This paper discusses the pros and cons of a single labour contract. After reviewing the current state of dualism in labour markets and the recent labour reforms in Europe, we discuss the various proposals to eliminate dualism.
This short paper analyses the decline of France’s trade balance over the past 15 years. While the loss in export market shares is comparable to that of the major OECD countries except Germany, it is one of the largest among the countries of the euro area.
This paper analyses the age structure of employment rates across OECD countries with a focus on France. The statistical contribution of each age group to total unemployment-rate differentials is also computed.
Extensive structural reforms since the early 1990s have strengthened the resilience of the Swedish economy to shocks.
In this paper we include measures of school quality in regressions determining the labour market premiums to education level.
In this paper we document the impact of education levels on labour market outcomes from 1994 to 2010 using national household survey data.
Australia’s productivity growth has decelerated markedly around the turn of the century. Part of the decline is probably temporary, but raising multifactor productivity is key to ensure that living standards continue to grow strongly, especially if the currently strong terms of trade weaken over time.
Sweden is a very egalitarian country but inequalities have risen and some groups are poorly integrated into the labour market.
Structural reforms offer governments a powerful tool to boost economic growth, create jobs and bring about a strong and balanced economic recovery, according to the OECD’s latest Going for Growth report.
In his remarks, OECD Secretary-General answers the three following questions: Where is growth going to come from? How sustainable will it be? Who is going to benefit from it?
Britain must continue to pursue pro-growth, as well as inequality-reducing structural reforms in order to recover from the nation’s deepest recession in nearly a century, according to a new OECD report.
In this paper we examine whether past labour market reforms aiming at reducing the rate of unemployment have raised its long-run volatility.
The Slovak economy experienced a strong but short recession in 2009. The recovery afterwards was driven by exports and investment. While GDP growth was one of the strongest in OECD, employment did not reach the pre-crisis level and unemployment remains stubbornly high.
In Slovakia, educational outcomes are below the OECD average and are too dependent on the socioeconomic background of students.
The Colombian economy is strong and the outlook is promising, but the country must do more to ensure that the ongoing commodities boom contributes to sustainable and inclusive growth over the long-term, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Assessment of Colombia.
Although job creation has improved, since the end of the 2007-08 recession, the effects of the recession on the labour market remain severe.
Despite the economic importance of the road transport sector, there is no systematic cross-country evidence on the sector’s efficiency.
This study looks into the use of fixed term contracts and agency work in Russia during and shortly after the crisis 2009 10 with the help of an enterprise survey.
In several OECD countries, ongoing fiscal consolidation might have a negative impact on the static income distribution. However, this conclusion should be treated only as an approximate first step in the analysis.
The well performing labour market has delivered low unemployment and relatively stable wage developments.
The Netherlands has strongly benefited from globalisation, which boosted international trade, cross-border investment and economic growth over the latest decades.
The Netherlands, as other OECD countries, faces the challenge of providing high quality health and long term care services to an ageing population in a cost-efficient manner.
The global crisis led to a smaller increase in the unemployment rate than in most other OECD countries as employment has been sustained through intensive use of reduced working time schemes.
Big changes are needed to strengthen the capital positions of euro area banks. European banks remain at the heart of the euro area crisis. Despite actions to strengthen banks and build a banking union, confidence in the euro area banking system remains weak, and is likely to remain so until underlying concerns over low capitalisation of some banks are addressed.
The Australian economy is robust and faces a solid short-term outlook, but it must continue adapting to ensure that its privileged place in the Asia-Pacific region contributes to long-term sustainable growth, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Survey of Australia.
The euro area crisis finds its roots in the credit booms seen in many countries following the introduction of the euro in 1999. Easy credit led to strong growth in a range of sectors, notably housing, as well as higher levels of public spending. Inflation in these over-heating economies was higher than the euro area as a whole. Rising prices led to rising costs and a loss of international competitiveness.
The Slovak Republic recovered strongly from the global economic crisis and is weathering well the storm that has struck its main European trading partners. The challenges going forward will be restoring public finances while driving down unemployment and fostering long-term inclusive growth, says the latest Economic Survey.
Spain is immersed in a prolonged recession that has been compounded by the continuing crisis in the euro area. The path to recovery has been launched, but will require full implementation of reforms and some additional measures to restore confidence in the financial sector, redress public finances and bring down high unemployment, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Survey of Spain.
The US innovation system has many strengths, including world class research universities and firms that thrive in innovation-intensive sectors.
The global economy is expected to make a hesitant and uneven recovery over the coming two years. Decisive policy action is needed to ensure that stalemate over fiscal policy in the United States and continuing euro area instability do not plunge the world back into recession, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook.
This paper uses household level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) over the period 1991 to 2008 to analyse the driving factors of movements in the German household savings rate.
Palabras de Angel Gurría,Secretario General OCDE, Lanzamiento del Informe Perspectivas Económicas de América Latina 2013: Transformación de la Estructura Productiva y Papel de las PYMES en el Desarrollo Regional
Latin American governments must act now to strengthen growth and development and counter these risks, according to the 2013 Latin American Economic Outlook, jointly produced by the OECD Development Centre and ECLAC.
This workshop will convene leading experts from health and finance backgrounds in government, academia, and international organisations to take stock of progress in health expenditure forecasting and to discuss future directions, in light of policy needs and recent advancements in techniques, detailed data and computing power.
The balance of economic power is expected to shift dramatically over the next half century, with fast-growing emerging-market economies accounting for an ever-increasing share of global output, according to a new OECD report.
This paper discusses how to improve Canada’s business innovation in order to boost labour productivity and output growth. Many general framework conditions are highly favourable to business risk taking and innovation, including macro stability, openness, strong human capital, low corporate tax rates, low barriers to firm entry and flexible labour markets.
The Secretary-General presents the OECD’s views on “new approaches to economic development” at the 4th Annual Global Perspectives Conference, one of the most important gatherings of Civil Society Organisations.
The correlation between a firm’s size and its productivity level varies considerably across OECD countries, suggesting that some countries are more successful at channelling resources to high productivity firms than others.
Restoring competitiveness is one of the key challenges to bring European economies back on a path of strong, sustainable and balanced growth. Europe could improve its growth prospects by implementing a strategic reform agenda with a broad range of policy reforms to increase productivity, dynamism and employment.
The President of the French Republic, Mr. François Hollande, met the Heads of international economic organisations at the OECD on Monday 29th October.
Secretary-General Angel Gurría opens the first meeting of the New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC) Group, an organisation-wide reflection process on the roots and lessons from the crisis with the aim of catalysing a process of continuous improvement of our analytical frameworks and policy advice. This meeting serves as a first step to get expert feedback and inputs to identify priorities for the way forward.
A major step forward towards putting the measurement of well-being at the heart of policy-making was taken at a four-day international conference which ended in New Delhi today.
Micro, small and medium-sized firms (MSMEs) are a key source of employment and economic growth in Indonesia. They contributed to the country’s economic resilience during the 2008-09 financial crisis.
Low growth and huge current account deficits have characterised the Portuguese economy over the past decade.
Renewed impetus for reforms is essential for India to continue to narrow its major gap in living standards with middle-income and OECD economies, to reduce widespread poverty, to reverse rising inequality and to improve the wellbeing of all Indians. Based on the expertise of OECD, this report presents an update of policy advice in critical areas to India’s long-term economic performance and social development.
Real GDP growth in the OECD area slowed to 0.2% in the second quarter of 2012, compared with 0.4% in the first quarter.
Estonia recovered forcefully from the global economic crisis but growth has since slowed, highlighting the need for further reforms that reduce exposure to external shocks and ensure against future boom/bust cycles, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Survey of Estonia.
OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría welcomes the Spanish government's budget and the economic policy measures announced yesterday.
Indonesia has improved its macro-economic and structural policies over the last 15 years. Its economy, with strong and stable growth rates of 5–6.6%, is catching up with other countries in the region and allowing Indonesia to focus on its development agenda.
This paper explores the productivity impact of trade, product market and financial market policies over the last decade in China – a fast growing country where, despite significant reform action, regulatory stance remains still far from OECD standards.