Global intellectual property reform has been underway since the early 1990s (Box 1). With respect to international trade, a central pillar of the reform is the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property ...

Since the end of the 1990s, issues related to international migration, and more particularly to the international mobility of highly-qualified workers, are receiving increasing attention from policy-makers. This reflects among others the increasing ...

The health of a firm’s balance sheet potentially plays a role in its decisions to invest and through that channel, aggregate activity can be affected. Several authors have established a theoretical link based on the notion that the value of equity ...

Between 2002 and early 2005 risk premia for a number of asset classes across broad geographical areas not only fell substantially but also tended to move more closely together than they had done historically. This raises the question to what extent ...

Some of the recent “hype” about how advances in technology are forging a “new economy” has evaporated. Interest in “dot.com” start-up companies in the US has waned with the decline in stock market valuations. Some of the more extravagant claims – in ...

Accurate and timely information on the current state of economic activity is an important requirement for the policymaking process. Delays in the publication of official statistics mean that a complete picture of economic developments within a ...