Russia faces very large challenges in modernising its large transport system. Promoting competition in the transport sector is essential, in particular by effectively opening the railway freight market to independent operators.
Reducing the role of the state in the economy and WTO membership should be viewed as opportunities to strengthen competition, and hence provide incentives for productivity improvements, which are urgently required to ensure stronger growth in Russia because of a shrinking labour force.
Mexico has embarked on a bold package of structural reforms that will help it to break away from three decades of slow growth and low productivity. Major structural measures have been legislated to improve competition, education, energy, the financial sector, labour, infrastructure and the tax system, among many, and implementation has started in earnest.
Designing policies that protect society while allowing for Internet’s great economic potential to be fulfilled, is a difficult task. This paper investigates this challenge and takes stock of existing regulations in OECD and selected non-OECD countries in specific areas related to the digital economy.
The EU Single Market remains fragmented by complex and heterogeneous rules at the EU and national levels affecting trade, capital, including foreign direct investment, and labour mobility.
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.
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.
A simple econometric framework is presented linking current account balances of euro area countries to intra and extra euro area competitiveness, cyclical positions, fiscal positions and the oil price.
English, PDF, 522kb
The Netherlands has strongly benefited from globalisation, which boosted international trade, cross-border investment and economic growth over the latest decades.
English, PDF, 508kb
The Netherlands, as other OECD countries, faces the challenge of providing high quality health and long term care services to an ageing population in a cost-efficient manner.