Over the past decade, the share of jobs not controlled by the state has increased considerably, whilst employment in agriculture has declined, against the backdrop of ongoing urbanisation. Over 200 million people have been drawn into urban areas through official or unofficial migration, despite...

Using new cross-country data on industry-specific product market regulations, this paper investigates the relationship between wage premia and some of the policy determinants of product market rents. Hourly wage premia in 2-digit manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries are estimated from...

This paper compares a number of housing policies such as housing taxation, land use and rental regulations and social housing policies for OECD countries relying on new data. Based on a range of econometric analyses, it also investigates whether these housing-related policies achieve their...

The responsiveness of housing supply to changes in prices bears important implications for the evolution of housing prices and the speed of adjustment of housing markets. This paper estimates the long-run price elasticity of new housing supply in 21 OECD countries based on a stock-flow model of...

Residential mobility is closely tied to housing market forces and has important implications for labour mobility and the efficient allocation of resources across the economy. This paper analyses patterns of residential mobility across OECD countries and the role of housing policies in enhancing...

Urbanisation in China has long been held back by various restrictions on land and internal migration but has taken off since the 1990s, as these impediments started to be gradually relaxed. People have moved in large numbers to richer cities, where productivity is higher and has increased...

The housing market figures among the main determinants of labour mobility, as households seldom make employment and housing decisions independently of each other. This interdependence is likely to strengthen as the cost of commuting increases, due to worsening road congestion or measures that...

Industrial specialization has important implications for economic performance; therefore, understanding its determinants is of key policy relevance. This paper quantifies the relationship between factor endowments, policies and institutions and patterns of industrial specialisation in production...

This paper uses an impulse-response function approach to assess the magnitude and persistence of the effects of downturns on labour force participation for a sample of 30 countries over the period 1960-2008. Past severe recessions appear to have had a significant and persistent impact on...

This paper quantifies the importance of different determinants of trade at the industry level using a sample of 54 OECD and non-OECD economies. The empirical methodology extends the approach of previous empirical studies to explicitly quantify the impact that trading partners’ factor...