Due to the lack of Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs) at regional level, regional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures have been traditionally adjusted using national PPPs. The simplifying assumption that all regions of a country have the same cost of living, and implicitly that there are no...

This paper sets out a framework to estimate quality-adjusted price levels and price changes for fixed broadband services in OECD countries. We extend and adapt existing hedonic frameworks for international and interarea comparisons and consider the extended country product dummy approach....

Consumer price inflation, as measured by the year-on-year increase in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), is used by the European Central Bank (ECB) for assessing its monetary policy. The European Statistical System regularly introduces methodological improvements into this...

The effect on the household consumption price index from possible sources of error in capturing digital products depends on the weight of the affected products. To calculate upper bounds for this effect, we apply weights based on the average structure of household consumption in OECD countries...

This study presents some stylised facts on wage growth differentials across the euro area countries in the years before and in the first eight years after the introduction of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999. The study shows that wage growth dispersion, i.e. the degree of difference in...

The concept of megaregions is increasingly put forward among academics and policy makers as a new scale of economic co-ordination and social organisation. A megaregion is most commonly understood as an economic unit that comprises an agglomeration of cities and its less dense hinterlands, which...

This paper provides an assessment of the presence of migrants, their characteristics and integration outcomes across OECD regions, based on a new OECD database on immigrant integration at the regional level. It reveals the wide diversity of the presence of migrants within countries, as well as...

In this paper we highlight a new complementary channel to the business and social network effect à la Rauch (2001) through which immigrants generate increased export flows from the regions in which they settle to their countries of origin: they can become entrepreneurs. Using very small-scale...

This paper reviews the governance framework of the Lisbon Strategy and discusses the specific option of increasing the role of benchmarking as a means of improving the implementation record of structural reforms in the European Union. Against this background, the paper puts forward a possible...

Analysis of consolidated accounting data of European listed groups shows significant differences in some key ratios between countries. However, the figures do not reveal whether these differences result from a distinct composition of the countries’ populations in terms of branches of activity...