Recent social security reform has significantly improved the long-run sustainability of the pension system. However, the pension system continues to serve as an important barrier to a more rapid expansion of the formalsector economy in two ways. First, early-retirement incentives (including...

The Czech Republic faces one of the largest demographic challenges in the OECD area and making sure the public pension system is able to cope with rapid population ageing is important for long-term fiscal stability and social welfare. This paper assesses five proposals for pension reform made in...

The Czech Republic faces one of the largest demographic challenges in the OECD area and making sure the public pension system is able to cope with rapid population ageing is important for long-term fiscal stability and social welfare. This paper assesses five proposals for pension reform made in...

Recent social security reform has significantly improved the long-run sustainability of the pension system. However, the pension system continues to serve as an important barrier to a more rapid expansion of the formalsector economy in two ways. First, early-retirement incentives (including...

Industrial specialization has important implications for economic performance; therefore, understanding its determinants is of key policy relevance. This paper quantifies the relationship between factor endowments, policies and institutions and patterns of industrial specialisation in production...

This paper quantifies the importance of different determinants of trade at the industry level using a sample of 54 OECD and non-OECD economies. The empirical methodology extends the approach of previous empirical studies to explicitly quantify the impact that trading partners’ factor...

The government’s health reform programme since 2000 has covered many aspects of the organisation of health care and was accompanied by a sizeable increase in spending on healthcare. Many of these reforms have the potential to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of the health care system...

Based on an endogenous growth model, we show that intermediate goods markets imperfections can curb incentives to improve productivity downstream. We confirm such prediction by estimating a model of multifactor productivity growth in which the effects of upstream competition vary with distance...

The transition paths from plan to market have varied markedly across countries. Central and Eastern European and the Baltic countries, which opted for a fast and profound transformation of their institutions, rapidly narrowed the productivity gap with advanced economies. In contrast, in...

Norwegian growth has been strong over the past decade. This development has been supported by the off-shore sector, but depleting oil reserves implies that growth will have to rely increasingly on the mainland economy. Empirical work shows that competition is important for promoting economic...