Urbanisation in China has long been held back by various restrictions on land and internal migration but has taken off since the 1990s, as these impediments started to be gradually relaxed. People have moved in large numbers to richer cities, where productivity is higher and has increased...

Accumulating debt raises concerns about its implications for macroeconomic stability. This paper sheds light on the implications of high indebtedness for the macroeconomic volatility by identifying the main drivers of the evolution of debt in a set of countries. The country choice was based on...

Frequent recourse to large one-off operations in a number of OECD countries has undermined the accuracy of cyclically adjusted fiscal balances as a measure of both the sustainability of public finance and the fiscal stance. This paper first provides detailed information on the nature and amount...

Measuring cyclically-adjusted budget balances for OECD countries An important tool in the analysis of fiscal policy is the distinction between structural and cyclical components of the budget balance. This paper describes work undertaken to re-estimate and re-specify the elasticities underlying...

Since the crisis of 2001, an impressive package of fiscal consolidation and institutional reform has created a strong foundation for economic growth. As a result, GDP growth has been strong and stable, inflation has fallen, and the public debt burden has been significantly reduced. Yet the...

Brazil's fiscal adjustment since the floating of the real in 1999 has been impressive, even in periods of lacklustre growth. This suggests a remarkable fiscal effort to ensure public debt sustainability. To better gauge the magnitude of this adjustment effort, this paper applies the methodology...

The economic crisis in the early 1990s prompted action on reforming the Swedish welfare state and its institutions, including deregulation of a wide range of product markets. In that way, Sweden took early action compared to other OECD countries currently struggling with how to make public...

This paper provides estimates of the implicit fiscal assets as well as of the evolution over time of fiscal costs and revenues related to tax-favoured retirement saving regimes in 17 OECD countries, taking into account current and future contributions, asset accumulation and withdrawals, all of...

This study analyses the impact of economic catching-up on annual inflation rates in the European Union with a special focus on the new member countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Using an array of estimation methods, we show that the Balassa-Samuelson effect is not an important driver of...

This paper analyses the reaction of fiscal policy to the cycle in OECD countries. The results suggest that while overall government balances were counter-cyclical in the past and more so in economic downturns than in upswings, discretionary fiscal policy was neutral on average. However,...