Pooling data for 1905 to 2000, we find no systematic relationship between top income shares and economic growth in a panel of 12 developed nations observed for between 22 and 85 years. After 1960, however, a one percentage point rise in the top decile's income share is associated with a...

This paper explores the effects of labour market conditions at graduation on an individual's work-life over the following decade. Australians graduating into a state and year with a 5 percentage point higher youth unemployment rate can expect to earn roughly 8 per cent less in their first year...

A feature of the recent global slowdown in productivity growth is that progress at the technological frontier has remained strong, while the gap between firms at the global frontier and other 'laggards' within an industry has grown. This growing gap reflects the fact that laggard firms now seem...

Productivity-enhancing structural reforms are crucial to the economic prospects of the EU. Indeed, such reforms are even more urgent in the current environment in which many economies are reaching the limits of the policy support they can provide to shore up demand. Moreover, even as some of the...

This paper explores the connection between "zombie" firms (firms that would typically exit in a competitive market) and bank health and the consequences for aggregate productivity in 11 European countries. Controlling for cyclical effects, the results show that zombie firms are more likely to be...

This paper uses novel microdata sources spanning 2001-02 to 2015-16 to explore the structural drivers of wage growth in Australia, with a view to better understanding recent weak wage growth - a phenomenon observed across a range of advanced economies. Controlling for a range of cyclical and...

International evidence suggests that aggregate productivity growth is driven by the within-industry reallocation of inputs away from less productive firms and towards more productive firms, but little is known about this process in Australia. Accordingly, this paper exploits firm-level data to...

In many OECD countries, low productivity growth has coincided with rising inequality. Widening wage and productivity gaps between firms may have contributed to both developments. This paper uses a new harmonised cross-country linked employer-employee dataset for 14 OECD countries to analyse the...

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to support manufacturing jobs...

Case study evidence suggests that exporting firms learn from their clients. But econometric evidence, mostly using exporting and TFP growth, is mixed. We use a UK panel data set with firm-level information on exporting and productivity. Our innovation is that we also have direct data on the...