Slovakia’s population is ageing rapidly, with the share of the working-age population expected to shrink by about a fifth in the next 30 years. Ageing-related costs are projected to increase much more strongly than in other EU countries and ageing will put pressure on potential growth and...

Much scope remains to make regulation of product markets more conducive to competition ? notwithstanding progress in recent years ? with substantial benefits for consumer welfare, productivity and employment. While the general competition legislation and enforcement framework is mostly...

Russia in 2003 embarked on the restructuring of its electricity sector. The reform is intended to introduce competition into electricity production and supply, leaving dispatch, transmission and distribution as regulated natural monopolies with non-discriminatory third-party access to the...

This paper examines shifts in labour productivity growth in the United States and in Europe between 1970 and 2007 based on econometric tests of structural breaks. Additionally, it makes use of time-series-based projected labour productivity growth up to 2009 in order to detect any recent break...

This paper discusses ways of strengthening the competitive environment in order to help boost productivity performance in various sectors of the Danish economy. It looks at a number of indicators of the strength of competition — including price levels, industrial concentration and product...

The establishment of competitive markets has been one of the cornerstones Hungarian economic policy over the past decade, alongside a successful strategy of attracting foreign investment. Broad statistical measures show no signs of endemically weak domestic competition, though the country’s...

Key indicators show Germany belonging to the countries in the OECD with strong innovation activity even though some weakening in Germany’s position relative to other OECD countries has occurred recently. While the redirection of resources towards unification-related spending as well as low...

The Maastricht criteria for accession to the euro area can be difficult for any economy to achieve, not least because of the challenges posed by the “impossible trinity”, which suggests that it is not possible to target both a stable exchange rate and stable inflation at the same time as...

Despite some weakening in the 1990s, partly due to sluggish trend growth, the Swiss innovation performance has been very strong. There are, however, areas in which policy reforms could strengthen innovation further and help Switzerland maintain its lead in the face of a changing global...

In recent years economists have come to see rich natural resource endowments as a ?curse? or ?precious bane? that inevitably undermines development and slows economic growth. Resource-based development undeniably involves important risks. Nonetheless, the resource curse - if it exists - is at...