Increasing productivity growth through innovation is a key to raising living standards. Although R&D intensity in Japan is the third highest in the OECD area, the benefits do not appear to have been commensurate with the level of investment. The innovation system, which developed during the...

With inputs of labour and capital slowing, sustaining high growth rates in Korea will increasingly depend on total factor productivity gains, which are in turn driven to a large extent by innovation. While a number of Korean firms are at the world technology frontier in areas such as ICT, the...

This paper discusses policies to improve fiscal relations between levels of government to better meet the needs of citizens, an objective of the government’s “Roadmap for Decentralisation”. Although local government accounts for around half of total government spending, they have little...

This paper analyses the increasing dualism in the Korean labour market and the need to encourage greater labour force participation. Although the rising proportion of non-regular workers lowers labour costs and increases employment flexibility, it has a negative impact on both equity and...

The government has introduced five policy packages since August 2005 to stabilise house prices, mainly due to concerns about possible spill-overs from the capital region to other parts of the country, even though the increase on a nation-wide basis has been modest compared to other OECD...

Globalisation through international trade, foreign direct investment (FDI) and international movements of labour is a key force driving economic growth. However, Japan is an outlier among OECD countries, with the lowest levels of import penetration, stock of inward FDI relative to GDP and...

Several elicitation techniques were employed to gauge the attitudes to risk of smallholder high-value crop farmers in the southern Philippines. Results showed varying degrees of risk aversion, neutrality, and preference among smallholder farmers. Although some of the techniques classified...