Three main approaches can be used to assess infrastructure performance. The first employs macro-econometric techniques to estimate the impact of the existing infrastructure capital stock on growth and to infer its growth-maximising level. This approach neglects the impact of infrastructure on...

This report presents the results from a new model for projecting growth of OECD and major non-OECD economies over the next 50 years as well as imbalances that arise. A baseline scenario assuming gradual structural reform and fiscal consolidation to stabilise government-debt-to GDP ratios is...

This paper presents the results from a new model for projecting growth of OECD and major non-OECD economies over the next 50 years as well as imbalances that arise. A baseline scenario assuming gradual structural reform and fiscal consolidation to stabilise government-debt-to GDP ratios is...

In this paper the recently updated product market regulation (PMR) indicators are extended to a larger set of countries including several non-OECD members. It investigates regulatory patterns in this extended set of countries as compared to the OECD countries and analyses the link between...

In this paper we develop a simple analytical framework to analyze “good” and “bad equilibria” in public-debt and growth dynamics. The “bad equilibrium” is characterised by the simultaneous occurrence, and adverse feedbacks between, high and growing fiscal deficits and debt, high risk...

The 2005 reform of the EU Stability and Growth Pact has provided leeway for governments to let their fiscal deficit temporarily breach the 3% rule to finance the immediate budgetary cost of structural reform, such as compensation schemes to offset redistributive effects. Against this backdrop,...

In most OECD countries, public spending rose steadily as a share of GDP over the past decades to the mid-1990s, but this trend has since abated. The spending pressures stemming from the continued expansion of social programmes have been partly compensated by transient or one-off factors....

The UK medium-term budgetary framework introduced in 1997 addressed a number of weaknesses of the former regime, notably a bias against capital expenditure and, more generally, poor conditions for longerterm planning adversely affecting central government spending departments, local authorities...

The tax-to-GDP ratio rose steadily in most EU countries up to the late 1990s, largely reflecting a sustained expansion of public sector commitments to welfare provision. Since the late 1990s, many EU countries have cut tax rates. However, the tax burden in the EU area remains much higher than in...