The rise in European unemployment has inspired much new research on the causes and mechanisms of unemployment, analogous to the interest devoted to unemployment in the 1930s. The new research has to a large extent focused on wage-setting behaviour,...

A recent study by David Aschauer suggested a novel explanation for the slowdown of private-sector total factor productivity (TFP) in the United States in the early 1970s. He argues that it is due to the roughly contemporaneous slowdown in the rate of...

Since the early 1980s, most OECD countries have embarked on medium-term strategies to restore greater balance to the public finances and to wind back government intervention in the economy. The attached paper examines the progress so far. It also...

This paper surveys various estimates of the macroeconomic implications of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Most available studies focus on policies to reduce CO2 emissions and are limited to the costs of such policies. The survey first examines the...

Investment growth in the OECD area has been higher in the second half of the 1980s than in the 1970s. However, the ratio of net investment to GDP has remained low by past cyclical standards. This paper first reviews the evolution of business-sector...

In the 1980s, real consumption wages fell relative to labour efficiency in OECD countries, although there has been some pressure on wages recently. The persistent moderation of wages was due to labour-market slack, as well as rising non-wage labour...

This paper presents work on wage/price blocks for the smaller OECD countries which has been implemented in OECD's world econometric model, INTERLINK. The paper discusses theoretical, statistical and practical aspects of the estimation of business...

This paper reviews the influence of a variety of different monetary rules for the G3 economies on the comparative simulation properties of a recent version of the OECD INTERLINK model. The simulated shocks are typically of a "global" nature, with the...

This paper presents a technical description of the OECD's multi-sector, multi-country applied general equilibrium model -- the WALRAS model. This model has been developed with the explicit objective of quantifying the economy-wide effects of...

The paper examines the desirability of exchange rate management in a commodity-exporting country, in which the terms of trade are driven by the world commodity price cycle. When the authorities are assumed to pursue an inflation objective, the...

Concerns over the pace, scope and causes of environmental degradation have led to a renewed interest in the way environmental and economic policies interact. This paper first reviews the main causes for excessive use of environmental resources in a...

The paper addresses the question of whether financial liberalisation and innovation has significantly altered consumption behaviour by reducing liquidity constraints as capital markets become more flexible. A consumption model in which the permanent...

This paper is one of three in this Working Paper Series, along with those by Chouraqui et al. and Blanchard, in which the assessment of fiscal policy is reconsidered. It reviews the question of what type of budget indicators the OECD should compile....

There are four sets of questions that fiscal indicators can help answer: (1) Of the changes in the fiscal position, what part is due to changes in the economic environment and what part is due to policy? (2) Can the current course of fiscal policy be...

During the past decade, the formulation of fiscal policy has been increasingly founded on medium-term considerations associated with public debt and economic efficiency. In this regard, this paper, and the ones by Olivier Blanchard and Edward...

The paper examines evidence concerning the impact of financial liberalisation and innovation on monetary policy. The indicator value of monetary aggregates and the role of liquidity constraints in the transmission mechanism affecting aggregate demand...

This paper measures the net dollar position of the non-U.S. private sector and a few other international positions -- notably the net foreign-currency position of the U.S. private sector. These currency positions provide the basis for a discussion of...

Industrial subsidies should ideally be measured in ways that permit comparisons across subsidy instruments and countries, and that facilitate subsequent economic analysis of the effects of subsidisation. This paper deals with a number of conceptual...

Subsidisation of industrial activities distorts the allocation of scarce resources, is a burden on government finances and generates friction in international trade. This paper draws on a wide range of data sources to examine industrial subsidisation...

This paper surveys Japanese saving behaviour, whose rate is one of the highest among OECD countries. Macroeconomic factors such as rates of economic growth and inflation may have been important in explaining the high saving rate in the past and the...