Enhancing growth through more innovation has become a priority for Austrian policy makers in line with European policies as laid down in the Lisbon Agenda. This paper discusses Austria’s innovation performance, its innovation policies, and general framework conditions for innovation and...

The authorities have a very ambitious environmental-policy agenda, aimed chiefly at cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but also at dealing with local air and water pollution, waste management and the conservation of biodiversity. The laws that followed the Grenelle de l?environnement...

New Zealand, as a resource-based economy anxious to protect and promote its clean-and-green image, appropriately sees green growth as a natural direction for future development. The country’s environment is of high quality, and depletion of its abundant natural resources is for the most part...

Structural transformation towards a more knowledge-based economy will strengthen Spain’s medium-term growth prospects. To deal with long standing impediments to higher growth the government has a substantial structural reform programme touching on education, the labour market and the business...

Poland is on track to meet its international greenhouse-gas emissions commitments. However, it will need to cut emissions significantly in the future, if the European Commission’s proposal on the Low Carbon Roadmap is adopted. Policies should ensure that the country’s substantial reduction...

Developments over the past few years have shown that reforms to address climate change are no less difficult to implement than reforms in other areas, even if the objective of limiting global warming is broadly accepted. In the case of global public goods such as the climate, the political...

This paper presents a productivity growth measure that explicitly accounts for natural capital as an input factor and for undesirable goods, or “bads”, as an output of the production process. The discussion focuses on the extension of productivity measurement for bad outputs and estimates of...

This paper proposes an analytical framework for assessing policies that will contribute to a better integration of environmental externalities in the pursuit of economic efficiency and growth objectives. The framework consists of two parts. The first part lays out principles and criteria for the...

Many studies on household energy efficiency investments suggest that a wide range of seemingly profitable investments are not taken up. This paper provides novel evidence on the main factors behind consumer choices using the OECD Survey on Household Environmental Behaviour and Attitudes. The...

The 2011 disaster and nuclear problems opened the door to a new energy policy, as they raised fundamental questions about the electricity system’s ability to prevent and respond to accidents. In particular, the system has had difficulty coping with the shortages caused by the accident and the...