Taxes and cash transfers reduce income inequality more in France than elsewhere in the OECD, because of the large size of the flows involved. But the system is complex overall. Its effectiveness could be enhanced in many ways, for example so as to achieve the same amount of redistribution at...

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,...

This paper investigates the impact of international shocks - interest rate, commodity price and industrial production shocks - on key macroeconomic variables in ten Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries by using near-VAR models and monthly data from the early 1990s to 2009. In contrast to...

This paper studies the determinants of house prices in eight transition economies of central and eastern Europe (CEE) and 19 OECD countries. The main question addressed is whether the conventional fundamental determinants of house prices, such as GDP per capita, real interest rates, housing...

This study analyses the impact of economic catching-up on annual inflation rates in the European Union with a special focus on the new member countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Using an array of estimation methods, we show that the Balassa-Samuelson effect is not an important driver of...

Investment in network infrastructure can boost long-term economic growth in OECD countries. Moreover, infrastructure investment can have a positive effect on growth that goes beyond the effect of the capital stock because of economies of scale, the existence of network externalities competition...

This paper addresses difficulties in modelling exchange rates in South Africa. Real exchange rate models of earlier research seem to be sensitive to the sample period considered, alternative variable definition, data frequency and estimation methods. Alternative exchange rate models proposed in...

This paper provides a new measure of human capital using PISA and PIAAC surveys, and mean years of schooling. The new measure is a cohort-weighted average of past PISA scores (representing the quality of education) of the working age population and the corresponding mean years of schooling...