The informal sector (IS) plays a significant role in developing countries viz. the provision of employment, income and supplying ignored markets. However, working and employment conditions within the sector are still poor. Its expansion and changing structures have thus drawn the attention of...

Rapid and sustained economic growth in the emerging world has brought new members, notably China, into the group of middle-income countries. Reaching this level of income, however, has historically presented countries with a new set of challenges to development, resulting in slowing growth and...

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...

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...

Economic growth requires factor reallocation across firms and continuous replacement of technologies. Labor market institutions influence economic dynamism by their impact on the supply of a key factor, skilled workers to new and expanding firms, and the shedding of workers from declining and...

The Europe's 2020 Strategy clearly outlines the ambition for EU member states to pursue a smart, sustainable and inclusive growth: this means designing a the strategy that aims at achieving a socio-ecological transition by fostering economic growth as well as social development (e.g. with...

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...

Poland’s productivity has grown strongly over the past decade, and efforts to reduce the regulatory burden have been significant. Despite impressive progress, product market regulation remains more burdensome than in most OECD countries, partly due to the importance of red tape and the level...

Germany remains Europe's largest and most diversified source of new technology, but still lags in the fastest growing areas of today's high technology. After World War II, West-German technology policy sought to rebuild the institutions which had supported Germany's leadership in the high-tech...

Eastern Europe is one of the fastest growing transition economies of the world. The post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, especially the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, continue to undergo a radical economic reform program via microeconomic liberalization, macroeconomic...