This paper presents empirical evidence on the role that policy and institutional settings in both product and labour market play for productivity and firm dynamics. It exploits a new firm-level database for ten OECD countries and industry-level data for a broader set of countries, together with...

This paper investigates the design of tax structures to promote economic growth. It suggests a “tax and growth” ranking of taxes, confirming results from earlier literature but providing a more detailed disaggregation of taxes. Corporate taxes are found to be most harmful for growth,...

One commonly held view about the difference between continental European countries and other OECD countries, especially the United States, is that the heavy regulation of Europe reduces its growth. Using newly assembled data on regulation in several sectors of many OECD countries, we provide...

This paper investigates the effect of product market regulations on the international diffusion of productivity shocks. The empirical results indicate that restrictive product market regulations slow the process of adjustment through which best practice production techniques diffuse across...

This paper examines the extent to which fiscal policy actions may be offset by simultaneous, anticipatory changes in private saving, as well as the determinants of that offset. The conditions under which private agents will engage in forward-looking consumption-smoothing behaviour are quite...

There is a large literature on how the sharing of revenue between different levels of government and the design of intergovernmental transfer schemes affect sub-national finances. Using a panel of OECD countries during 1980-2005, this paper tests for: i) the presence of a stable long-run...

In several OECD countries, investment rates in the business sector grew strongly in the second half of the 1990s. In some cases, the strength of private investment relative to output growth had raised concerns about the risk of capital overhang and the prospect of a prolonged period of slow...

The ability of discretionary fiscal policy to affect economic activity following shocks depends on how private agents react. This paper re-investigates the extent of possible offsetting private saving behaviour to fiscal policy changes. The results suggest that the private saving offset is...

Many propositions have been made to explain the increase in the German household saving rate since the year 2000 from an individual country perspective but most of them focus on partial aspects. This paper adds to the discussion by analysing whether factors common to other industrial countries...

This paper analyses the reaction of fiscal policy to the cycle in OECD countries. The results suggest that while overall government balances were counter-cyclical in the past and more so in economic downturns than in upswings, discretionary fiscal policy was neutral on average. However,...