Technological change is transforming Ireland’s economic structures, leading to new jobs and innovative products that benefit consumers. Adoption of new technologies by businesses has been high relative to many other OECD economies, but it has been uneven across industries and the impact on...

A creative economy requires innovation-friendly conditions. Korea’s innovation system should be improved by upgrading universities and expanding their role in business R&D, while increasing international collaboration in R&D from its current low level. The returns from Korea’s large...

China is well-placed to avoid the so-called “middle-income trap” and to continue to converge towards the more advanced economies, even though growth is likely to slow from near double-digit rates in the first decade of this millennium to around 7% at the 2020 horizon. However, in order to...

With sound framework conditions, fine universities, good infrastructure and policies friendly towards foreign direct investment, Ireland scores high in international innovation scoreboards. Overall, policies to boost innovation and entrepreneurship are on the right track, but investment in...

Innovation is key to boosting Australia’s productivity and inclusiveness. This paper examines the policies that create good conditions for innovation, not only in science and technology but also wider forms, such as business-model innovation. Competition and flexible markets are particularly...

Raising productivity requires addressing a wide range of policies that affect resource allocation, the creation and diffusion of technology, human capital and the creation and financing of start-ups. The greatest gains can be achieved in the service sector and in SMEs, where productivity has...

The Korean government has made fostering a “creative economy” a top priority. The goal is to shift Korea's economic paradigm to one based on innovation in which new start-ups and venture businesses play a key role. However, the venture capital market is still at an early stage of...

Making SMEs and start-ups a driver of growth and job creation requires a number of policies to improve the performance of SMEs, whose labour productivity in the manufacturing sector has fallen to less than a third of that in large companies. The large-scale support for SMEs should shift from...

Legal systems provide the basic institutions for firms and markets to operate. Their quality can have important consequences on the size distribution of firms, who rely on them for contract enforcement. This paper uses the variation in legal system quality across states in Mexico to examine the...

This paper explores the role of managerial capital and business research and development (R&D) in fostering multifactor productivity (MFP) convergence in a panel of 42 countries. The OECD long-term growth model is augmented to show that, in addition to trade openness, an economy’s speed of...