This paper seeks to assess the impact of liberalisation and privatisation on performance in the generation segment of the electricity supply industry. Regulatory indicators for a panel of 19 OECD countries over a 10 year time period were constructed to examine the influence of regulatory reform...

Offshore natural-gas discoveries have released Israel from complete reliance on imported primary fuels and are allowing for a cleaner energy mix. Furthermore, additional production will soon come on stream, and there is a reasonable chance of new commercially viable gas finds, and possibly of...

This paper assesses Brazil’s regulatory framework and agencies for several network industries (electricity, oil and gas, and water and sanitation). Private investment can be encouraged by tackling regulatory uncertainty in many areas. To this end, recent initiatives include a new regulatory...

This paper proposes and estimates a model of demand for and supply of graduations in tertiary education, which is then used to construct forward-looking scenarios for graduation rates by country. Consistent with evidence that economic returns to education have remained high in spite of rising...

The paper uses an original international database on regulation, market structure and performance in the telecommunications industry to investigate the effects of entry liberalisation and privatisation on productivity, prices and quality of service in long-distance (domestic and international)...

In this paper, we relate the scope and depth of regulatory reforms to growth outcomes in OECD countries. By means of a new set of quantitative indicators of regulation, we show that the cross-country variation of regulatory settings has increased in recent years, despite extensive liberalisation...

Low growth and huge current account deficits have characterised the Portuguese economy over the past decade. Easy credit in global markets, combined with the absence of incentives to limit loan-to-deposit ratios until recently, made it possible to finance internationally high levels of...

Australia’s productivity growth has decelerated markedly around the turn of the century. Part of the decline is probably temporary, but raising multifactor productivity is key to ensure that living standards continue to grow strongly, especially if the currently strong terms of trade weaken...

This paper investigates the role played by deregulation on firms’ investment decisions in infrastructure sectors. The analysis covers the period 1980-2006, which was characterised by increased liberalisation and privatisation across OECD countries. We assess the relationship of different...

After a recession of historic proportions, an export-led recovery is gaining traction in Ireland. The pace of recovery, however, varies sharply across sectors. While export-oriented manufacturing and services, led by large multinationals, have reached record-high levels of output,...