In most OECD countries, public spending rose steadily as a share of GDP over the past decades to the mid-1990s, but this trend has since abated. The spending pressures stemming from the continued expansion of social programmes have been partly compensated by transient or one-off factors....

This paper examines the linkages between housing markets and the business cycle in OECD countries, focusing on how differences in the degree of resilience to economic shocks can be affected by the structural characteristics of housing and mortgage markets. The paper focuses specifically on: the...

Rules constraining the discretionary powers of budget policymakers have become widespread among OECD economies, and the expanding role played by decentralised institutions in providing public services has led to their increasing adoption at the sub-central level.