Productivity in Russia has fallen steadily over the past 15 years. This paper explores micro-level data to understand the contribution of individual firms to aggregate productivity. Overall, firm-level data corroborate the decline in aggregate productivity and a widening productivity gap against...

This paper assesses the possible dynamic effects of occupational entry regulations (OER) on productivity. It combines firm-level productivity data with a new cross-country policy indicator measuring the stringency of OER by the presence of administrative burdens, qualifications requirements, and...

Over the past decade, sound macroeconomic policies and an improved business environment have helped generate relatively strong GDP growth. Investments in infrastructure are improving connectivity and trade integration has been facilitated by lower tariffs. Simplification in opening of...

Declining inflation in many countries over the past few decades at the same time as rising global competition has led to a debate on the importance of globalisation for domestic inflation. This paper explores the implications of global value chain (GVC) integration and market contestability for...

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...

Financial inclusion and women entrepreneurship concern policymakers because of their impact on job creation, economic growth and women empowerment. Women in Mexico do engage in paid work but many of them work in the informal sector because they lack opportunities to work in the formal sector....

Mexico’s structural reforms are already boosting productivity, but more can be done. This paper focuses on issues that have led to the success of the “modern” Mexico, and have led to difficulties with the “traditional” Mexico. These include the success of Global Value Chains (GVCs) in...

Structural trends not directly related to labour market functioning and redistribution have made a sizeable contribution to inequality and poverty in Sweden, but occupy only limited space in the income inequality debate. To fill this gap, we put a quarter of a century of rising inequality in...