The global economy will strengthen over the coming two years, but urgent action is still required to further reduce unemployment and address other legacies from the crisis, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook.

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.

The prospective normalisation of monetary policies in the main OECD areas will be challenging given that current policy rates are likely to be significantly below neutral levels and that central bank balance sheets will be above the pre-crisis levels by a wide margin.

The paper discusses a number of policies that could help to make the Chilean labour market more inclusive and broaden the benefits of growth. These include expanding childcare, promoting a more flexible labour market and strengthening education and skills policies, among others.

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.

Surveys suggest that Denmark ranks close to or slightly above the OECD average in terms of student and adult skills, even though Denmark spends more than many OECD countries on education, labour market policies and adult learning. Sluggish productivity growth over the past two decades raises the question of how to develop better skills and use them more efficiently to achieve stronger and more inclusive 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.

In Norway house prices have risen to high levels, associated with very strong credit growth, in a context of low interest rates. Such a combination was in many countries a contributory factor to the 2008-09 crisis.

This paper exploits longitudinal data on firm performance and patenting activity for 23 OECD countries over the period 2003-2010 to explore the extent to which changes in the patent stock are associated with flows of capital and labour to patenting firms.

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.

A slowdown in global economic growth and a continuing rise in income inequality are projected for the coming decades, according to a new OECD study which looks beyond the crisis at what the world could look like by 2060.

Enhancing the productivity and competitiveness of the French economy will demand action on innovation and research, competition, education and vocational training, as well as on the functioning of the labour market, on public-sector efficiency, and on fiscal policy.

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.

This report examines the sustainability of social institutions and their ability to absorb and cope with short-term shocks and longer-term trends by providing risk sharing and expenditure smoothing, focusing on pension, health care and unemployment insurance schemes.

Future generations will pay a high price if countries fail to reform pension, health care and unemployment schemes, according to a new OECD report.

OECD Türkiye Ekonomik İnceleme Raporuna göre; Türkiye ekonomisi önümüzdeki yıllarda büyümeye devam edecek ancak, ekonominin dış kaynak ile fonlanan iç tüketime aşırı bağımlılığı halen devam etmekte.

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.

This paper provides a framework for comparing a defined benefit (DB) and a defined contribution (DC) point schemes, which are both pay-as-you go (PAYG) financed.

This paper investigates the vulnerabilities of health care systems in OECD and BRIICS countries to adverse secular trends and large macroeconomic shocks.

Unemployment insurance is a key tool for risk sharing and redistribution and also a prominent automatic stabiliser. It is a volatile spending item by design, which can lead to vulnerabilities. This paper explores various shocks and sources of vulnerability of the unemployment insurance schemes of OECD and BRIICS countries.

Demographic developments are unfavourable for the financing of pension schemes in most OECD countries, implying continued growth in pension expenditure in virtually all OECD countries. This paper examines the vulnerability of pension systems, with an emphasis on financial sustainability and adequacy.

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.

Skills shortages have developed in certain fields and regions in recent years. Earnings premiums for people in some professions, notably health, engineering and skilled trades have increased.

Swiss women are now as well educated as their male counterparts. However, progress remains to be made in the job market where both the supply and price of female labour are below that of men.

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.

Life is quite good in the United States compared to other OECD countries, thanks to strong economic growth and technological progress having lifted average income to high levels. Nonetheless, there is evidence that the benefits from growth have not been sufficiently broad based.

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.

A creative economy requires innovation-friendly conditions. Korea’s innovation system should be improved by upgrading universities and expanding their role in business R&D, while increasing international collaboration in R&D from its current low level.

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 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.

This paper uses data from the American Life Panel to understand the determinants of well-being in the United States during the Great Recession. It investigates how various dimensions of subjective well-being reflected in the OECD Better Life Framework impact subjective well-being.

OECD Secretary-General, Angel Gurría is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Catherine L. Mann as the new OECD Chief Economist. Her appointment will reinforce the OECD’s commitment to identifying and promoting better policies for better lives around the world.

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.

Spain is emerging from a protracted recession, marked by a return to moderate growth and rising international competitiveness. Decisive banking and fiscal reforms, coupled with supportive monetary policy from the European Central Bank, have reduced financial tensions and improved public finance.

The EU Single Market remains fragmented by complex and heterogeneous rules at the EU and national levels affecting trade, capital, including foreign direct investment, and labour mobility.

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.

A moderate expansion is underway in most major advanced and emerging economies, but growth remains weak in the euro area, which runs the risk of prolonged stagnation if further steps are not taken to boost demand, according to the OECD’s latest Interim Economic Assessment.

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.

Turkey’s business sector dynamism has underpinned broad-based and inclusive growth in the 2000s. However, the business sector is highly segmented, with a relatively small core of modern high-productivity corporations, and myriad small, less formal and low-productivity entities.

One-half of Korea's population aged 65 and over lives in relative poverty, nearly four times higher than the OECD average of 13%. Elderly poverty is thus an urgent social problem.