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Productivity and long term growth

Occupational entry regulations

Occupational entry regulations and their effects on productivity in services

The rise in occupational licensing regulations has been an important economic trend over past decades, yet it was largely overlooked by policy makers. Using novel cross-country data on a wide set of personal and professional services, this work present evidence on the scope and implications of these regulations, with a special focus on the potential effects of ill-designed regulations for firm-level productivity.

Digitalisation and productivity

Digitalisation and productivity: a story of complementarities

Digital technologies are transforming our economies and seem to offer a vast potential to enhance the productivity of firms. However, despite ongoing digitalisation, productivity growth has declined sharply across OECD countries over the past decades.

Decoupling of wages from productivity

Decoupling of wages from productivity: What implications for public policies?

Several OECD countries have been grappling not only with slow productivity growth but have also experienced a slowdown in real average wage growth relative to productivity growth, which has been reflected in a falling share of wages in GDP.

The Long View: Scenarios for the world economy to 2060

The Long View: Scenarios for the world economy to 2060

Slowing global growth, limited income convergence and rising fiscal pressures – this is the outlook for the world economy in the new OECD long-term baseline projection. But structural policy reforms can brighten the outlook substantially in all countries, as illustrated in a number of alternative scenarios.

Going for Growth: Shaping a Vibrant Recovery

Going for Growth 2021: Shaping a Vibrant Recovery

Going for Growth 2021 identifies country-specific structural policy priorities for the recovery across OECD and key non-member countries (Argentina, Brazil, The People’s Republic of China, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia and South Africa). It frames the main policy challenges of the current juncture along three main areas: building resilience; facilitating reallocation and boosting productivity growth for all; and supporting people in transition.

Zombie firms

Zombie firms and weak productivity
Among the factors of the productivity slowdown experienced over the past two decades is the increasing survival of firms that would typically exit in a competitive market – i.e. “zombie” firms. Reviving productivity growth will partly depend on the policies that effectively facilitate the exit or restructuring of weak firms, while simultaneously coping with any social costs that arise from a heightened churning of firms and jobs.

Economic Resilience

Strengthening Economic Resilience: Insights from the Post-1970 Record of Severe Recessions and Financial Crises
Given the enduring impact of severe recessions and financial crises, it is important to take measures to minimise the risk of such events. In so doing, the benefits of higher economic stability must be weighed against potential costs. Risk-mitigating measures can involve a trade-off between growth and crisis risk, thus the most cost-effective actions must be identified.

Global Forum on Productivity

The OECD Global Forum on Productivity (GFP) fosters international co-operation between public bodies promoting productivity-enhancing policies. Access here the latest research and data on productivity trends and institutions, and follow our upcoming events.

Structural Policy Indicators Database for Economic Research (SPIDER)

The OECD’s Structural Policy Indicators Database for Economic Research (SPIDER) provides a broad range of data to researchers in ready-to-use formats to facilitate empirical/econometric research investigating the nature and the impact of structural policies.

It includes about 500 policy and institutional indicators from almost 50 different OECD and non-OECD data sources. The policy variables stored in the database are annual or less frequently available (every five years or only once). The database will be updated on a yearly basis.

The database covers the following broad categories of policy variables: i.) legal infrastructure and institutions describe features of the political system, the underlying legal institutions and indicators measuring the quality and various aspects of public governance; ii.) framework condition policies include policies that condition the environment in which firms operate and make decisions such the product market regulation (PMR/ETCR) indicators, the competition law and policy (CLP) indicator and a number of labour market institutions; iii.) specific policies cover policies relating for instance exclusively to specific segments of the labour market (older workers, women or the youth) and include family benefits, policies influencing decisions to retire. Examples of other specific policies are measures primarily designed to support R&D investment or exports. 

The database is available as a TEXT FILE (40 MB), data formats for EVIEWS (131MB) (.wf1), and STATA (123MB) (.dta).

See also the detailed data sources and definitions.

The database is described in more detail in Égert, Gal and Wanner (2017), “Structural policy indicators database for economic research (SPIDER)”, OECD Economics Department Working Paper No. 1429.

When using this data, please cite this working paper as your source.

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