From a macroeconomic perspective the term "new economy" describes a phenomenon of persistent strong and low-inflation growth due to the large diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT). This paper looks into Europe's position with respect to the new-economy phenomenon. Section...

The slower productivity growth in Canada relative to that experienced in the United States in the second half of the 1990s has been a matter of great concern to Canadians, with a wide variety of explanations put forward to account for this development. A key issue is whether this slower...

The remarkable economic success of the United States in the 1990s led many observers to talk about a ‘New Economy’. This Paper provides an overview of the main issues, including faster productivity growth, the stability of inflation despite very low unemployment, the greater overall economic...

Empirical research on the drivers of multi-factor productivity (MFP) is abundant at the firm- and industry level but surprisingly little research has been conducted on the determinants of MFP at the macroeconomic level. In this paper, we seek to understand the drivers of country-level MFP with a...

Rates of productivity growth slowed following the global financial crisis in nearly all OECD countries. Diverse national productivity performances are aggregates of the productivity performances of individual producers, which are influenced by organizational factors such as the quality of...

This book collects selected articles addressing several currently debated issues in the field of international macroeconomics. They focus on the role of the central banks in the debate on how to come to terms with the long-term decline in productivity growth, insufficient aggregate demand, high...