A pickup in global growth remains elusive, almost eight years after the financial crisis erupted. The recovery in advanced economies is still muted, particularly in the euro area and Japan, while growth has slowed in emerging-market economies (EMEs). Trade and investment remain weak, while jobs and wage growth have been disappointing. Financial markets are increasingly volatile as capital searches for both yield and safety. Getting back to healthy and inclusive growth calls for urgent policy response, drawing on monetary, fiscal, and structural policies working together: On the one hand, demand policies alone will not restore sustainable growth; but on the other hand, policies to strengthen competition and innovation, spur job creation, and repair financial systems to fund investment will only yield results if there is enough demand.

The codes for country names and currencies used in this volume are those attributed to them by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Global growth prospects remain clouded in the near term, with emerging-market economies losing steam, world trade slowing down and the recovery in advanced economies being dragged down by persistently weak investment. These near-term concerns arise against the background of a widespread deceleration of productivity gains, with the downward trend going back to early 2000s – at least in advanced economies – and with little signs of revival. The growth slowdown observed among emerging-market economies over the past couple of years also raises questions about their capacity to further closing the income gap vis-à-vis most advanced countries. The case for structural reforms, combined with supporting demand policies, remains strong to sustainably lift productivity and the job creation that will promote improvements in equity.

This chapter reviews the main growth challenges faced by OECD and selected non-OECD countries and takes stock of the progress made since 2015 in the adoption and implementation of structural policy reforms to address these challenges. Progress is assessed on the basis of actions taken in response to Going for Growth policy recommendations. The chapter also discusses the potential effect of the reforms on policy objectives other than GDP growth, in particular public finance consolidation, narrowing current account imbalances and reducing income inequality.

This chapter reviews the main issues related to the short-term impact of structural reforms in different macroeconomic contexts and takes stock of existing theoretical and empirical studies. Taking reforms introduced in normal times as a benchmark, it reviews the available evidence on the impact of reforms that are implemented in bad times – i.e. in the presence of a sizeable negative output gap and persistently weak demand – as well as under different assumptions regarding the availability or effectiveness of macroeconomic policies in supporting the reforms. In doing so the chapter focuses on the key channels through which different reforms influence short-term activity via the main components of demand and discusses how these channels operate under different macro conditions.

This chapter reviews the association between GDP and living standards from the perspective of the average household, focusing on the income dimension. It discusses the mechanisms through swhich GDP growth trickles down to household sector income with a view to assessing whether and to what extent such mechanisms are amenable to policy intervention. To do so, the chapter provides a proper assessment of the link between income generated from GDP and income distributed to households, which implies examining income distribution between household and the non-household sectors of the economy.

This chapter contains a comprehensive set of quantitative indicators that allow for a comparison of policy settings across countries. The indicators cover areas of taxation and income support systems and how they affect work incentives, as well as product and labour market regulations, education and training, trade and investment rules and innovation policies. The indicators are presented in the form of figures showing for all countries the most recent available observation and the change relative to the previous observation.