Macroeconomic forecasters typically forecast fewer recessions than the number experienced, which means economic growth tends to be over-predicted on average. Consequently, forecast errors are not normally distributed, making it difficult to convey the uncertainty and risks based on the...

Greece’s labour market entered the COVID-19 shock following several years of sustained employment growth and with wages picking up. Unemployment remained high and employment rates were low, especially among women, the young and older workers. The shock led to a sharp fall in labour force...

Having access to credit is essential for households to address the volatility of their personal finances over time and for firms to fund their investments. Accessing financial services at affordable cost on the other hand, is crucial to ensure financial security of all economic units. Despite...

The economic effects of environmental policies are of central interest to policymakers. The traditional approach sees environmental policies as a burden on economic activity, at least in the short to medium term, as they raise costs without increasing output and restrict the set of production...

Traditional measures of multi-factor productivity (MFP) growth generally do not recognise natural capital as inputs into the production process. Since productivity growth is measured as the residual between output and input growth, it will pick up the growth in unmeasured inputs, which can lead...

The Chinese economy has been undergoing fundamental structural changes since the start of reforms in 1978. An increasing number of farmers first got engaged in off-farm activities and then started to migrate to cities in the 1990s in search of jobs. Such movement of labour from less to more...

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...

The rapid growth after independence stopped in 2008 as the global crisis exposed important structural weaknesses. Large state involvement and rigid labour and product markets lowered productivity. Weak corporate governance and easy credit before the crisis led to high indebtedness and...