You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience. Economic Studies publishes articles in the area of economic policy analysis, applied economics and statistical analysis, generally with an international or cross-country dimension.

Economic Studies, please contact Jean-Luc Schneider jean-luc. Incorporating anchored inflation expectations in the Phillips curve and in the derivation of OECD measures of the unemployment gap Elena Rusticelli, David Turner, Maria Chiara Cavalleri Does the post-crisis weakness of global trade solely reflect weak demand?

Patrice Ollivaud, Cyrille Schwellnus Can pro-growth policies lift all boats? Economic Studies, Volume The effect of the global financial crisis on OECD potential output Patrice Ollivaud, David Turner. Lessons from OECD forecasts during and after the financial crisis Christine Lewis, Nigel Pain.

Rescuing the Phillips curve: Making use of long-term unemployment in the measurement of the NAIRU Elena Rusticelli. Foreign direct investment and reverse technology spillovers: The effect on total factor productivity Edmund Amann, Swati Virmani.

Environmental policies and productivity growth - a critical review of empirical findings Tomasz Kozluk, Vera Zipperer. Policy incentives for private innovation and maximising the returns Ben Westmore. Technological effects of intra-OECD trade in manufacturing: Demographic or labour market trends: Towards global carbon pricing: Do investors disproportionately shed assets of distant countries during global financial crises?

Rudiger Ahrend, Cyrille Schwellnus. Fiscal multipliers and prospects for consolidation Ray Barrell, Dawn Holland, Ian Hurst. Avoiding debt traps Pier Carlo Padoan, Urban Sila, Paul van den Noord.

ICT investments and productivity Vincenzo Spiezia. The determinants of earnings inequality Jean-Marc Fournier, Isabell Koske.

Interest-rate-growth differentials and government debt dynamics David Turner, Francesca Spinelli. Tackling income inequality Isabelle Joumard, Mauro Pisu, Debbie Bloch. The Evolution of Homeownership Rates in Selected OECD Countries: Exploring the Relationship Between Education and Obesity Marion Devaux, Franco Sassi, Jody Church, Michele Cecchini, Francesca Borgonovi.

Are ICT Users More Innovative? How Can Fiscal Councils Strengthen Fiscal Performance? Available from OECD iLibrary. What is the Private Return to Tertiary Education? New Evidence from 21 OECD Countries. Equity in Student Achievement Across OECD Countries: An Investigation of the Role of Policies.

New International Evidence on Asset-Price Effects on Investment, and a Survey for Consumption. The policy determinants of hours worked across OECD countries. Improving public spending efficiency in primary and secondary education.

The policy determinants of investment in tertiary education. Joaquim Oliveira Martins, Romina Boarini, Hubert Strauss, Christine de la Maisonneuve. Hubert Strauss, Christine de la Maisonneuve The role of teacher compensation and selected accountability policies for learning outcomes. Improving the efficiency of health care spending: Globalisation and OECD consumer price inflation.

The macroeconomic policy challenges of continued globalisation. Economic resilience to shocks: The incidence of carbon pricing: Norway, Russia and the Middle East. The contribution of economic geography to GDP per capita. Taxation and business environment as drivers of foreign direct investment in OECD countries.

Product market regulation and productivity convergence. Regulation of financial systems and economic growth in OECD countries: The drivers of public expenditure on health and long-term care: Less than you thought: The fiscal autonomy of sub-central governments.

The determinants of unemployment across OECD countries: Reassessing the role of policies and institutions Andrea Bassanini and Romain Duval. Time as a trade barrier: The effect of geographic isolation on productivity levels Bryn Battersby. Policies, institutions and fertility rates: Are structural reforms the answer to global current account imbalances?

A comparison of structural levels of productivity in the major industrialised countries. Foreign affiliates in OECD economies: Sub-central government fiscal rules. International licensing and the strengthening of intellectual property rights in developing countries during the s. Counting immigrants and expatriates in OECD countries: Corporate sector vulnerability and aggregate activity. Whatever happened to Canada-US economic growth and productivity performance in the information age.

Indicator models of real GDP growth in the major OECD economies. The US fiscal gap and retirement saving Alan J. Gale and Peter R. Long-term budgetary implications of tax-favoured retirement saving plans. Tax treatment of private pension savings in OECD countries. Effectiveness of tax incentives to boost retirement saving: International production relocation and exports of services.

Explaining waiting-time variations for elective surgery across OECD countries. The contribution of housing markets to cyclical resilience. The challenges of narrowing the US current-account deficit and implications for other economies. Retirement behaviour in OECD countries: Labour force participation of women: Enhancing the cost effectiveness of public spending: Capital stocks, capital services and multi-factor productivity measures.

Towards more harmonised estimates of investment in software. The influence of policies on trade and foreign direct investment. Measures of restrictions on inward foreign direct investment for OECD countries Stephen S. The decline in private saving rates in the s in OECD countries. How much can be explained by non-wealth determinants? Production and use of ICT: A sectoral perpective on productivity growth in the OECD area. Tax ratios on labour and capital income and on consumption.

The stock market, the housing market and consumer behaviour. Income distribution and poverty in theOECD area: Investment in human capital through upper-secondary and tertiary education.

The contribution of information and communication technologies to economic growth in nine OECD countries. Estimation of the cyclical behaviour of mark-ups: The driving forces of economic growth: Growth effects of education and social capital in the OECD countries.

Estimating the structural rate of unemployment for the OECD countries. The implementation and the effects of regulatory reform: Regulation, market structure and performance in telecommunications. Regulation, market structure and performance in the electricity supply industry. Regulation, market structure and performance in air passenger transportation.

What do we know about policies to "make work pay"? But still pretty good: Experimental evidence on the use of earnings supplements as a strategy to "make work pay". The family credit system and the working families tax credit in the United Kingdom.

The importance of inclusion and the power of job subsidies to increase it. Determinants of health outcomes in industrialised countries: What works among active labour market policies: Estimating prudent budgetary margins forEU countries: Is the health of older persons in OECD countries improving fast enough to compensate for population ageing?

Revisiting real social spending across countries: Early retirement in OECD countries: What do countries really spend on social policies? Technology and non-technology determinants of export share growth. The paper gives an overview of the interrelation between corporate governance, product market competition and performance across main "models" of corporate governance in OECD countries. The paper argues that managerial incentives, disciplining and corporate finance are not the fundamental distinguishing features of different financial systems.

Instead, differences in ownership and control emerge as important influences on the formulation, implementation and adaptation of corporate strategy.

Ownership and control structures are interrelated with competition in product markets: Innovation, firm size and market structure: Shumpeterian hypotheses and some new themes.

This paper surveys the empirical literature on the links between innovation, market structure and firms size. The review shows that there is little evidence in support of the Schumpeterian hypothesis that market power and large firms stimulate innovations.

Recent empirical work suggests that RGD intensity and market structure are jointly determined by technology, the characteristics of demand, the institutional framework, strategic interaction and chance. This paper presents estimates of mark-ups of prices over marginal costs for 36 manufacturing industries and 7 service sectors in 14 OECD countries.

It applies a recently developed methodology, and finds that positive mark-ups are common in both manufacturing and services. The level of the estimated mark-ups can partly be related to competitive conditions by type of market structure.

The paper also finds evidence of counter-cyclical behaviour of mark-ups, providing a possible explanation for the pro-cyclicality of employment and real wages.

This paper discusses the empirical evidence on cross-country productivity gaps and analyses the link between productivity and competition. It finds that inefficiency and low productivity levels are widespread in both manufacturing and services, and throughout the OECD area. The variation in productivity levels and growth rates appears related to the degree of competition facing industries.

International competition is an important element in achieving high productivity levels, but domestic factors also play a role. High entry rates appear conducive to productivity, but high concentration is not.

In service sectors, government-imposed regulations are often an important restriction on competition and productivity growth. The main income transfers provided by governments to people of working age are addressed. First, reasons for spending differences over time and across countries in transfer programmes are examined.

A general finding is that differences in eligibility and entitlement conditions are usually more important than underlying population and risk characteristics. Moreover, eligibility conditions, reflecting policy goals and programme administration, often appear to be more important than benefit levels in explaining spending patterns.

The second part of the paper reflects on these results, giving a brief overview of policy reforms that might allow programme objectives to be reached more efficiently. Reducing poverty while increasing employment: This paper addresses the conflict between poverty reduction and work incentives implicit in the income protection policies of several OECD countries.

Alternative approaches to reducing the well-known "poverty trap" are identified and assessed, including Credit and Negative Income Tax programmes, earnings supplementation, and two marginal employment subsidy plans.

It is concluded that a judicious combination of a moderate income guarantee plus programmes to stimulate the supply of and the demand for lower skilled labour could yield gains in a number of dimensions relative to existing income protection arrangements. A stylised "blueprint" which illustrates such an approach is presented.

Assessing the role of labour market policies and institutional settings on unemployment: This paper discusses the role of labour market policy and institutional factors in explaining the differences in structural or "equilibrium" unemployment across 17 OECD countries.

The results suggest that these factors do matter for the level of structural unemployment and for the speed of labour market adjustment after an exogenous shock.

In particular, generous unemployment benefit systems and stringent employment protection legislation are associated with high unemployment and a lower speed of adjustment. Greater coordination among social partners in the wage bargaining process as well as both highly centralised and fully decentralised bargaining systems are beneficial to labour market performance.

Measures of replacement rates for the purpose of international comparisons: Much prominence has been given to the role of unemployment and related social welfare benefits as a determinant of high and persistent unemployment.

Quantifying this effect depends crucially on the ability to measure accurately the so-called "replacement rate", the proportion of expected income from work which is replaced by unemployment and related welfare benefits. The OECD has devoted much time and effort recently to gathering comparable data on gross and net replacement rates for most OECD countries. This note aims to describe these data briefly and compare them with similar measures computed by other cross-country studies.

This paper examines whether imperfect competition in product markets has contributed to unemployment problems in industrial economies. Microeconometric evidence on the origin and extent of product market power and the degree to which these rents are captured by workers is surveyed. Product market imperfections appear widespread and, although large deviations of price from marginal cost appear shortlived, many firms enjoy persistently high returns for long periods.

Wages are partially determined by rent sharing but this phenomenon is not solely confined to the union sector. The implication is that reductions in product market imperfections would raise employment.

Vulnerability of fixed exchange rate regimes: The calculation of probabilities of parity changes indicates that devaluations mainly occurred when economic fundamentals had deteriorated. More recently, exchange rate pressures appear to be triggered by smaller deteriorations in economic fundamentals, as compared with the early s. Prospects of devaluation also appear to be sensitive to changes in key domestic variables, which are traditionally not viewed as direct determinants of "equilibrium exchange rates", such as changes in the rate of unemployment.

This paper addresses the issue of whether financial liberalisation has led to improved welfare. The benefits of improved allocation of resources and increased eficiency have to be weighed against the possible effects of deregulation on financial stability.

While there is no strong evidence of any trend increase in financial volatility in key markets, there have been a number of episodes of instability apparently linked to financial deregulation. However, the analysis of individual crises suggests that inappropriate macroeconomic policies, deficiencies in prudential policies, and microeconomic distortions affecting incentives in the financial sector, were important contributing factors to the crises.

This paper discusses the impact of regulatory reforms and privatisation across the OECD area in enhancing competition in the service sector. After discussing the broad trends in regulation and deregulation, the main focus is on the experience in the distribution, construction, road transport, telecommunication and airline sectors. It appears that countries with a high degree of regulation in these sectors tend to have poorer performance. Moreover, the effects of regulatory reforms - and their design and implementation - depend critically on the character of competition within each sector.

The analysis suggests that the deregulation process has induced sizable gains in economic performance. Real long-term interest rates: The evidence from pooled-time-series. In this paper a model is presented and estimated that explains real long-term interest rates in terms of developments in low-frequency and high-frequency economic factors in a multi-country framework, for 17 OECD countries since the earlys. The results indicate that the low-frequency component of real rates is determined by fundamentals such as the rate of return on business capital, portfolio risk, inflation uncertainty, and indicators of future saving and investment balances.

Influences on the high-frequency component include monetary policy actions and shocks to inflation. Experience with bankcruptcy legislation in Central and Eastern European countries. One major challenge of economic transition in Central and Eastern European countries is to set up the institutional framework without which markets are unable to operate.

In most countries, this has implied reviving the bankruptcy legislation inherited from their pre-Communist era. This paper compares the design, operation and outcomes of bankruptcy legislation in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. It analyses the reasons why these laws have not been effective so far in solving the widespread insolvency of former state-owned companies, and draws some broad guidelines about desirable features of bankruptcy procedures in economic transition.

Technical progress, factor productivity and macroeconomic performance in the medium-term. This paper analyses the macroeconomic effects of changes in trend factor productivity for the major OECD economies. Medium-term simulations with the OECD INTERLINK model are used to illustrate key uncertainties and sensitivities of adjustment mechanisms to macroeconomic and structural factors.

The results suggest that a rise in trend factor productivity leads to higher levels of real income, but the duration of unemployment effects depends crucially on structural factors. If markets are flexible, then the adjustment period may be relatively short-lived, with no permanent effect on the rate of unemployment.

This paper first assesses the reasons for the substantial increase in health spending as a share of GDP over the past thirty years; and then discusses policy options that may help countries to contain expenditures and reach health objectives more effectively. It is argued that much of the increase in spending stems from incentives facing providers of health services rather than from demand-side pressures. Hence, health sector reforms should focus on improving microeconomic aspects of the provision of services.

In particular, agencies which fund health care should become more active and selective purchasers of health services. Speed limit and asymmetric inflation effects from the output gap in the major seven economies. This paper examines the empirical evidence for "speed limit" and asymmetric effects from the output gap on inflation. The empirical evidence for these effects is not clear-cut across all the major seven OECD economies. Nevertheless, allowing for asymmetric inflation effects does lead to some improvement in fit for a majority of countries.

Moreover, such effects are shown to provide a rotionale for the importance which is often attached to timeliness in taking macroeconomic policy actions, and which is athenvise difficult to justify on the basis of a linear model. The impact of trade and capital movements on labour evidence on the French case. This paper examines the impact of trade and capital movements on French employment and relative wages. It provides three results.

Firsf trade has a modest impact on total employment. Second, trade has a strong impact on relative wages; the paper provides evidence supporting the saying that liberal trade is associated with better jobs rather than more jobs.

Lostly, the paper shows that outword FDI is essentially done by exporting sectors and that inward FDI which is broadly the same magnitude occurs in the downsizing industries as well as in the exporting sectors. Turning points in the international business cycle: This paper examines the performance of leading indicators for predicting turning points in industrial production of the G7 countries.

The analysis is based upon leading indicator information and a chronology of industrial production turning points compiled by the OECD. Sequential probability models are applied to the prediction of turning points.

This requires that a learning process be specified both for the conditional densities and for the transitional probabilities incorporated in the model. The results of the study indicate that in general, the time taken for the sequential probability to cumulate to a point where a turning point in industrial production is signalled is relatively stable across countries.

The signal lead time, however, varies both across countries and between peaks and troughs for individual countries. Potential output, output gaps and structural budget balances. This paper reviews the methods used for estimating potential output in OECD countries and the use of the resulting output gaps for the calculation of structural budget balances. The "split time trend" method for estimating trend output that was previously used for calculating structural budget balances is compared with two alternative methods, smoothing real GDP using a Hodrick Prescott filter and estimating potential output using a production function approach.

It is concluded that the production function approach for estimating potential output provides the best method for estimating output gaps and for calculating structural budget balances. The effect of trade and foreign direct investment on employment and relative wages. This paper summarises and assesses recent studies on the impact of current trends in trade and direct investment on employment and wages in OECD countries and discusses various policy options being considered to meet the concerns of policy makers about these trends.

Consistent with earlier OECD studies, a general conclusion is that such factors as changes in labour supplies, technology and demand are more important than changes in trading patterns in accounting for changes in employment and shifts in relative wages.

However, further studies are needed to understand better the employment and wage impact of foreign direct investment. The EC's internal market: This article provides a brief overview of the content of the EC's internal market initiative and progress made in its implementation.

It also describes the EC's medium-term programme towards ensuring that it becomes a practical reality, It analyses the mechanisms which should lead to welfare gains, and reviews a wide variety of micro- and macroeconomic indicators in order to ascertain whether integration has proceeded since the mid- s. Policy issues, which are more or less closely linked to the success of the internal market initiative, are also addressed.

These include competition policy, social and regional policy aspects and changes to the foreign trade regime. Costs and benefits of moving from low inflation to price stability. This paper reviews issues concerned with the long-run objectives of monetary policy. In particular, it looks at the case for aiming at zero inflation rather than a low positive rate in the long run.

Available evidence on the net costs and benefits of disinflating within inflation ranges that are very close to zero appears inconclusive. Measurement biases in standard price indices may be large enough to be materially relevant to the choice of inflation objectives. This paper forms part of on-going OECD work on the economic assessment of public pension systems in view of the process of the ageing of populations. It provides indicative estimates of the size of public pension liabilities in the main seven economies based on simplifying assumptions, and analyses the sensitivity of these estimates for changes in pension rules and the discount rate.

The methodology developed here combines actuarial approaches used in the private sector with so-called generational accounts. Such accounts indicate in present-value terms the lifetime financial burden government programmes impose on present and future generations.

A survey of the trade and environment nexus: This paper presents a survey of the growing literature on trade and environment linkages, focusing on the link between trade and environmental policies; environmental regulation and competitiveness; and trade liberalisation, growth and the environment.

Linkages refer to environmental externalities; environmental and trade policies; consumer and social preferences towards the environment; factor mobility, technology diffusion, and trade orientation. The paper contrasts South issues which are largely production-based and institutional, with North issues where both demand and supply generate substantial trade-environment linkages.

Finally, the paper highlights the need for more empirical results and indicates directions and priorities for this work.

Active labour market policy and unemployment - a framework for the analysis of crucial design features. The paper develops a framework for the analysis of active labour market policies and uses that to structure various effects on wage setting, labour demand and labour supply. The empirical evidence on wage and employment effects is surveyed.

Several design features are seen as crucial for success: The conclusion is that most European countries are likely to do better with more of active labour market programmes but not a lot better. This article reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the sources of medium-term productivity growth and provides an empirical analysis of labour and total factor productivity TFP growth in the business sectors of OECD economies.

Higher education levels, low initial productivity levels, moderate labour force growth and low inflation are the factors found to be associated with faster TFP growth.

Faster capital accumulation accelerates labour productivity growth, but no evidence is found for a TFP growth bonus. Neither this article nor the other empirical studies examined can explain a significant portion of the productivity growth slowdown.

This note updates data on levels and growth rates of labour and total factor productivity in the business sectors of OECD countries. Productivity levels across countries are made comparable through the use of purchasing power data. While convergence has continued through the s in productivity levels, considerable variation remains across OECD countries. Only limited evidence was found to suggest that there had been any pick-up in trend productivity growth during the s. This paper investigates the links between trade flows and industry relative wages for a cross-section of 22 sectors in 12 OECD countries.

First, the industries are classified according to stylised facts about market structure. Second, import penetration trends are analysed during the periodwith special focus on imports from Asian NIEs. Finally, a wage equation is estimated encompassing both the characterisation of industries by type of market structure and measures of import penetration and export intensity.

The results show that the impact of import penetration on wages is negative in industries with low product differentiation whereas the reverse result occurs in industries with high product differentiation and market segmentation.

Monetary policy credibility and price uncertainty: The effects on price uncertainty arising from the legislation of anti-inflation policies in New Zealand are assessed using the standard deviation of price-related expectations across respondents drawn from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Survey. Also examined is whether diverging views about the current and future stance of monetary policy significantly contribute to price uncertainty. Legislative factors which enhance central bank independence are shown to reduce future price uncertainty and mitigate political influences.

However, uncertainty relating to the stance of monetary policy increases price uncertainty, suggesting a transparent operation augments the benefits of inflation targets.

The effects of net transfers on low incomes among non-elderly families. In considering the possible effects of different tax and transfer systems in OECD countries, efficiency concerns have been the centre of the social-policy debate. There has, however, been a growing interest in assessing the extent to which these policies have succeeded in alleviating poverty. This article uses micro data for 11 OECD countries and concludes that simple and comprehensive measures of poverty are reduced once allowance is made for net transfers.

The analysis explores different country patterns and shows the relative contributions of three elements to poverty reduction: Employment regulation and patterns of work in EC countries. This paper constructs indicators for the strength of employment regulation in EC countries, based upon fairly detailed descriptions of restrictions on dismissals, fixed-term employment contracts, temporary work agencies, and working time.

It then considers a variety of indicators for patterns of work, such as the ratio of employee employment to population, concentration in the distribution of weekly hours worked, and temporary workers who would have preferred a permanent job. Many regulations appear to be influencing their targets as expected, but there is also evidence that regulation has undesirable indirect effects, reducing the overall level of the regulated forms of employment and increasing dissatisfaction among non-standard workers.

This paper examines recent evidence relating to the persistence of high rates of unemployment in many OECD countries. It assesses the empirical relevance of some possible sources of persistence, including changes in the natural rate of unemployment, and slow labour market adjustment towards a longer-run equilibrium.

While elements of various hypotheses may be needed to fully explain persistence, the evidence - while not conclusive - suggests that slow aujustment of both wages and employment is an important part of the story.

The role of real and nominal rigidities in macroeconomic adjustment: This paper examines whether divergent behaviour of output, inflation and unemployment in the G3 countries can be explained by differences in real and nominal rigidities in wage and price formation. Such rigidities are found to be much higher in the USA and Germany than Japan, reflected in correspondingly large disturbances to the real economy following demand or supply shocks. In Japan, the flexibility of hours worked and labour force participation are further reasons why disturbances to unemployment are small.

This paper presents empirical evidence on trends and cycles of unemployment and labour-force participation. Some of the mechanisms behind the observed developments are analysed. The observed interplay between unemployment and participation has implications for the interpretation of unemployment as an economic and social indicator. The paper ends by presenting some unexplained puzzles concerning the interplay between trends and cycles of unemployment and labour-force participation.

Centralisation of wage bargaining and macroeconomic performance - a survey. The paper sets out the theoretical arguments underlying the hypothesis of a hump-shaped relationship between the degree of centralisation of wage bargaining and real wages. Subsequently, it considers extensions to the basic model, drawing also on practical experience in various countries, and investigates the various dimensions of centralisation in the wage formation process.

A review of the empirical literature in the field comes up with mixed results. This is not surprising given the diversity of effects discussed in the paper, which motivates why unambiguous policy conclusions do not seem possible. Adjustment under fixed exchange rates: Fixing exchange rates between countries entering into the European Monetary Union shifts the burden of inter-regional adjustment onto labour and product markets.

At present, rigid labour markets in European economies raise the output and employment costs of aqusting relative price levels at fixed exchange parities. High adjustment costs also reduce financial markets' confidence that fixed-exchange rates and fiscal convergence commitments are feasible, entailing large interest differentials. By contrast, the growing integration of Member countries should diffuse country-specific demand shocks more smoothly than at present, and reduce the impact of localised fiscal policy as well.

This paper examines the relationship between share prices and investment, addressing the question of whether investment is influenced by inefficient pricing in equity markets. The results indicate that while there is a significant relationship between share prices and business investment in some countries, this largely reflects share price correlation with, and anticipation of, other macroeconomic developments. Pricing inefficiencies, lo the extent they are present, do not seem to have a statistically or economically significant influence on investment.

This paper examines evidence obtained from panel data concerning factors which influence individual transitions between different labour market states, particularly unemployment and employment.

The effects of individual characteristics, such as age and education, are reviewed, as is the influence of training schemes. Also reviewed are the effects of unemployment benefits on the duration of unemployment, and various aspects of the job search behaviour of unemployed workers. Economic integration between Hong Kong, Taiwan and the coastal provinces of China. Economic integration between Taiwan, Hong Kong and the coastal provinces of southern China has advanced rapidly in recent years.

This paper analyzes the sharp increases in trade and investment within what may be called the "Chinese Economic Area": Policy changes in Taiwan and, particularly, China have allowed deeper economic ties to develop, driven by the complementarities among the three economies.

Based on firm survey data available in the United States and Japan, the paper examines how the trend towards globalisation in the s, characterised by a FDI boom, has affected the size and trend of intra-firm trade IFT flows. The share of IFT in total US trade has been roughly stable at around 35 to 40 per cent and IFT is mostly concentrated in technology and human capital intensive industries.

The example of Japanese and other Asian firms in the United States points to the importance of investment in wholesale activities in the promotion of exports. Costs of reducing CO2 emissions. Costs of reducing CO2 emissions: This paper summarises and analyses results of the OECD's Model Comparisons Project.

The aim of the project is to better understand differences across six global models in the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In order to facilitate comparisons, key assumptions and reduction targets have been standardised. The paper provides evidence on: By modeling the decisions of households and firms, applied general equilibrium AGE models are able to capture the economic mechanisms that link, in each period of time, the available resource base to man-made emissions of CO2.

The project is called the GeneRal Equilibrium ENvironmental model, hereafter referred to as GREEN. This paper provides a non-technical overview of the GREEN model specification, parameterisation and calibration. As such, it is a complement to the other papers on GREEN in this volume that report the results of various policy-relevant simulations with the model.

The costs of international agreements to reduce CO2 emissions: This paper reports the results of several simulations with the OECD's GREEN model designed to quantify the economy-wide and global costs of a range of international agreements to curb carbon dioxide CO2 emissions.

Two particular aspects of international agreements are highlighted. The first is the issue of country coverage; this is examined by simulating an agreement among the OECD countries alone and then extending it to encompass action by the non-OECD countries too.

The second is the quantification of the potential welfare gains to individual countries and the world economy as a whole from implementing cost-effective agreements, i.

Trade and the effectiveness of unilateral CO2-abatement policies: The results suggest that the leakage rate would be small, contradicting the findings of forex brokers with e gold deposits researchers.

In order to test the robustness of this GREEN result, a sensitivity analysis was undertaken with respect to the supply elasticities of fossil fuels and the price elasticity of trade flows. The main conclusion is that how to publish poems and earn money key parameter determining the size of the leakage rate is the supply elasticity of coal.

The effect of existing distortions in energy markets on the costs of policies to reduce CO2 emissions: This paper highlights how the existence of distortions in energy markets could play an important role in designing a global strategy to curb CO2 emissions.

Governments in many non-OECD countries appear to subsidies energy demand heavily. The existence e of these subsidies has several implications. First, eliminating these subsisides is an obvious candidate for a "no-regrets" approach to the design of an international agreement.

Second, the economic costs to the world as a whole of curbing global emissions are overestimated when energy subsidies in the non-OECD countries are index market shanghai stock treated as explicit distortions.

Third, an international agreement involving the elimination of existing subsidies before phasing-in carbon taxes could be achieved at virtually no cost for the non -OECD countries taken as a whole so long as carbon reductions are cost-effectively allocated across countries. Carbon taxes and current energy policies in OECD countries. In response to the threat of global warming much attention has been paid to taxes levied on the carbon content of fossil fuels carbon taxessince they are potentially efficient economic instrument for reducing emissions of Binary options on fibonacci levels, the main greenhouse gas.

This paper first reviews the existing and evolving structure of fossil fuel prices and taxes and the relationship between energy prices and emissions. It then analyses the economic cost of superimposing carbon taxes on top of current energy taxes. Finally, using a simple energy demand system, tax reform proposals are simulated including restructuring present energy taxation by the average excel trading days formula carbon tax and a carbon cum energy tax similar to the EC proposal.

This paper considers the growth in regional trading ati tactical stock for ruger mini 14 RTAs in the world economy over the period The number of RTAs and of questus global capital market ltd stock value history participating in them and the intra-area freeing of trade have certainly increased.

However, the empirical evidence from an examination of the import trade data for four RTAs among OECD countries EC, EFTA, Canada-United States FTA, and Australia-New-Zealand CER does not support the view that RTAs have led to a growing regionalisation of world trade.

There is some tendency for world trade to become more polarised as the share of intra-area imports has increased for the westem European and ASEAN regions but not for the North American region. Institutional commitments and policy credibility: The success of ERM countries in reducing inflation has led to much analysis of whether ERM membership has given rise to policy credibility effects.

This article examines the analytical foundations of the credibility hypothesis, reviews the econometric evidence on whether or not credibility contributed to low-cost disinflation in ERM countries and provides independent estimates of possible credibility effects since The article finds some policy credibility effects in financial markets in the second half of the s, but there is little evidence that credibility effects in labour or product markets have significantly reduced the costs of disinflation.

This paper deals with the measurement of the non-market production of goods and services by households and explains why the issue is important for various areas of economic analysis. It discusses the definition of production in the UN-OECD System of National Accounts. It then reviews and assesses different measurement methods of the value added by non-market productive household activities.

The paper concludes with suggestions for future research. Wages and wage policies in market economies: This paper reviews theory and evidence on how market economies solve the labour allocation and performance problems and draws lessons for the economic transitions in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe CEECs.

The paper begins by addressing the role of wages and competitive labour market mechanisms in skill acquisition and in the industrial allocation of labour. Subsequent sections address institutional aspects of wage formation, the conflict between the efficiency and distributional aspects of wages, and how wage incentives are used to encourage high performance within organisations. The problem of establishing effective managerial incentives in CEECs receives trading correlation forex pairs attention.

The paper what constitutes a stock market correction with a consideration of the difficulty in establishing effective incomes policies to counter the threat of inflation during the economic transitions in CEECs.

Labour markets and the transition in Central and Eastern Europe. The initial phase of the transition from centrally-planned to market-based economies has been marked by a rapid rise in unemployment in Central and Eastern Europe. While this may have been inevitable in the short-run, high and persistent levels of unemployment could strain the social consensus supporting the current reforms.

The risks of this occurring are discussed in this article which first presents an overview of labour markets under central planning and then analyses recent developments, including the changing structure of employment, growth of the private sector and the composition of the pool of unemployed.

A final section discusses some implications for labour market policies. Is P-star a good indicator of inflationary pressure in OECD countries?

Speculative attack on a currency

The P-star approach has been developed by the U. Federal Reserve as a new indicator of inflationary pressures. This paper assesses its usefulness for 20 OECD Member countries. Regression results are presented and in-sample tracking ability and forecasting performance of the equations are compared to rival inflation models and official OECD projections. Stock market volatility in OECD restricted stock units dividend equivalents This paper examines the historical patterns among the returns and return volatilities of stock market indices for 15 OECD countries over the last thirty years.

It characterises trends in gross volatility and measures of inter-market correlations, describing the degree and manner in which these statistics have changed over time. It discusses the implications of transitory periods of excess volatility for real economic activity and considers financial policies that have been proposed in the United States to limit such volatility. The results suggest that the past three decades have coincided with a world-wide increase in the average levels of volatility in stock returns as well as a general increase in the strength of the positive correlations euronext stock exchange trading hours national stock index returns and the conditional volatilities of these returns.

The evidence to date does not suggest that the increase in volatility has had strong effects critically examine the impact of exchange rates volatility on currency trading economic activity. In a recent study, David Aschauer concluded that the significant slowdown of the growth of private-sector total factor productivity in the United States in the early s was due to the contemporaneous slowdown in the rate of investment in public-sector infrastructure.

If he is right, the obvious policy implication is that boosting infrastructure investment would be a good way to promote economic growth, a course that has been recommended by some economists. In particular, the regression results presented here are not sufficiently robust to provide much support for the policy of a sharp rise in infrastructure investment.

Taxes levied on the carbon content of fuels carbon taxes are being considered in many OECD countries as a possible policy instrument to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This paper first reviews the policy response in OECD countries to the threat of global warming. It then discusses the link between carbon emission intensities and current energy prices.

It examines the relative price effects of current energy policies and the implicit carbon taxes reflected in present calls for binary options taxation for different fuels. Finally, the likely effect of a carbon tax on energy prices and emission intensities australian binary options trading robot scam discussed.

Real interest rate trends: This paper examines the trends in saving, investment and real interest rates. In doing so an attempt is made to identify some of the major influences on real interest rates in the past. In addition, some prospective influences reddit forex the course of real interest rates - government saving, the demand for funds from non-OECD countries and demographics - are considered. Controlling government spending and deficits: During the s most OECD governments launched medium-term strategies to restore greater balance to the public finances.

It was generally agreed that the brunt of the strategy should be borne by expenditure grid ea forex mt4 rather than tax increases. This paper describes how governments achieved better budgetary control in the s, examining trends in deficits, revenues and expenditures. The focus throughout is on general government which accounts for most of public sector activity in OECD countries.

It also assesses the main spending pressures which OECD governments are likely to face in the s and suggests some possible policy bread and butter forex system. Economics and the environment: Concerns over the pace, scope and causes of environmental degradation have led to a renewed interest in the way environmental and economic policies interact.

This paper first reviews the main causes for excessive use of environmental resources in a market economy, focusing also on economy-wide implications. The merits of different policy instruments to counter environmental degradation are then discussed, and the information needed for the successful conduct of environmental policy is reviewed. The paper also considers the policy options to cope with uncertainties surrounding cost and benefit estimates. Finally, the paper highlights some policy issues concerning international co-operation on regional and global issues.

Macroeconomic implications of reducing greenhouse gas emissions: This paper surveys various estimates of the macroeconomic implications of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Most available studies focus on policies to reduce CO2 emissions and are limited to the costs of such policies. The survey first examines the key factors shaping baseline emission scenarios. It then looks at the aggregate cost of emission reductions, as shown by both global and country-specific models, and discusses the key determinants of commodity futures trading commission proposed rule 4.13 model outcomes.

The paper also briefly reviews other options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and draws some more general lessons for the policy response to the threat of stock market obama vs bush change. Growth of the capital stocks of OECD countries has flagged in the s, despite a rebound in gross business fixed investment. This has raised concerns of a shortage of capital and focused attention on government policies to further raise investment.

The evidence presented in this article does not provide support for the standard theories of investment forex factory james16, on which such policies are based. Thus, there is little evidence that government incentives will raise capital accumulation.

International economic linkages and classical binary options strategy 60 seconds international debt situation. Since the early s the third-world debt crisis has contributed to fragility in parts of the OECD financial system, brought to a halt growth in many indebted countries, and reduced regional and world trade flows.

To investigate the role international linkages between large joseph granville new key to stock market profits countries and OECD countries have played in the evolution of the debt situation, purpose-built macroeconomic models of major Latin American economies, integrated with the OECD's INTERLINK system for az stockbroker fraud lawyers OECD macroeconomic developments, have been developed.

These models are used to show the relationship between debt indicators and OECD fiscal and monetary policy, exchange rate and price developments, as well as to assess the contribution of domestic factors and of various overall strategies of dealing with debt - including the role of new money and debt reduction packages. Is convergence a spontaneous process?

Levels of productivity in the OECD countries have become more uniform since the early s; however, the process is uneven and hard to explain from the theoretical point of view. In neo-classical analysis of growth, catch-up occurs spontaneously as a result of the spread of technological progress and capital accumulation. In this paper, developments in three southern European countries are discussed in an arbitrage exist in stock market to throw some light on the factors involved.

Catch-up appears not to be spontaneous; the acquisition of technology and efficient capital accumulation depend largely on the degree of development of market mechanisms and the quality of social and economic infrastructures.

The impact of the minimum wage on earnings and employment in France. Throughout the s and s, the real value of the minimum wage in France has risen due to its frequent up-rating. However, unlike in the United States where the minimum wage is increased infrequently, studies of the French youth labour market have been unable to identify a significant impact of the minimum wage on youth employment. One possible reason for this is that the standard model used to analyse the relationship between the minimurn wage and youth employment is inappropriate.

Using an alternative approach, increases in the minimum wage are found to increase real wages of youth, while the impact on adult wages is much smaller. It proved very difficult, however, to books on strategy binary options 60 sec robust estimates of the impact of real wages on youth and adult employment.

But such evidence as there is suggests long-run minimum wage elasticities of youth employment of The sustainability of fiscal corporation buying stocks buyback New answers to an old question.

Sustainability of fiscal policy is traditionally assessed by projecting the ratio of public debt to GNP taking into account expected pin bar forex ea developments.

Using this new indicator, the paper appraises the degree to which current fiscal policies are sustainable in a sample of OECD countries over short, medium, and long-term horizons.

Subsidisation of industrial activities distorts the allocation of scarce resources, is a burden on government finances and generates friction in international trade. This paper draws on a wide range of data sources to examine industrial subsidisation in OECD countries. The sectoral distribution of subsidies and the relative importance of the different instruments of subsidisation are highlighted.

The final section of the paper evaluates, to the extent possible, the economic effects of subsidy policy. This article summarises the background and content of a new OECD data base on the personal income tax and indicates a number of areas in which these new data can be applied.

It also reviews the different measures of progressivity of personal income tax and describes the different aspects of tax progressivity reflected by the different measures. Finally, it presents and discusses estimates of income tax progressivity in most OECD countries. Portfolio effects and the position of the dollar in exchange markets. The article derives the "spontaneous" demand for new dollar assets arising from how to make money enchanting on runescape growth of global private portfolios which is compared with the "exogenous" supply of such assets.

This simplified flow approach suggests that the growth of global portfolios could continue to translate into an important demand for new dollar assets, albeit not sufficient to fully cover the expected financing need. Whether custom rifle stocks canada would require higher expected returns on dollar assets relative to assets denominated in other currencies will largely depend on spontaneous portfolio diversification.

While in the near future this process could remain favourable to the dollar, over the longer term - as financial markets outside the United States increase their breadth and depth - it could become less supportive of this currency. Rapid progress in financial market deregulation and innovation has occurred in most large OECD economies dough trade options the early s.

One important consequence of this has been enhanced competition and improvements in the allocative efficiency of financial markets. However, transitional costs higher inflation and balance-of-payments difficulties have also been encountered by many economies. At the same time, the process of financial liberalisation has been accompanied by new and longer-run challenges for monetary policy.

Thus, liquidity constraints have been reduced, enabling expenditure decisions to be based more on expected wealth positive carry forex pairs relative prices, implying new transmission mechanisms for monetary policy.

The importance of monetary aggregates as an indicator for monetary policy have been one casualty of this development, while the role of financial prices has increased. National saving ratios are generally lower now than in the s runescape free money generator no download s. This paper first reviews developments in national and international saving and investment trends in OECD countries since the s.

It then examines sectoral saving trends and considers the links between them. There are seen to be important offsets between government and private sector saving and, within the latter, between the business sector and households, so that national and private saving rates tend to be more stable than their component parts.

The paper looks in particular at foreign exchange rate management in nigeria reasons lying behind the volatile behaviour of household saving in certain countries in recent years. The information content of the term structure of interest rates: The paper is devoted to an empirical examination of the information content in the term structure of nominal interest rates for future inflation.

Tests of the ability of the term structure to forecast future changes in the inflation rate are carried out for six major OECD countries using monthly data. These tests demonstrate that the term structure does have considerable forecasting ability, particularly for rates taken from the short end of the maturity spectrum. However, with one exception, forecasting power tends to fade or disappear completely when the term structure in question is formed using, as the long rate, yields on increasingly distant maturities.

This suggests that changes in the nominal term structure using such rates reflect mostly changes in the term structure of ex post real interest rates. Promoting new industrial activities: Popular support is growing in Europe and North America for an industrial policy that would encourage entry of national firms into new industrial activities. The activities that proponents have in mind are primarily technology-based and skilled-labour intensive.

Recent analysis has sought to identify the distinguishing features of modern industries and to evaluate the arguments for government policy support in the light of these features. This paper reviews a number of economically based arguments for an active industrial policy. In each instance, the logical merits and empirical relevance of the case for government action are evaluated and an attempt is made to identify an appropriate policy response where it seems warranted.

Measuring potential output in the seven major OECD countries. Over the past decade make money double in sbi greater attention has been paid to setting economic policies in a medium-term framework. In this context, potential output can forex trading south africa standard bank a useful role as a summary indicator of aggregate supply, and it does so in the OECD's medium-term work.

The aims of this paper are three-fold: A model of housing investment for the major OECD economies. Housing investment accounts for a small but cyclically volatile share of GNP in the major OECD economies.

This paper surveys a range of recent empirical studies of housing and presents a set of estimated equations for the autocad lt 2016 export settings major countries in the OECD INTERLINK model.

These results suggest that reasonable estimates can be obtained by applying a common stock-adjustment approach to housing, in spite of major variations in institutional factors. Modelling the effects lock stock and barrel gun shop agricultural policies.

This paper describes the concept and discusses the practical measurement of the PSE and CSE trading forex market structure applied in the OECD calculations. The effects of changes in exchange rates and the treatment of supply controls are examined, as these are forex brokers asia issues in the interpretation and use of the results in monitoring agricultural policy reform and in trade negotiations.

The MTM model is a medium-term, comparative-static, partial-equilibrium model of world agriculture, comprising eleven country models linked through trade. I t was constructed to evaluate the domestic and international market impact of a reduction in assistance to commodities, as measured by PSEs and CSEs.

Recently, the model has examined these impacts on production inputs, net farm income, developing countries, and specific types of agricultural policies. WALRAS - A multi-sector, multi-country applied general equilibrium model for quantifying the economy-wide effects of agricultural policies. This article provides the methodological background of the WALRAS model which has been developed by the Critically examine the impact of exchange rates volatility on currency trading to quantify economy- and world-wide effects of agricultural policies in OECD countries.

The paper describes the structure of the model and discusses the main economic mechanisms at work with the help of diagrammatic representations. It also discusses the data and parameter values used to calibrate forex trading bank account model.

Agricultural policies in OECD countries are complex: It finds that import taxes and export subsidies are particularly important in Japan and the EC, whereas subsidies for supporting domestic production are the main form of farm support in Canada and the United States. Economy-wide effects of agricultural policies in OECD countries: Simulation results with WALRAS.

These quantify the long-run effects of agricultural policies in OECD countries on resource allocation between the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, on factor returns, on trade volumes and prices, and on economic welfare.

The results suggest that existing levels of farm support in OECD countries are costly, both to the OECD countries and to non-OECD countries. The paper also presents a range of policy-relevant simulations designed to highlight certain aspects of the current debate on agricultural reform. This paper aims to provide an assessment of the robustness of WALRAS simulation results.

It does this by presenting the results of sensitivity analysis with respect to changes in both the specification of the model and the values of its key exogenous parameters.

None of the three changes in model specification examined makes a major difference to the results. The analysis reveals that the import and export demand elasticities are the most crucial exogenous parameters in WALRAS.

However, the presumption that agricultural liberalisation should lead to real income gains is shown to be very robust, even to wide variations in the trade elasticities. Assessing the role of scale economies and imperfect competition in the context of agricultural trade liberalisation: A Canadian case study.

The Effects Of Currency Fluctuations On The Economy | Investopedia

This paper describes a version of the WALRAS model which incorporates scale economies and imperfect competition. This model, referred to as WALRAS-SE, is calibrated to Canadian data. The paper first outlines the theoretical considerations involved, and describes how two alternative assumptions concerning the pricing behaviour of producers in imperfectly competitive markets were implemented in the model.

WALRAS-SE is then used to assess the economy-wide effects of unilateral agricultural liberalisation using levels of support. Finally, the results shed light on the key interaction between the structure of support and the sectoral location of economies of scale.

The so-called "non-economic" objectives of agricultural support. Agricultural support costs OECD countries 72 billions of U. It is frequently argued, however, that this is not waste, but is rather a fair price to pay for a number of "non-economic" objectives such as thriving rural communities and increased national food security.

This paper analyses these objectives and their relationship with agricultural policy. It draws three conclusions: Empirical research on trade liberalisation with imperfect competition: This paper surveys recent empirical research on the benefits of trade liberalisation with imperfect competition and scale economies.

Computable general-equilibrium studies are surveyed, as are a large number of partial-equilibrium studies. The first typical conclusion from the studies surveyed is that calculated gains in national purchasing power are usually two to three times the size of those estimated in traditional frameworks with perfect competition.

The second is that calculated adjustment pressures from trade liberalisation are considerably fx trader trainee singapore than implied in most commentary, and tutorial instaforex untuk pemula also than estimates from forex buy stop limit models.

Economic effects and some policy implications for financing public pensions. Population ageing in the OECD area is expected to affect labour and product markets, and national rates of saving and capital accumulation.

This paper discusses some of the potential effects of ageing, with particular emphasis on its implications for financing public pensions in Japan, the Federal Republic of Germany, Sweden, and the United States.

Future increases in retirement age and reduction of the ratio of benefits to wage levels could help reduce pressures on public finances, while a trust fund can help smooth the transition.

The economic dynamics of an ageing population: The case of four OECD countries. Demographic changes such as population ageing have many effects that influence a country's fiscal viability.

This paper uses a dynamic general-equilibrium model with overlapping generations to evaluate the macroeconomic and fiscal consequences of population ageing in four OECD countries: Japan, the Federal Republic of Germany, Sweden, and the United States. One of the fundamental lessons is that allowing for general equilibrium adjustments reduces the adverse welfare effects of increasing dependency ratios.

Nevertheless, the welfare costs and their distributions acmss cohorts pose serious challenges to policy-makers in some cases.

Structural conditions and macroeconomic responses to shocks: Sensitivity analysis for four european countries. This paper treats expected macroeconomic payoffs from greater competition in product and labour markets by analysing how the four largest European countries would ways to make money runescape eoc to shocks if they had the same degree of price and wage flexibility as the United States.

Based on simulations carried out with the INTERLINK model, the main results are: During the last decade, measures have been taken in many countries to deregulate previously regulated industries and to privatise government-owned enterprises. This paper describes these developments with special focus on the transport and telecommunications industries and reviews the theoretical considerations behind the change in policy approach.

It is argued that regulation of prices, restrictions on entry to certain industries and government investing in the stock market in canada often lead to inefficiencies which seriously impair the welfare gains expected from such measures.

Moreover, regulation is sometimes introduced in markets which work from home rn jobs louisville ky to themselves would have yielded efficient outcomes despite a concentrated production structure.

Revision of the system of national accounts: A note on objectives and key issues. The United Nations System of National Accounts defines aggregates such as income, production, saving and investment which are the basic concepts of macroeconomics. The present SNA is twenty years old and is now being reviewed by statisticians and economists from national options trading classes seattle and international organisations.

The main aim of the review is to update the System to ing stock broker account of institutional developments that have occurred in the last two decades, but the review has also touched upon some fundamental questions such as the distinction between current and capital transactions, depletion of natural resources and the boundary of economic production.

What happened to the pace of innovation during the s? This article presents evidence from patents data, regression analysis and stock market data suggesting that the pace of innovation slowed in most industries during this period, despite remarkable stock for mauser 98 sporter in some areas, such as information technology. Such a slowdown in innvoation could partially account for the observed slowing in total factor productivity ITFP growth.

The paceof innovation may have accelerated in the early s, and could contribute to a resurgence of TFP growth in the years ahead. A cross-country analysis of private consumption, inflation and the "debt neutrality hypothesis".

Do expectations of future financing burdens lead the public to save more when the government runs large deficits? This paper analyses the impact of "fiscal expectations" on consumption in eight OECD countries.

Estimates of a dynamic demand system, based on an extended life-cycle model embodying fiscal expectations, are reported. The results suggest that: The disinflation of the s has been one of the outstanding achievements of macroeconomic policies in OECD countries. After reviewing aggregate price developments between andthis article how to earn money illegally and quantifies the main influences which contributed to falling inflation rates.

Based on simulations carried out with the OECD INTERLINK model, the main reasons for improved inflation performance are analysed. This full-model approach shows that restrictive monetarypolicy between and was the principal factor accounting for the return to more stable price levels in OECD countries. Declines in oil prices also played an important role in sustaining the process after This paper analyses the role of increasing maladjustment in the labour market as a source of high unemployment, particularly in Europe.

After reviewing and dismissing several labour-supply explanations, the paper focuses on the stock market us and asia pacific regionalism of changes in employer hiring decisions. It argues that the reluctance of European employers to hire is related to specific economic and institutional developments, such as pa y compression and greater output uncertainty, that have altered hiring incentives.

It demonstrates both the development of a general reluctance to hire and specific effects tied to these incentives in some countries. This note provides evidence from pooled time-series cross-section data on the extent of non-tariff trade barriers in OECD countries.

This is accomplished through the estimation of "normal" import shares in GDP stock market company abbreviations of deviations from average values for individual OECD countries. Natural barriers to trade - distance and cost of transportation - are assessed through econometric estimates of a relationship 440 stainless steel flat stock cif-fob margins to distance.

Finally, a discussion is provided regarding the issue of underimporting in sub-categories of total imports. Total factor productivity growth TFP for the OECD has slowed from just under 3 per cent a year in the s to about 0. This has led not only to a slowdown in the improvement of living standards, but indirectly to stronger inflationary pressures and higher rates of unemployment.

This study identifies the slowing of capital accumulation, reduced capacity utilization, reduced opportunities for technology transfer and catch-up, and possibly a slowing in new technology generation as macro and structural influences behind the TFP growth slowdown. In doing so, it updates much of the information published in earlier OECD studies related to international economic linkages and the INTERLINK model in particular.

Recent developments in index number theory and practice. The article examines recent developments in index number theory and their implications for the measurement of inflation and growth.

The kinds of price and volume indices which are typically compiled in most countries are shown to be only second best from a theoretical viewpoint, so that their movements should not be taken too literally.

A consensus in favour of chain indices seems to be emerging among index number specialists even though they are still not used much in practice.

The paper attempts to throw more light on the properties of chain indices and also presents a new type of chain index. How might the world economy have looked different in the s if a large deficit had not arisen in the U. This paper examines such a counterfactual history in which U. It concludes that i macroeconomic performance would not call to a member function save() on a non-object cakephp been clearly better in the OECD area; and ii although the tensions arising from the U.

Tax reform in OECD countries: This paper examines the question of tax reform in OECD countries. First, the reasons for tax reform are reviewed. These include economic efficiency arguments as well as concerns about equity which are often a major consideration. Next, the paper considers the many factors which constrain governments in their effort to reform the tax system such as inherent conflicts between efficiency and equity, and the non-revenue objectives of taxationand how those constraints might be reduced.

Finally, the paper reviews the extent of tax reform in OECD countries, noting some of the remaining problems. The economic consequences of agricultural support: The article first establishes a conceptual framework for assessing the impact of protectionist policies on aggregate economic welfare, and then reviews sixteen recent studies - ranging in complexity from single-sector studies to general equilibrium models - which have quantified the social costs arising from agricultural policies in Japan, the United States and the EEC.

After considering related aspects of agricultural policy, including national security and income distribution and stabilization, the article concludes that the economic returns from reform of agricultural policies are substantial. Rapid innovation and regulatory change in the financial sector have eroded barriers between once-distinct markets within countries and internationally, enhanced the flexibility and range of instruments traded in secondary markets and created an intensely competitive market environment in many areas where competition had once been restrained.

This article explores how these broad changes may be altering the probability of crises in financial markets and the forms they might take. It concludes by drawing implications for the role of the lender of last resort and other systemic safeguards in averting or containing crises in the future. A risk premium model of the yen-dollar and DM-dollar exchange rates. Although the exchange rate is one of the most important economic variables, it has proved to be difficult to explain its movements.

One of the difficulties is attributable to changes over time in the relative importance of various determinants of exchange rates, such as interest rates and balance of payments.

This article tries to explain exchange rate movements by a model with a risk premium term and parameters which are affected by structural shifts in international financial markets. The results show that risk premium factors are highly significant, while real interest rate differentials have been increasing in importance in recent years.

This article explains how the OECD system of leading indicators is constructed, covering the choice of reference cycles, selection of indicator series, identification of turning points, trend estimation and aggregation of series to produce composite indicators.

The ability of the composite leading indicators to predict turning points in the industrial production cycle is evaluated using both the complete data that became available after the event as well as the more limited data set that was actually available at the time the indicators were first published.

A final section looks at the ability of composite indicators to predict levels. Indicators of international competitiveness: This paper reviews the methodological problems involved in constructing indicators of international competitiveness and provides some elements for their evaluation. It presents the measures of competitiveness calculated by the OECD and compares them with those published by other institutions.

This comparison highlights the importance of the conceptual principles underlying the construction of such indicators and points to their respective areas of application. A number of indicators portraying special aspects of competitiveness phenomena are then described, together with examples of how they might be used, to illustrate the value of such measures, notably for purposes of cross-country analysis.

A note on the new OECD benchmark Purchasing Power Parities for The OECD has recently published a new set of benchmark Purchasing Power Parities PPPs for twenty-two Member countries based on price and expenditure data for The countries include Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and Turkey, for which PPPs have neverpreviously been calculated.

The main purpose of this note is to present these new PPPs and to explain how they differ from the previous benchmark estimates for The note also contains a brief discussion of the uses of PPPs and a short description of how they have been calculated.

A final section gives some estimates for and This paper focuses on the large current-account imbalances among OECD countries that have emerged over the past several years, and on how the evolution of these imbalances might be influenced by various hypothetical changes in the world economy. Quantitative estimates of how exchange-rate changes, changes in relative growth rates among countries or government budget actions might affect external balances are presented.

Particular emphasis is given to an analysis of the various channels through which changes in specified variables affect external imbalances, and an assessment of the relative importance of these channels. Internationalisation of financial markets and the allocation of capital. This article analyses the effects of the internationalisation of financial markets on the allocation of capital.

It examines the increased integration between domestic and international financial markets and the tendency towards convergence of real interest rates among financially open countries. The article then deals with long-term implications for the international allocation of capital, with emphasis on tax distortions. International comparisons of tax levels: International tax statistics are frequently used to compare tax burdens and the extent of government intervention in the economy.

This article examines the conceptual and practical problems encountered when making such comparisons and identifies similarities and differences in tax level trends in OECD Member countries.

It also provides some explanations for these trends. Microeconomic changes and macroeconomic wage disinflation in the s. Since there has been an important decline in wage inflation and also a renewed emphasis on enhancing the supply-side flexibility of economies.

This article surveys changes in microeconomic policies affecting the labour market, and in wage-setting practices. Although there have been an impressive number of new developments, for any single country most of the changes have been relatively modest and comparatively recent. The article then discusses how these changes might affect aggregate wage developments and attempts a quantitative assessment of their significance.

Service activities, broadly defined to cover all activities that do not result directly in the production of goods, now account for the major part of GDP and employment in OECD countries. This article examines the relative importance of different service activities in terms of their contribution to GDP and employment and their growth rates over the last two decades. It is helpful to distinguish between at least three groups - collective services provided by government, services linked to goods production, and what are here termed "free-standing" services.

Applied general equilibrium models: Introduction of a solution algorithm and the increasing power of computers have made possible the development of complex general equilibrium models and their use in analysing economic policy issues. This paper surveys applied general equilibrium models, analyses their advantages and remaining weaknesses for various policy applications, and discusses efforts to improve on existing models and to extend their usefulness.

It concludes that general equilibrium models are indispensable in determining long-term effects of a number of important policy measures e. Marginal tax rates on the use of labour and capital in OECD countries.

Concern for the effects of taxation on the incentives to work, to employ labour, to save and to invest has focused the attention of policymakers on marginal tax rates. This paper provides some illustrative total marginal tax rates on factor use for most OECD countries. The rates aply to two related pairs of decisions: The rates are "total" in that they attempt to integrate the effects of all taxes levied on these pairs of decisions by all levels of government.

Public debt in a medium-term perspective. This article examines the implications of the recent sharp increase in the ratio of public debt to GNP in most OECD Member countries. The evolution of public debt is also analysed within the wider framework of the government sector's net worth.

One particular element in this approach - the future pension liabilities of governments - is seen to have a significant bearing on the debt outlook in several countries.

The article then assess the sensitivity of the public debt profile under alternative economic conditions and fiscal policy settings.

The international debt situation and linkages between developing countries and OECD. The linkages between the debt situation of some of the most indebted developing countries and conditions in the OECD economies are explored by the use of a model which relates developing country debt to changes in OECD growth, prices, interest rates and other key variables. The way in which financial ratios for certain groups of debtor countries could develop over the next five years is examined on the basis of assumptions about world economic developments.

Simulations on alternative assumptions allow an assessment of the importance of the linkages and the sensitivity of the debt situation to developments in the OECD economies.

Pure profits and Tobin's q in nine OECD countries. This paper presents valuation ratios Tobin's q for nine countries. Tobin's q embodies market expectations and is an indicator of expected pure profit rates on the existing capital stock. Sinceequity markets have recovered substantially. By end, values of Tobin's q were close to their levels and to the symbolic figure of unity.

The theoretical and conceptual relevance of q is considered, as well as data and measurement limitations. Real debt and equity costs of finance are considered in the light of buoyant stock markets.

The implications of the strong recent recovery in q for investment are also noted. Differences between unemployment rates for countries or regions may be explicable in terms of different degrees of "labour market flexibility". This article discusses some of the meanings of that term, and related macroeconomic implications.

External price or supply shocks arising in conditions of rigid labour markets are thought to lead to higher structural unemployment.

Making labour markets more adaptive and responsive to changing demand and supply conditions would therefore help to remove impediments to a return to sustainable high employment levels.

This article examines the relationship between the competitive environment facing firms and the extent to which prices charged by these firms are responsive to changes in costs or demand.

A model of optimal dynamic pricing is developed and tested on disaggregated industry data from five countries. The general conclusion is that in those sectors where competitive pressures - as proxied by several different indicators - are relatively weak, price smoothing is an important phenomenon. The implications of this finding for macroeconomic behaviour of economies are briefly considered, and in particular the light it sheds on "neoclassical" versus "fix-price" paradigms for macroeconomic theory.

This paper describes modifications to, and further developments of, the supply block in the Secretariat's world model INTERLINK as of autumn The objective of the work was to strengthen the role in the model of supply side elements, in particular profitability. In the process, stockbuilding was endogenised, assigning to inventories an important buffer role between sales and output in the dynamic adjustment process.

Price formation has been linked more coherently to the revised supply structure via a dual cost function, and labour supply has been endogenised. When the prices of goods andservices sold in different OECD countries are converted into a common currency by means of market exchange rates, differences emerge between countries in both the levels andpatterns of their prices.

These differences, which are both substantial and persistent, are systematically related to levels of real per capita GDP. They show that there is no tendency for exchange rates to equal the purchasing power parities for final domestic expenditures, at least between countries with markedly different levels of real per capita GDP. During recent years real interest rates, both short- and long-term, have been high by historical standards in many OECD countries, regardless of the measure of expected inflation used to adjust nominal rates.

A number of domestic factors which may have contributed to unusual upward pressure on interest rates, as well as international transmission aspects, are analysed, but none can be attributed a dominant role. Substitution between different categories of labour, relative wages and youth unemployment.

Available research suggests that when the relative supply of women to the labour market increases, as it did in most developed countries in the s and s, the wage rate of young workers must fall relative to other wages if youth unemployment is not to rise. This paper discusses the evidence from related empirical studies and evaluates their research methods. The historical determinants of nominal wages are analysed for eleven OECD economies, and consideration is given to the implications for future development of wages, and hence of inflation.

There appears to be little risk of renewed inflationary pressures emanating from the labour market, because unemployment rates are currently sometimes substantially above estimates of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment.

Specific measures of wage flexibility are also derived; by any measure, Japan stands out as the country having the most flexible wages. There was a widespread decline in profit rates from to ; in some countries, profit shares fell. In the s these phenomena became general, accompanied by low rates of growth and capacity utilisation. This article examines profit trends and cycles in historical perspective, with attention to measurement problems.

It discusses various concepts of profit and their economic significance. Inflation, the associated response of interest rates, the revaluation of assets and liabilities and the interaction of these effects with the tax system affect firms' financial profitability, while National Accounts profitability is important as a measure of productive efficiency in the economy. Representing recent policy concerns in OECD's macroeconomic model.

Over the past few years, a number of issues have demanded increasing attention by policymakers. These include the behaviour of financial markets, the effects of expectations, the interactions of OECD economies with the developing economies, and the determinants of supply-side performance. Analysis of these issues by the OECD Secretariat has progressively been incorporated into its world model, INTERLINK.

This note describes, in a non-technical way, the main features and broad preliminary conclusions of this work prior to publication of more detailed technical studies of specific aspects. The role of public sector. Programme objectives, achievements and adverse consequences. Trade between developed and developing countries: The paper reviews the trade policies applied by developed and by developing countries in the postwar period and examines the effects of these policies on trade between the two groups of countries.

Emphasis is given to trade in manufactured goods, which has been the most dynamic element of world trade. The possible interest of developed and developing countries in the liberalisation of their mutual trade is examined, with a view to establishing a policy package for multilateral trade liberalisation.

Finally, matters relating to the conduct of a North-South round of trade negotiations are analysed. Structural budget indicators and the interpretation of fiscal policy stance in OECD economies. Distinguishing "structural" from "cyclical" budget deficits, this paper presents estimates of structural budget deficits in OECD economies and traces them to, primarily, government debt interest payments.

It also analyses recent structural budget developments in the context of monetary targeting, pressures on private savings and the growing burden of public debt and debt service, which now places severe limits on the room for fiscal manoeuvre in most OECD countries. It concludes that the budget deficit adjusted for variations both in the cycle and in the rate of inflation appears to be a more informative indicator of the fiscal stance than the budget deficit per se.

This article examines the accuracy of real GNP and inflation forecasts made by the OECD Secretariat and various bodies in OECD Member countries. In many years, there is cancelling of errors across countries, so that year-ahead forecasts for OECD real GNP have been within one percentage point or so of the outcome.

In a few years, however, the majority of single-country forecasts exhibited errors in the same direction, leading to large forecasting errors for OECD GNP. These occasions generally followed large, and novel, shocks to the OECD economy, whether originating inside or outside the region.

Knowledge of the interaction between macro-economic policy and exchange rates is imperfect and incomplete. This paper examines the scope for such usage looking at relevant qualitative, quantitative and historical evidence.

Broadly it would appear that, although many other factors are at work, policies can influence exchange rates - at least if the policy adjustments are large enough and in harmony with each other.

The efficacy of monetary targeting: The recent experience with monetary targeting particularly in countries where velocity has behaved in an unexpected wayand uncertainties implied by the unpredictable future effects of financial innovations have led to reservations about the reliability of relations between money and income.

This paper considers the likely implications of financial innovations on the demand for money and uses econometric techniques to analyse the empirical stability of money demand equations in major OECD countries.

There appears to be at least one monetary aggregate for which a stable demand function can be identified in each of the major OECD economies. Domestic and international effects of government spending under rational expectations.

To what extent do government deficits, by increasing the stock of debt, contribute to higher interest rates? It is sometimes argued that empirical evidence of such a linkage is weak, so that, for example, expansionary fiscal policy in the United States cannot be the cause of high interest rates and of a strong dollar.

This paper shows that even in the absence of debt supply effects on interest rates, increased U. This article discusses the implications for fiscal policy effectiveness of persistent budget deficits combined with tight monetary targets. Furthermore, when such accumulation is used to finance consumption and causes growing imbalances between government bonds andother financialassets in private portfolios, this asymmetry can cause upward pressure on interest rates.

Thus the impact of fiscal policy may tend to diminish over the medium term. Multinational modelling of financial linkages and exchange rates.

The OECD Secretariat's world economic model determines exchange rates and capital flows using a modern "portfolio balance" approach which makes capital flows dependent on interest rate differentials and exchange rate expectations.

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco | Research, Economic Research, Publications, Working Papers

By accounting in a consistent though aggregative manner for the financial flows among all OECD countries and with the rest of the world, the model determines seventeen exchange rates simultaneously. This paper reports estimation results for the system. Simultaneous-equation estimation techniques with cross-country parameter restrictions are employed, and a significant "risk premium" is identified whereby exchange rates depend on countries' net foreign asset positions.

Some effects of export restraints on Japanese trading behaviour. This article reviews the implications of recent measures restraining Japanese exports. Examining aggregate export volumes, exports by commodity, and by area, it finds that such measures, unlike other forms of trade restriction, have tended to increase export prices.

As these prices have been adjusted to partly offset exchange rate changes, the macroeconomic implications of changes in the yen exchange rate are altered. It also appears that avoiding "trade frictions" is becoming an important motive for Japanese direct investment overseas.

A comparison of simulation properties of national econometric models. This paper compares the current simulation properties of sixteen national econometric models in active use. The analysis confronts policy-relevant theoretical issues with available empirical evidence. At the risk of oversimplification, the behavioural properties of these models are mainly eclectic-Keynesian in inspiration.

Few embody fully-specified stock or wealth effects; and none, the latest thinking on expectations or supply-side effects. Income measurement in economic accounts is based on actual or imputed transactions and disregards real holding gains and losses on monetary assets and liabilities, even though these occur with predictable regularity in an inflationary environment. In practice, economic agents are well aware of these gains and losses and may be systematkally taking them into account when making decisions about consumption and saving.

Thus the picture of consumer behaviour provided by national accounts may be distorted, especially when inflation is accelerating or decelerating, thus leading to overstatement of the extent to which a fall in inflation is liable to stimulate personal consumption.

What - and how powervul - are the international linkages that each government needs to respect in devising its own policies and how far do they limit effective national action? How do changes in nominal income show up as real output on the one hand or inflation on the other? Resource prices and macroeconomic policies: What do the two oil shocks tell us about the effects of changing resource prices on macroeconomic condtions and the appropriate policy responses?

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD. OECD Home Economics Department Productivity and long term growth OECD Journal: Economic Studies Productivity and long term growth. Economic surveys and country surveillance Economic outlook, analysis and forecasts Monetary and financial issues Public finance and fiscal policy Regulatory reform and competition policy Labour markets, human capital and inequality Productivity and long term growth Economic policies to foster green growth.

Economic Studies, Volume Incorporating anchored inflation expectations in the Phillips curve and in the derivation of OECD measures of the unemployment gap Elena Rusticelli, David Turner, Maria Chiara Cavalleri Does the post-crisis weakness of global trade solely reflect weak demand?

Economic Studies, Volume The effect of the global financial crisis on OECD potential output Patrice Ollivaud, David Turner Lessons from OECD forecasts during and after the financial crisis Christine Lewis, Nigel Pain Rescuing the Phillips curve: Economic Studies, Volume Do investors disproportionately shed assets of distant countries during global financial crises? Economic Studies, Volume The Evolution of Homeownership Rates in Selected OECD Countries: Vincenzo Spiezia How Can Fiscal Councils Strengthen Fiscal Performance?

Economic Studies, Volume What is the Private Return to Tertiary Education? An Investigation of the Role of Policies Orsetta Causa, Catherine Chapuis Does Computer Use Increase Educational Achievements?

Student-level Evidence from PISA Vincenzo Spiezia How Large Are Competitive Pressures in Services Markets? Economic Studies, Volume The policy determinants of hours worked across OECD countries Orsetta Causa Effects of environmental policy on the type of innovation Ivan Hascic, Frans de Vries, Nick Johnstone, Neelakshi Medhi What is holding back productivity growth in India? An integrated approach Joaquim Oliveira Martins and Christine de la Maisonneuve Less than you thought: Park and Douglas Lippoldt Counting immigrants and expatriates in OECD countries: Tax-favoured retirement saving The US fiscal gap and retirement saving Alan J.

Orszag Long-term budgetary implications of tax-favoured retirement saving plans Pablo Antolin, Alain de Serres and Christine de la Maisonneuve Tax treatment of private pension savings in OECD countries Kwang-Yeol Yoo and Alain de Serres Mind the gap: Golub The decline in private saving rates in the s in OECD countries.

Regulatory Reform The implementation and the effects of regulatory reform: Make work pay An overview: Mark Pearson and Stefano Scarpetta Not perfect?

Joseph Hotz and Johan Karl Scholz Experimental evidence on the use of earnings supplements as a strategy to "make work pay" John Greenwood and Jean-Pierre Voyer The family credit system and the working families tax credit in the United Kingdom Andrew Dilnot and Julian McCrae The importance of inclusion and the power of job subsidies to increase it Edmund S. Martin Estimating prudent budgetary margins forEU countries: A comparative note Willem Adema Technology and non-technology determinants of export share growth Evangelos Ioannidis and Paul Schreyer Economic Studies No.

Shumpeterian hypotheses and some new themes George Symeonidis This paper surveys the empirical literature on the links between innovation, market structure and firms size. Mark-up pricing, market structure and the business cycle Joaquim Oliveira Martins, Stefano Scarpetta and Dirk Pilat This paper presents estimates of mark-ups of prices over marginal costs for 36 manufacturing industries and 7 service sectors in 14 OECD countries.

Competition, productivity and efficiency Dirk Pilat This paper discusses the empirical evidence on cross-country productivity gaps and analyses the link between productivity and competition.

Martin Much prominence has been given to the role of unemployment and related social welfare benefits as a determinant of high and persistent unemployment. Market imperfections and employment Paul Geroski, Paul Gregg and John Van Reenen This paper examines whether imperfect competition in product markets has contributed to unemployment problems in industrial economies.

Deregulation and privatisation in the service sector Jens Hoj, Toshiyasu Kato and Dirk Pilat This paper discusses the impact of regulatory reforms and privatisation across the OECD area in enhancing competition in the service sector. The evidence from pooled-time-series Adrian Orr, Malcolm Edey and Michael Kennedy In this paper a model is presented and estimated that explains real long-term interest rates in terms of developments in low-frequency and high-frequency economic factors in a multi-country framework, for 17 OECD countries since the earlys.

Experience with bankcruptcy legislation in Central and Eastern European countries Jean-Marc Burniaux One major challenge of economic transition in Central and Eastern European countries is to set up the institutional framework without which markets are unable to operate. Technical progress, factor productivity and macroeconomic performance in the medium-term Claude Giorno, Pete Richardson and Wim Suyker This paper analyses the macroeconomic effects of changes in trend factor productivity for the major OECD economies.

Speed limit and asymmetric inflation effects from the output gap in the major seven economies Dave Turner This paper examines the empirical evidence for "speed limit" and asymmetric effects from the output gap on inflation. The impact of trade and capital movements on labour evidence on the French case Patrick A. Messerlin This paper examines the impact of trade and capital movements on French employment and relative wages.

Zhang This paper examines the performance of leading indicators for predicting turning points in industrial production of the G7 countries. Potential output, output gaps and structural budget balances Claude Giorno, Pete Richardson, Deborah Roseveare and Paul van den Noord This paper reviews the methods used for estimating potential output in OECD countries and the use of the resulting output gaps for the calculation of structural budget balances.

Baldwin This paper summarises and assesses recent studies on the impact of current trends in trade and direct investment on employment and wages in OECD countries and discusses various policy options being considered to meet the concerns of policy makers about these trends. Costs and benefits of moving from low inflation to price stability Malcolm Edey This paper reviews issues concerned with the long-run objectives of monetary policy.

Medium-term determinants of OECD productivity A. Steven Englander and Andrew Gurney This article reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the sources of medium-term productivity growth and provides an empirical analysis of labour and total factor productivity TFP growth in the business sectors of OECD economies. Steven Englander and Andrew Gurney This note updates data on levels and growth rates of labour and total factor productivity in the business sectors of OECD countries.

Market structure, trade and industry wages Joaquim Oliveira Martins This paper investigates the links between trade flows and industry relative wages for a cross-section of 22 sectors in 12 OECD countries. Fischer and Adrian B. Orr The effects on price uncertainty arising from the legislation of anti-inflation policies in New Zealand are assessed using the standard deviation of price-related expectations across respondents drawn from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Survey.

The effects of net transfers on low incomes among non-elderly families Michael F. Forster In considering the possible effects of different tax and transfer systems in OECD countries, efficiency concerns have been the centre of the social-policy debate. Unemployment persistence Jorgen Elmeskov and Maitland MacFarlan This paper examines recent evidence relating to the persistence of high rates of unemployment in many OECD countries. Centralisation of wage bargaining and macroeconomic performance - a survey Lars Calmfors The paper sets out the theoretical arguments underlying the hypothesis of a hump-shaped relationship between the degree of centralisation of wage bargaining and real wages.

Steven Englander and Thomas Egebo Fixing exchange rates between countries entering into the European Monetary Union shifts the burden of inter-regional adjustment onto labour and product markets.

The stock market and investment Warren Tease This paper examines the relationship between share prices and investment, addressing the question of whether investment is influenced by inefficient pricing in equity markets. Pedersen and Niels Westergard-Nielsen This paper examines evidence obtained from panel data concerning factors which influence individual transitions between different labour market states, particularly unemployment and employment.

Economic integration between Hong Kong, Taiwan and the coastal provinces of China Randall S. King and Michael Klein Economic integration between Taiwan, Hong Kong and the coastal provinces of southern China has advanced rapidly in recent years. Globalisation and intra-firm trade: Costs of reducing CO2 emissions Costs of reducing CO2 emissions: Martin, Jean-Marc Burniaux, Giuseppe Nicoletti and Joaquim Oliveira Martins This paper reports the results of several simulations with the OECD's GREEN model designed to quantify the economy-wide and global costs of a range of international agreements to curb carbon dioxide CO2 emissions.

Martin and Joaquim Oliveira Martins This paper highlights how the existence of distortions in energy markets could play an important role in designing a global strategy to curb CO2 emissions. Carbon taxes and current energy policies in OECD countries Peter Hoeller and Jonathan Coppel In response to the threat of global warming much attention has been paid to taxes levied on the carbon content of fossil fuels carbon taxessince they are potentially efficient economic instrument for reducing emissions of CO2, the main greenhouse gas.

Lloyd This paper considers the growth in regional trading arrangements RTAs in the world economy over the period Steven Englander The success of ERM countries in reducing inflation has led to much analysis of whether ERM membership has given rise to policy credibility effects. What is households' non-market production worth? Ann Chadeau This paper deals with the measurement of the non-market production of goods and services by households and explains why the issue is important for various areas of economic analysis.

Flanagan This paper reviews theory and evidence on how market economies solve the labour allocation and performance problems and draws lessons for the economic transitions in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe CEECs. Labour markets and the transition in Central and Eastern Europe Tito Boeri and Mark Keese The initial phase of the transition from centrally-planned to market-based economies has been marked by a rapid rise in unemployment in Central and Eastern Europe.

Peter Hoeller and Pierre Poret The P-star approach has been developed by the U. Infrastructure and private-sector productivity Robert Ford and Pierre Poret In a recent study, David Aschauer concluded that the significant slowdown of the growth of private-sector total factor productivity in the United States in the early s was due to the contemporaneous slowdown in the rate of investment in public-sector infrastructure.

Energy prices, taxes and carbon dioxide emissions Peter Hoeller and Markku Wallin Taxes levied on the carbon content of fuels carbon taxes are being considered in many OECD countries as a possible policy instrument to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Martin During the s most OECD governments launched medium-term strategies to restore greater balance to the public finances.