The impressive emergence of China’s economy is set to lose some momentum as the country catches up with more advanced economies and its rapid ageing also weighs on it. However, China can still reap the “reform dividend”, especially with measures to keep up the sustained growth of...

La croissance économique française sur la dernière décade s'est avérée insuffisante pour résorber un taux de chômage élevé et persistant. Les études et comparaisons internationales disponibles suggèrent qu'un renforcement du degré de concurrence permettrait d'améliorer...

This paper assesses the progress of China’s transition toward a market economy by examining the structure of ownership, productivity, and profitability, as well as the concentration of production across firms, industries and regions. It does this by analyzing a database of firm microdata of...

This paper presents evidence on firm demographics and firm survival for a group of ten OECD countries. For each country a dataset of sectoral indicators of firm dynamics has been created using information from business registers. The patterns of firm entry, exit, survival and employment growth...

This paper examines the strength of product market competition and economic performance in Canada and discusses way in which the institutional framework governing competition policy could be improved. Competitive forces are comparatively strong and administrative and economic regulations...

Empirical work shows that competition is important for promoting economic growth. However, in Japan the promotion of competition has long been compromised by ministerial guidance and exemptions from the competition law. Thus, the level and growth of productivity have been low in many...

Maintaining rapid economic growth depends increasingly on productivity gains, particularly in the service sector. Competition has an important role to play in achieving such gains. However, Korea’s development strategy has tended to weaken competition and has left a legacy of government...

Norwegian growth has been strong over the past decade. This development has been supported by the off-shore sector, but depleting oil reserves implies that growth will have to rely increasingly on the mainland economy. Empirical work shows that competition is important for promoting economic...

The economic crisis in the early 1990s prompted action on reforming the Swedish welfare state and its institutions, including deregulation of a wide range of product markets. In that way, Sweden took early action compared to other OECD countries currently struggling with how to make public...

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)...