The paper provides an overview of the course of economic reform and the performance of the Russian economy since the early 1990s and an analysis of the structural reform challenges ahead. It assesses the contribution of institutional and structural reforms to economic performance over the...

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 and...

In this paper, we relate the scope and depth of regulatory reforms to growth outcomes in OECD countries. By means of a new set of quantitative indicators of regulation, we show that the cross-country variation of regulatory settings has increased in recent years, despite extensive liberalisation...

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...

With inputs of labour and capital slowing, sustaining high growth rates in Korea will increasingly depend on total factor productivity gains, which are in turn driven to a large extent by innovation. While a number of Korean firms are at the world technology frontier in areas such as ICT, the...

This paper examines the robustness of explanatory variables in cross-country economic growth regressions. It employs a novel approach, Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE), which constructs estimates as a weighted average of OLS estimates for every possible combination of included...

Increasing productivity growth through innovation is a key to raising living standards. Although R&D intensity in Japan is the third highest in the OECD area, the benefits do not appear to have been commensurate with the level of investment. The innovation system, which developed during the...

The global crisis has left many G20 countries with an unenviable legacy of lower potential output and high government indebtedness. Global imbalances, which had narrowed during the recession, are now beginning to widen again, as the recovery takes hold. Structural reform will be needed not only...

This paper examines whether regulation that is more conducive to competitive and efficient financial systems has a significant positive impact on sectoral output and productivity growth in a sample of 25 OECD countries. More specifically, following a methodology used by Rajan and Zingales...