Economic growth is below what would be needed to resume rapid convergence to average OECD living standards. On-going efforts to improve the business climate are laudable, but need to be widened and strengthened. Much progress has been achieved in reducing red tape, but it is only recently that...

In the years before the economic crisis, Portugal had low growth, a decline in export competitiveness and rising imbalances that included a large current account deficit and a strong expansion of the non-tradable sector. Strengthening export performance is therefore one of the principal...

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...

The Internet has become an integral part of the everyday life of households, firms and governments. Its proper functioning over the long run is therefore crucial for economic growth and people’s wellbeing more generally. The success of the Internet depends on its openness and the confidence of...

This paper provides analysis of the regulatory governance of network sector regulators in electricity, gas, telecommunications, rail, airport and ports within the OECD as it stood in 2013. The paper explores the governance arrangements of network sector regulators as described by law and...

This paper analyses the structure of Greek exports and presents policy recommendations to boost export performance. Despite recent improvements, export performance deteriorated in the last decade particularly in the service sector. The decline in unit labour costs since the beginning of the...

Improving public sector efficiency can help to meet two conflicting objectives: ensuring fiscal consolidation and maintaining room for growth-friendly spending. However, the public sector lags on the application of e-government and e-procurement, insufficiently prioritizes spending, and suffers...

For much of the second half of the twentieth century, labour productivity grew rapidly in most OECD economies, fuelled by the adoption of a large stock of unexploited existing technologies. However, the slowdown in productivity growth over the past decade underscores the idea that as economies...

Since 1995 when OECD began conducting Economic Surveys of the Russian Federation many policy recommendations relating to structural reform and framework conditions have been made. This paper is an update of an earlier paper that described actions taken up to October 2011 (Vaziakova et al.,...

Over the past decade, France has substantially eased the burden of anti-competitive regulations and effectively enforced competition law against anti-competitive practices. Various sectors have been opened up more widely to competition, and the powers of the Competition Authority have been...