Achieving France's medium-term fiscal targets will require significant expenditure efforts. This paper identifies areas where there is scope for increasing expenditure efficiency, with a view to achieving higher quality and more sustainable fiscal consolidation. The methodology is based on a...

Raising South Africa's low employment rate to levels seen in emerging market or advanced economy peers could raise GDP per capita by 50 to 60 percent and reduce income inequality dramatically in the long term. By putting further strain on an already fragile labor market, Covid-19 has raised the...

We show that a dynamic general equilibrium model with efficiency wages and endogenous capital accumulation in both the formal and (non-agricultural) informal sectors can explain the full range of confounding stylized facts associated with minimum wage laws in less developed countries

This paper provides the first systematic study of how minimum wage policies in China affect firm employment over the 2000-2007 periods. Using a novel dataset of minimum wage regulations across more than 2,800 counties matched with firm-level data, we investigate both the effect of the minimum...

Advanced economies have been witnessing a pronounced slowdown of productivity growth since the global financial crisis that is accompanied in recent years by a withdrawal from trade integration processes. We study the determinants of productivity slowdown over the past two decades in four...

The paper uses survey data to analyze whether financial market expectations on government budget deficits changed in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom during the period of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). Our findings indicate that accuracy of financial expert deficit forecasts...

The need to revive Euro area growth highlights the importance of the evolution of domestic and external demand in the core. This paper puts recent demand patterns in France, Germany, and Belgium into historical perspective. We find that, first, dynamics for private consumption, non-residential...