This paper explores the effects of product and labour market regulation on growth in total factor productivity (TFP) using panel data from 1974–2003 for 18 OECD countries. Our regressions are specified so that labour and product market regulations can affect productivity both individually and...

Indices of business and consumer sentiment receive widespread media coverage and are closely watched by market economists despite their limited success as leading indicators. In this paper we ask what explains ‘sentiment’ and find that lagged economic indicators (such as changes in GDP, job...

This paper considers whether capital is a significant constraint on employment in Australia. We calculate the level of capital-constrained employment for ten sectors of the Australian economy. The calculations suggest that the manufacturing; mining; transport, storage and communication and...

This paper examines the effect of inflation on productivity growth in Australia. Broad historical correlations suggest a negative relationship between inflation and aggregate productivity growth. The low-frequency nature of the relationship, however, means it is difficult to establish...

This paper presents a new measure of underlying inflation: component-smoothed inflation. It approaches the problem of determining underlying inflation from a different direction than previous methods. Rather than excluding or trimming out volatile CPI items, it smoothes components of the CPI...