Why do governments in developing economies invest in roads and not enough in schools? In the presence of distortionary taxation and debt aversion, the different pace at which roads and schools contribute to economic growth turns out to be central to this decision. Specifically, while costs are...

How important is foreign knowledge for domestic innovation outcomes? How is this relation shaped by globalization and the attendant intensification of international competition? Our empirical approach extends the previous literature by analyzing a large panel comprising industries in both...

This paper provides a quantitative evaluation of the macroeconomic, distributional, and fiscal effects of three reform proposals for Germany: i) a reduction in the social security tax in the low-wage sector, ii) a publicly financed expansion of full-day child care and full-day schooling, and...

The paper investigates the economic effects of major product market reforms in some of the historically most protected non-manufacturing industries. It relies on a unique mapping between new annual data on reform shocks and sector-level outcomes for five network industries (electricity and gas,...

This paper analyzes the effects of product market reforms in the short and medium term across 10 regulated industries and 18 advanced economies for the period 1998-2013 using internationally comparable firm-level data based on Orbis. It provides four key insights. First, product market reforms...

This paper examines the role of removing obstacles to competition in product markets in raising growth and productivity. Using firm-level data from Italy during 2003-13 and OECD measures of product market regulation, we estimate the effect of deregulation in network sectors on value added and...

This paper examines the role of sectoral spillovers in propagating sectoral shocks in the broader economy, both in the past and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we study how shocks that occur within a sector itself and spillovers from shocks to other sectors affect sectoral activity,...

This paper documents stylized facts on the process of structural transformation around the world and empirically analyzes its determinants using data on real value added by sector of economic activity (agriculture, manufacturing and services) for a panel of 168 countries over the period...

This paper proposes a new index of sectoral labor distortion using employment and valueadded shares. We show that this index is highly correlated with growth both crosssectionally and over time. We also use it to compare the degree of distortion among countries and identify sectors where the...

This paper estimates medium-term potential growth for a country undergoing significant structural and secular changes. Our forward-looking framework, incorporating three analytical approaches for examining economic prospects, constitutes an important complement to typical backward-looking...