Standard income inequality figures, based on official household survey statistics covering most of the population, report a steady rise of inequality across a majority of advanced countries. The usefulness of these data sources in providing a timely and internationally comparable picture of...

Despite an improvement in overall macroeconomic performance in Costa Rica, income inequality has risen and is currently at its maximum historical value. This is in stark contrast with other Latin American countries, which have recently made significant progress in reducing inequality. This study...

This paper delivers a broad assessment of income inequality in Denmark. As a necessary preamble to provide a basis for discussion, we start by contrasting Danish official inequality measures with those gathered by the OECD in an international context. We show that differences between these two...

Widespread increases in inequality over the past three decades have raised the question of the distribution of the growth dividends. This paper finds that there is no single answer to this question. The mechanisms that link growth and income inequality are found to differ depending on the...

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...

Financial intermediaries may increase economic efficiency through intertemporal risk smoothing. However without an adequate regulation, intermediation may fail to do this. This paper studies the effects of a production shock in a closed economy and compares abilities of market-based and...

The OECD Survey on Blended Finance Funds and Facilities represents a major step forward to consolidate evidence and provide further policy guidance in support of the OECD DAC Blended Finance Principles, whose focus is unlocking commercial finance for the Sustainable Development Goals. This...

In the past 30 years Costa Rica has grown steadily and social indicators have improved markedly. Well-being indicators are comparable or even above the OECD average in several dimensions, such as health, environment or life-satisfaction. This paper reviews the social progress that Costa Rica has...

The Prosperity pillar of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls for an integrated approach based on boosting productivity through diversification, upgrading technology and innovation, and increasing employment and entrepreneurship. Thailand needs to address all these challenges to...

This paper explores one distinctive form of the ‘big data’ of economics – individual tax record microdata – and its potential for tax policy analysis. The paper draws on OECD collaborations with Slovenia and Ireland in 2018 where tax microdata was used. Most empirical economics is based...