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...

Denmark has been a frontrunner in policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and now plans to cut emissions by 70% by 2030 from 1990 levels and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Such ambition induces halving emissions from 2019 levels and making the same emission abatement effort in ten...

France has a track record of persistent general government deficits, partly reflecting pro-cyclical fiscal policies in upswings. This has resulted in a quadrupling of its public debt-to-GDP ratio since the 1970s to above 80% of GDP. Reducing public debt is crucial because a high level of public...

In recent years, policymaking in China has put increasing emphasis on stemming the growth in inequality, which had been fairly steep since the 1980s. Policy action has taken the form of regional development measures and of reforms of various aspects of the social safety net broadly defined. The...

Indonesia.s infrastructure is in poor shape, having suffered from protracted under-investment since the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, and constraints growth potential. This paper focuses on the current state of the regulatory framework and discusses different options for improvement...

Following many years of underinvestment, renovating and building new transport infrastructure is an important policy priority that would increase labour mobility and improve Poland’s competitiveness. This goal is all the more feasible given that the country is going to benefit from substantial...

Congestion has become a burden for the Dutch economy. Commuters and businesses are suffering from the time lost in traffic and the unreliability of travel time. Expanding infrastructure can potentially solve such problems, albeit only in the long term and at a high cost. Thus short to...

Despite large differences across countries, Latin America’s average investment-to-GDP ratio and the overall quality of infrastructure in the region are relatively low by international comparison. Empirical evidence on the effects of fiscal decentralisation on investment based on a panel of...

Depuis le début des années 2000, le taux d'investissement a fléchi, tiré par la baisse de l'investissement des entreprises. Son niveau est faible par rapport à celui d'autres pays émergents. Les principales causes sont : des réglementations excessives sur le marché des produits,...

Despite the economic importance of the road transport sector, there is no systematic cross-country evidence on the sector’s efficiency. This paper develops a conceptual framework for analysing the social efficiency of the road transport sector, including non-market inputs – such as travel...