China is well-placed to avoid the so-called “middle-income trap” and to continue to converge towards the more advanced economies, even though growth is likely to slow from near double-digit rates in the first decade of this millennium to around 7% at the 2020 horizon. However, in order to...

This paper examines the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on employment generation for a group of Latin American countries in the period 1980-2006. Using a dynamic panel model, which is estimated with the Arellano-Bover/Blundell-Bond system estimator, I find that FDI has a positive and...

Mexico has achieved a high degree of decentralisation in public services, but the Mexican fiscal federal system has important shortcomings. States and municipalities have become heavily dependent on federal transfers to finance a growing share of public spending. This leaves the burden of...

The current monetary policy framework in several Latin American countries, combining inflation targeting and a floating exchange-rate regime, has contributed to disinflation by anchoring expectations around low, stable levels. This paper uses co-integration analysis to estimate simultaneously a...

Productivity growth has declined since the late 1990s, slowing the catching-up process. Structural reforms to strengthen competition, entrepreneurship and innovation would go a long way toward enhancing it. Recent competition policy reforms that strengthen enforcement of cartel law must now be...

Considering the costs and risks of inaction, ambitious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is economically rational. However, success in abating world emissions will ultimately require a least-cost set of policy instruments that is applied as widely as possible across all emission sources...

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...

This paper explores the role of managerial capital and business research and development (R&D) in fostering multifactor productivity (MFP) convergence in a panel of 42 countries. The OECD long-term growth model is augmented to show that, in addition to trade openness, an economy’s speed of...

The economic effects of environmental policies are of central interest to policymakers. The traditional approach sees environmental policies as a burden on economic activity, at least in the short to medium term, as they raise costs without increasing output and restrict the set of production...