Productivity growth has declined since the late 1990s, slowing the catching-up process. Structural reforms to strengthen competition, entrepreneurship and innovation would go a long way toward enhancing it. Recent competition policy reforms that strengthen enforcement of cartel law must now be...

Poland’s productivity has grown strongly over the past decade, and efforts to reduce the regulatory burden have been significant. Despite impressive progress, product market regulation remains more burdensome than in most OECD countries, partly due to the importance of red tape and the level...

Productivity growth has declined since the late 1990s, slowing the catching-up process. Structural reforms to strengthen competition, entrepreneurship and innovation would go a long way toward enhancing it. Recent competition policy reforms that strengthen enforcement of cartel law must now be...

Danish productivity has grown only weakly over the past two decades, both historically and in relation to other countries, despite sound policies and institutions. At the same time, the country has lost export market shares. Denmark needs to continue its efforts to reap the benefits of...

This paper examines how import penetration affects firms' productivity growth taking into account the heterogeneity in firms' distance to the efficiency frontier and country differences in product market regulation. Using firm-level data for a large number of OECD countries, the analysis reveals...

This document forms a record of a workshop held on 16 January 2006, aimed at examining the mechanisms underlying cross-country convergence of per capita GDP, to what extent they operate in practice, and the implications for policies, including those requiring plausible long-term projections of...

This document forms a record of a workshop held on 16 January 2006, aimed at examining the mechanisms underlying cross-country convergence of per capita GDP, to what extent they operate in practice, and the implications for policies, including those requiring plausible long-term projections of...

Brazil, like other natural resource-exporting countries, has benefited from a sharp increase in commodity prices over the last few years. To investigate the possible impact of terms-of-trade gains on the real economy, this paper estimates normalised quadratic input demand and output supply...

Globalisation can be a threat or an opportunity, depending on a country’s trade mix and its economic and regulatory structure. This paper assesses which EU countries are most exposed to globalisation using, among other indicators, measures of revealed comparative advantage. It then looks at...

The relationships between trade and growth have long been a subject of considerable controversy among economists. In the early post-World War II period, many economic leaders concluded that protective trade policies stimulated growth, and import substitution policies were widely adopted by...