The rapid growth after independence stopped in 2008 as the global crisis exposed important structural weaknesses. Large state involvement and rigid labour and product markets lowered productivity. Weak corporate governance and easy credit before the crisis led to high indebtedness and...

Impressive productivity performance during the last decades has weakened since 2007, reflecting the 2008-09 recession but also a poor performance in important sectors, like the information and communication technology sector. Reforms to raise long term productivity growth need to be pursued....

To investigate how public finances could best be designed to promote long-run growth and address inequality, it is essential to have comprehensive, cross-country comparable data on government spending and revenues, along with structural and policy indicators. By identifying key variables of...

Tax and spending reforms offer numerous opportunities to promote inclusive growth. There is potential for so-called win-win reforms that simultaneously boost economic output and enhance income equality. Other changes in the structure of public finances will produce benefits only along a single...

This paper investigates if higher public spending in education and better teacher qualifications are related to student’s performance, using data from Saber 11, a national standardized test conducted by Instituto Colombiano para la Evaluación de la Educación. The estimation exploits...

Improving public sector efficiency can help to meet two conflicting objectives: ensuring fiscal consolidation and maintaining room for growth-friendly spending. However, the public sector lags on the application of e-government and e-procurement, insufficiently prioritizes spending, and suffers...

Since 1995 when OECD began conducting Economic Surveys of the Russian Federation many policy recommendations relating to structural reform and framework conditions have been made. This paper is an update of an earlier paper that described actions taken up to October 2011 (Vaziakova et al.,...

This working paper explores avenues to improve public sector efficiency in Latvia, a catching-up and ageing economy where spending needs are large. Ensuring that spending allocated to core services (e.g. education, healthcare) is adequate to achieve convergence of policy outcomes to OECD upper...