Brazil, like other natural resource-exporting countries, has benefited from a sharp increase in commodity prices over the last few years. To investigate the possible impact of terms-of-trade gains on the real economy, this paper estimates normalised...

The possibility that a country’s external current account may adjust nonlinearly to shocks is attracting increasing attention in the empirical literature. To shed further light on this issue in the context of emerging-market economies, this paper...

This paper uses WITCH, an integrated assessment model with a game-theoretic structure, to explore the prospects for, and the stability of broad coalitions to achieve ambitious climate change mitigation action. Only coalitions including all large...

This paper examines the cost of a range of national, regional and global mitigation policies and the corresponding incentives for countries to participate in ambitious international mitigation actions. The paper illustrates the scope for available...

From 2000 to 2007, Estonia was one of the fastest growing emerging market economies. A housing boom, fuelled by capital inflows and credit, resulted in skyrocketing house prices and an over-expanded construction sector. However, the currency board...

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of financial crises on potential output. For this purpose a univariate autoregressive growth equation is estimated on an unbalanced panel of OECD countries over the period 1960 to 2007. Our results...

This paper formalises the analysis of the employment-productivity trade-off by extending the framework developed by Gordon (1997) to account for labour heterogeneity. The extent of the trade-off is determined by the extent of the adjustment of...

In mid-2008, high employment and low unemployment rates characterised the Estonian labour market in comparison with the average of the EU15 countries. While aggregate outcomes improved during 2000-07, large inequalities persisted across regions,...

New Zealand’s living standards remain well below the OECD average. This is entirely attributable to persistently low labour productivity, which in turn is related to economic geography as well as structural policy factors. The small size and...

This paper describes patterns and developments of regulation that potentially affect product market competition in OECD countries over the past decade. It uses the 2008 update and revision of the OECD indicators of product market regulation (PMR)...

High expectations surrounded the two waves of eastward EU enlargement in 2004 and 2007, with the extension of the EU Internal Market being expected to deliver a substantial boost to economic growth in new and old member States alike. Indeed,...

There are local air pollution benefits from pursuing greenhouse gases emissions mitigation policies, which lower the net costs of emission reductions and thereby may strengthen the incentives to participate in a global climate change mitigation...

This paper studies drivers of high-frequency (daily) dynamics of the South African rand vis-à-vis the dollar from January 2001 to July 2007. We find strong nonlinear effects of commodity prices, perceived country and emerging market risk premium and...

Climate change is expected to have significant implications for the world economy and, more broadly, for many areas of human activity. The purpose of this review is twofold. First, it is to summarise current estimates of the impacts of climate change...

This paper uses household survey (Sakernas) data from the 1996 and 2004 to estimate the determinants of earnings in Indonesia. The Indonesian labour market is segmented, with a majority of workers engaged in informal-sector occupations, and earnings...

This paper uses a variety of empirical methods to examine the apparent differences in monetary policy stances as between the United States and other G7 economies, notably those in the euro area, during the period of sharp increases in oil and other...

This paper finds that coherent regulatory policies can boost investment in network industries of OECD economies. Rate-of-return regulation is generally thought to result in overinvestment, while incentive regulation is believed to entail...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relation between the volatility of government consumption and country size. Using a sample of 160 countries from 1960 to 2000 the main findings of our empirical analysis suggest that: 1) smaller countries have...

Investment in network infrastructure – the energy, water, transport and telecommunication networks – which performs a vital role for the functioning of the economy, can contribute to raising growth and social welfare. But more is not always better....

Investment in network infrastructure can boost long-term economic growth in OECD countries. Moreover, infrastructure investment can have a positive effect on growth that goes beyond the effect of the capital stock because of economies of scale, the...