In Slovakia, educational outcomes are below the OECD average and are too dependent on the socioeconomic background of students.

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 this paper we examine whether past labour market reforms aiming at reducing the rate of unemployment have raised its long-run volatility.

In this paper we document the impact of education levels on labour market outcomes from 1994 to 2010 using national household survey data.

In this paper we include measures of school quality in regressions determining the labour market premiums to education level.

Extensive structural reforms since the early 1990s have strengthened the resilience of the Swedish economy to shocks.

This book deals with two issues. The first concerns the various measurement of fiscal decentralization in general and their usefulness for policy analysis. The second and more specific issue concerns the taxonomy of intergovernmental grants and the limits of the current classifications.

Instead of resorting to trade measures such as export restrictions, Chile manages its minerals sector through a combination of balanced taxation, stable investment measures, good management of tax revenue, exchange rate policy and initiatives aimed at producing a multiplier effect of economy-wide development, according to this study.

France has avoided the most severe impacts of the global economic crisis and turmoil in the euro area, but must now take action to boost competitiveness and create jobs, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Survey of France.

The GGKP’s second annual conference will be held at the OECD Headquarters in Paris on 4-5 April 2013. The discussion will be framed around two headline themes: Greening global value chains and Measurement and reporting for green growth.

The economic situation of young people is unsatisfactory. Educational inequalities have been widening for over a decade, due to a sharp decline in the results of the most highly disadvantaged students. The unemployment rate for the 20-24 age bracket has not dropped below 16% for nearly 30 years.

Informality has important implications for productivity, economic growth, and the inequality of income. In recent years, the extent of informal employment has increased in many of Mexico's states, though highly heterogeneously.

The OECD provides an update on global economy in this statement to the International Monetary and Financial Committee - April 2013.

After two decades of strong economic growth and convergence in living standards towards the levels of more prosperous OECD countries, Portugal’s performance weakened in the 2000s, productivity growth slowed and competitiveness deteriorated. Restoring Portugal’s potential for strong, inclusive growth calls for a comprehensive reform of the State.

This paper uses panel regression techniques to assess the policy determinants of private sector innovative Activity – proxied by R&D expenditure and the number of new patents – across 19 OECD countries. The relationship between innovation indicators and multifactor productivity (MFP) growth is also examined with a particular focus on the role of public policies in influencing the returns to new knowledge.

Recent OECD research has utilised harmonised cross-country firm level data to explore the contribution of public policies to cross-country differences in productivity, innovation and resource allocation.

Innovation-based growth, underpinned by investments in a broad range of knowledge-based capital (KBC), is central to raising long-term living standards.

Technological advances, less costly shipping and trade liberalisation have transformed the way in which companies make products and distribute them worldwide. Governments that become more open to trade and investment, and encourage innovation will help firms better integrate the global value chains that are driving growth in increasingly interconnected economies, according to new OECD research.

Investment in knowledge-based capital (KBC) – assets that lack physical embodiment, such as computerised information, innovative property and economic competencies – has been rising significantly. This has implications for innovation and productivity growth and requires new thinking on policy.

Income inequality and relative poverty in the United States are among the highest in the OECD and have substantially increased over the past decades. These developments have been associated with a number of other worrying statistics, including low intergenerational social mobility and weak real income growth for many households.

The problems of Japanese agriculture – in particular low productivity and the prevalence of part-time farmers and small plots have been evident for the past 50 years.

South Africa has achieved remarkable progress in educational attainment relative to other emerging countries, but the quality of basic education for a large fraction of the Black African population is still very low.

Well-functioning judicial systems play a crucial role in determining economic performance – notably by guaranteeing the security of property rights and the enforcement of contracts – but not all countries’ judiciaries operate at the same level of efficiency.

This paper derives estimates of the efficiency of welfare spending in Slovenia and the other OECD countries from data envelopment analysis based on model specifications used in earlier OECD studies.

OECD indicators of structural policy show that policy changes in Italy since 1998 should have improved the environment for entrepreneurship significantly, but in the same period its economic performance has deteriorated noticeably.

Belgium has a good record in delivering accessible care, but adaptation to population ageing will be complicated by the fragmentation of responsibilities in the healthcare system and a strong reliance on government regulations.

The rapid expansion of education in Korea is exceptional and has played a key role in its economic development. Sustaining Korea’s growth potential in the face of demographic headwinds requires further improving the education system to boost productivity growth.

This study proposes a structured approach to selecting instruments of fiscal consolidation that are consistent with growth, equity and global-rebalancing objectives, which is then illustrated with a particular application.

Combining existing information with a newly collected dataset, the paper develops indicators of the performance and the institutional characteristics of OECD judicial systems.

Ireland’s economy is now showing encouraging signs of recovery from the financial crisis, but more must be done to reinvigorate growth and create the jobs that will get the country back to full health, according to the OECD.

This paper examines the heavily supported Swiss food and agriculture sector. It reviews some of the key features and trends in the sector and reveals its low relative labour productivity in international comparison.

Credible and consistent carbon pricing must be the cornerstone of government actions to tackle climate change, according to a new OECD report.

After a decade of relatively strong growth, Latin America is facing headwinds associated with declining trade, a moderation in commodity prices and increasing uncertainty over external financial conditions, according to the latest Latin American Economic Outlook jointly produced by the OECD Development Centre, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN ECLAC) and CAF - Development Bank of Latin America.

Young firms play a crucial role in job creation but have missed out on many of the benefits of structural reforms of the past decade in OECD countries.

This report provides a framework to understand the changing relationships between urban and rural areas. Specifically, it documents the characteristics of these partnerships and the factors that can hinder as well as enable rural-urban co-operation.

Well-functioning judicial systems play a crucial role in determining economic performance – notably by guaranteeing the security of property rights and the enforcement of contracts – but not all countries’ judiciaries operate at the same level of efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the role of natural capital for productivity measurement and as a source of economic growth.

The global economy is expected to continue expanding at a moderate pace over the coming two years, but policymakers must ensure that instability in financial markets and underlying fragility in some major economies are not allowed to derail growth, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook.

The productivity compendium provides data and methodological notes and describes the measurement challenges and the data choices that were made, as well as the remaining measurement problems.

This paper takes stock of informal employment in Russia analysing its incidence and determinants. Using the regular 2003-11 waves and an informality supplement of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) it develops several measures of informal employment and demonstrates that the incidence varies widely across the different definitions.

The OECD will launch its latest Economic Survey of the Russian Federation in Moscow on Wednesday 15 January 2014 during the annual Gaidar Forum.

This paper presents the new OECD competition law and policies (CLP) indicators which measure the strength and scope of competition regimes in 49 jurisdictions (OECD and non-OECD). The indicators cover areas for which there is a broad consensus among member countries on what constitutes 'good' practice for competition regimes.

This paper reviews the state of the banking sector in Europe. At the aggregate level, the empirical data suggest that the Baltics, Cyprus, Greece and Ireland, in particular, are hit by a strong decline in lending in the wake of the financial crisis.

Over the next 50 years, the world economic landscape will be shaped, among other things, by demographic developments, continuing trade and investment integration, a shift of gravity towards emerging economies, the rising role of knowledge-based capital, global environmental pressures and the correction of fiscal and current account imbalances.

After five years of work at every level to correct the fiscal, financial and external imbalances that led to the crisis, and to reinforce fiscal and financial institutions, the Euro Area is beginning to show signs of recovery. But, despite these positive signs, growth is still weak and uneven.

The Norwegian economy is performing well, generating inclusive growth, strong social mobility and low unemployment. But to ensure future prosperity, Norway must continue with growth-enhancing reforms while ensuring financial stability, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Survey of Norway.

A broad agenda of reforms in four areas – labour markets, education, product markets and innovation – should strengthen Poland’s economy and allow it to continue its path of convergence towards the income levels of the more affluent OECD economies, said Angel Gurría during a seminar in Warsaw.

This paper surveys recent international developments concerning the prudential regulation of financial institutions: banks, the shadow banking system and insurance companies. It concludes that, while substantial progress has been made, the global economy nevertheless remains vulnerable to possible future financial instability.

This paper extends the OECD Economics Department’s suite of short-term indicator models for quarterly GDP growth, which currently cover only the G7 countries, to the BRIICS countries.

A moderate recovery is under way in major advanced economies after two years of subdued growth. Overall, most indications point to a continued underlying strengthening of the pace of growth, helped by accommodative monetary policy and reduced fiscal drag.