of the population.

This paper reviews the empirical evidence on the link between environmental policy stringency and productivity growth, and the various channels through which such effects can take place.

This paper looks at a vast array of policy recommendations by the OECD that promote long-term growth – contained in Going for Growth and the Economic Outlook – and attempts to establish whether they underpin macroeconomic stability or whether there is a trade-off.

This paper takes stock of informal employment in Russia analysing its incidence and determinants. Using the regular 2003-11 waves and an informality supplement of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) it develops several measures of informal employment and demonstrates that the incidence varies widely across the different definitions.

Israel’s economy is in good shape, but further efforts are needed to fight poverty and close the gap in living standards with other leading nations, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Survey of Israel.

This paper presents the new OECD competition law and policies (CLP) indicators which measure the strength and scope of competition regimes in 49 jurisdictions (OECD and non-OECD). The indicators cover areas for which there is a broad consensus among member countries on what constitutes 'good' practice for competition regimes.

Over the next 50 years, the world economic landscape will be shaped, among other things, by demographic developments, continuing trade and investment integration, a shift of gravity towards emerging economies, the rising role of knowledge-based capital, global environmental pressures and the correction of fiscal and current account imbalances.

Macroeconomic shocks as severe and protracted as those since 2007 warrant a reconsideration of the role growth-promoting policies play in shaping the vulnerability and resilience of an economy to macroeconomic shocks.

Finland’s economy is gradually picking up, but uncertainty surrounds the recovery. Determined action to implement structural reforms is needed to revive economic growth, restore competitiveness and preserve high standards of living and well-being, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Survey of Finland.

After five years of work at every level to correct the fiscal, financial and external imbalances that led to the crisis, and to reinforce fiscal and financial institutions, the Euro Area is beginning to show signs of recovery. But, despite these positive signs, growth is still weak and uneven.

Adopting ambitious and comprehensive structural reform agendas will offer governments the best chance for a return to strong, sustainable and balanced economic growth that creates jobs and reduces inequality, according to the OECD’s latest Going for Growth report

A broad agenda of reforms in four areas – labour markets, education, product markets and innovation – should strengthen Poland’s economy and allow it to continue its path of convergence towards the income levels of the more affluent OECD economies, said Angel Gurría during a seminar in Warsaw.

Poland’s economic performance has been impressive over the past 15 years, but further reforms are now needed to put the economy firmly back on track for stronger and sustainable growth, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Survey of Poland.

This note discusses OECD forecast performance over the period 2007 12. It focuses on the lessons that can be learned from cross-country differences in growth forecast errors and the changes to forecasting models and procedures that have been prompted by the experience of the crisis.

After two decades of low growth and persistent deflation, Japan is showing signs of renewed economic dynamism. But to regain its primacy as a leading economic powerhouse and raise the well-being of its citizens, Japan needs a structural reform package to narrow the productivity gap with leading OECD countries, notably by increasing the labour participation of women and older citizens.

This paper provides an assessment of how households’ income has fared compared with GDP. While the prime focus is on incomes around the median, attention is paid also to the bottom of the income distribution.

The Netherlands is gradually emerging from a double-dip recession with strengthened public finances and reforms on track to improve the labour and housing markets and the health care and pension systems. These reforms are paying off, says the OECD. Growth is expected to reach 1% this year and 1.3% in 2015.

Inequality has risen in the OECD area. Could policies aimed solely at growth be responsible? Can inequality undermine economic growth? New evidence suggests there is a possibility.

Inequality – now at its highest level in decades in many countries – undermines economic growth and well-being, says a new OECD report. But policies to tackle the widening gap between rich and poor will only succeed if they also look beyond income and address better access to high-quality education, health care and public infrastructure, it adds.

Germany’s current economic success offers a good platform for achieving sustainable and inclusive growth, but further reforms will be necessary over the medium and long term, according to the latest OECD Economic Survey of Germany.

This study reviews the existing literature on the link between economic policies and economic stability at the firm and household level. Based on firm-level and household-level data for a wide range of OECD countries, it also provides preliminary results on sources and patterns of microeconomic volatility.

Danish productivity has grown only weakly over the past two decades, both historically and in relation to other countries, despite sound policies and institutions. Denmark needs to continue its efforts to reap the benefits of globalisation, which would contribute to invigorating productivity growth.

Finland’s population is set to age rapidly in the coming decades. This will put pressure on public finances, while shrinking labour resources. Nonetheless, solutions exist to alleviate those pressures. Adjusting the pension age in line with the rise in life expectancy would reduce pension costs and increase older workers’ employment, provided it is accompanied by the removal of the pathways to early retirement.

Significant labour market mismatches and insufficient mobility penalise employment and productivity. Mismatches have above all a skills dimension, with an excess of low-skilled workers and a possible lack of skilled workers in certain domains.

Over the past decade, the growth potential of the Hungarian economy has declined substantially. Trend productivity has ceased to increase, and investment has fallen to historically low levels.

Poor labour market outcomes remain one of Poland’s major structural weaknesses, impeding firms’ competitiveness and the nation’s potential output. Boosting employment prospects is also critical, as the country will soon be ageing at a fast pace.

Poland’s productivity has grown strongly over the past decade, and efforts to reduce the regulatory burden have been significant. Despite impressive progress, product market regulation remains more burdensome than in most OECD countries, partly due to the importance of red tape and the level of state involvement in the economy.

Canada has experienced solid economic growth since the global crisis, allowing it to reverse recession-induced job losses and put federal public finances on a sound footing, says the OECD. Growth is expected to accelerate from 2.5% this year to 2.7% in 2015.

This paper quantifies the importance of different determinants of trade at the industry level using a sample of 54 OECD and non-OECD economies. The empirical methodology extends the approach of previous empirical studies to explicitly quantify the impact that trading partners’ factor endowments and policies have on bilateral trade, and to analyse the effect of tariffs on the volume and composition of trade.

Having been hit hard by the global crisis, the Portuguese government has taken action to put its economy back on track, and to correct external and budgetary imbalances. This document highlights some key priorities to support economic growth and competitiveness through further productivity-enhancing structural reforms.

Turkey’s economy will grow stronger in the coming years, but remains overly dependent on domestic consumption funded by foreign finance, according to the latest OECD Economic Survey of Turkey.

The recent economic crisis has provided a stress test for the vulnerability of social institutions. This paper assesses the vulnerability of social institutions in light of the current crisis, and surveys past episodes, when social institutions faced similar challenges.

Income and earning inequality has been on the rise in most of the OECD and in many emerging economies since the 1980s. This paper estimates a model of earnings inequality across OECD countries that incorporates determinants of relative demand and supply of more and less-skilled labour.

Unfavourable demographic trends in many OECD countries threaten the sustainability of potential labour resources, GDP growth and fiscal positions. One factor that is expected to mitigate these trends is continued inflows of migrant workers from low income economies.

Demand for jobs, characterized by skill type and industry of employment, is driven by changes in technology, trade and consumption. Using structural decomposition analysis, we study the relative importance of these drivers for the period 1995-2008.

Despite relative affluence, workplace stress is a prominent feature of the US labour market. To the extent that job stress causes poor health outcomes – either directly through increased blood ressure, fatigue, muscle pain, etc. or indirectly through increased rates of cigarette smoking – policy to lessen job stress may be appropriate.

House prices have increased significantly in Canada over the past decade, driving household debt and residential construction activity to historical highs.

Economists have traditionally been very cautious when studying the interaction between employment and health because of the two-way causal relationship between these two variables: health status influences the probability of being employed and, at the same time, working affects the health status.

To strengthen social cohesion, a top government priority, it is essential to address the labour market roots of inequality by breaking down dualism to reduce the share of non-regular workers and to boost the employment ratio toward the government’s 70% target.

This paper presents a productivity growth measure that explicitly accounts for natural capital as an input factor and for undesirable goods, or “bads”, as an output of the production process.

This paper studies the association between US long term interest rates and cycles of capital flows to emerging market economies (EMEs). It finds that, indeed, cycles in capital flows to EMEs are linked to global conditions, including global risk aversion and long term interest rates in the United States.

Dutch banks were put under heavy strains early in the global downturn and have comparatively weak financial buffers to cope with new shocks. Falling house prices have increased the share of households with negative home equity to nearly 35% for home-owning households and 40% for mortgage holders.

Entrepreneurship is an important driver of economic growth, job creation and competitiveness. However, the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) sector has been severely affected by the crisis, with access to bank finance being particularly difficult.

This paper explores the role of managerial capital and business research and development (R&D) in fostering multifactor productivity (MFP) convergence in a panel of 42 countries.

The Korean government has made fostering a “creative economy” a top priority. The goal is to shift Korea's economic paradigm to one based on innovation in which new start-ups and venture businesses play a key role.

Increasing productivity is critical to achieving strong, sustainable and inclusive growth and well-being. Technological change and innovation are the key drivers of increased productivity, along with better skills and organisational change.

Despite large and growing investments in knowledge and innovation, productivity growth in many countries has slowed in recent years. At the same time, the urgent need for more rapid innovation (including its uptake and diffusion) in several key areas, such as in environment. This joint OECD-NBER workshop on 25-26 September 2014 will bring together academic experts to consider these challenges.

Many studies on household energy efficiency investments suggest that a wide range of seemingly profitable investments are not taken up. This paper provides novel evidence on the main factors behind consumer choices using the OECD Survey on Household Environmental Behaviour and Attitudes.

This paper investigates whether OECD countries are facing secular stagnation. Secular stagnation is defined as a situation when policy interest rates bounded at zero fail to stimulate demand sufficiently, due to low or negative neutral real interest rates and low inflation, and when ensuing prolonged and subdued growth undermines potential growth via labour hysteresis and discouraged investment.