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...

Regulatory reform efforts in a broad range of industries have resulted in increased importance of competitive forces as a means to allocate resources and improve economic efficiency. A number of indicators suggest that such forces have been stronger in the United States than in most other OECD...

Regulatory reform efforts in a broad range of industries have resulted in increased importance of competitive forces as a means to allocate resources and improve economic efficiency. A number of indicators suggest that such forces have been stronger in the United States than in most other OECD...

Combining existing information with a newly collected dataset, the paper develops indicators of the performance and the institutional characteristics of OECD judicial systems. It provides cross-country comparisons of measures of trial length, accessibility to justice services and predictability...

The recovery from the current deep recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will require raising productivity through structural reforms. This implies a number of challenges for economic policies. With large parts of the economy shielded from competition, firms face weak incentives to become...

Brazil spends around 15% of GDP on different social benefits, but within these expenditures, different benefits have different social impacts. While the small conditional cash transfer programme Bolsa Família is well-targeted to the poor and has a strong diminishing effect on inequality,...

The Indian financial system has changed considerably since the 1990s. Interest rates have been deregulated and new entrants allowed in the banking and the securities business. The Indian equity market has become world-class. New private banks have emerged that are more customer-oriented than the...

This paper updates of the OECD Insolvency framework indicator, which summarises the main features of insolvency systems, with respect to their ability to prevent the failure of viable firms, allow a timely exit of non-viable companies, facilitate corporate restructuring and promote...

The abuse of public office for private gains – discourages business dynamism, reducing investment and innovation, and weighs on growth prospects. It also undermines the equality of opportunities, distorts the income distribution and erodes trust in government. Corruption is often closely...

The paper examines the current state of competition in a number of sectors that are important for the economy. Because of the country’s small size and isolation, the analysis focuses on barriers to entry, investment and external trade, rather than some standard indicators of competition...