China is well-placed to avoid the so-called “middle-income trap” and to continue to converge towards the more advanced economies, even though growth is likely to slow from near double-digit rates in the first decade of this millennium to around 7% at the 2020 horizon. However, in order to...

Since income is the return on wealth, the total wealth of any given country should be on the order of 20 times its GDP. Instead the average observed ratio from the balance sheet accounts of the System of National Accounts (SNA) is a factor of 2.6 to 6.6, depending on whether natural resource...

Norway’s success in maintaining high living standards, low inequality and good progress in gender balance owes much to its business sector. High-productivity business-sector jobs support high wages and profits, providing capacity to fund comprehensive public services and inclusive employment...

Since the crisis, Estonia has experienced one of the most pronounced declines in the ratio of non-residential investment to GDP in the OECD. In addition, investment in intangible capital has remained well below OECD standards, partly explaining the low innovative capacities of typical Estonian...

Structural transformation towards a more knowledge-based economy will strengthen Spain’s medium-term growth prospects. To deal with long standing impediments to higher growth the government has a substantial structural reform programme touching on education, the labour market and the business...

This paper explores the effects of offshoring, technology and Chinese import competition on labor market polarization in European countries. We find that polarization occurs mostly as a result of polarization within individual industries, while the reallocation of employment away from less...

Concerns are growing about policies and measures that restrict market access with the effect of “forcing” technology transfer. Efforts to target forced technology transfer are complicated by the sometimes blurred line between voluntary and mutually agreed upon technology transfers and that...

The aim of this paper is to inform the ongoing debate on the policies being used to encourage international technology transfer (ITT) and, of these, which have the potential to distort trade or investment and which may effectively promote ITT. The paper develops a first-cut approach to...