More than six years after the onset of the financial and economic crisis, a return to the pre-crisis growth path remains elusive for a majority of OECD countries. In most advanced economies, potential growth has been revised down and, in some cases, there are growing concerns that persistently weak demand is pulling potential growth down further, resulting in a protracted period of stagnation. Risks of persistent stagnation concern mainly the euro area and Japan, but many of the underlying challenges such as slowing productivity, high long-term unemployment and falling labour force participation are common to other advanced economies. In major emerging-market economies, growth has become far less impressive in the last year or two, owing to a varying extent to infrastructure bottlenecks, financial sector vulnerabilities and resource misallocation. The slowdown has been particularly sharp in countries most exposed to commodity price developments.

The financial crisis and continued subdued recovery have resulted in lower growth potential for most advanced countries, while many emerging-market economies are facing a slowdown. In the near term, policy challenges include persistently high unemployment, slowing productivity, high public-sector budget deficit and debt, as well as remaining fragilities in the financial sector. The crisis has also increased social distress, as lower‑income households were hit hard, with young people suffering the most severe income losses and facing increasing poverty risk. Longer-term challenges include coping with population ageing as well as with the effect of skill-biased technical change on income inequality and the impact of environmental degradation on health and future growth. Robust structural policies are needed to address many of the short- and medium-term challenges faced by both advanced and emerging-market countries.

This chapter assesses progress that countries have made in responding to Going for Growth policy recommendations since 2013. Against this background, it identifies and discusses new priority areas where structural reforms are needed to lift growth across OECD and partner countries.

This chapter reviews the evidence on the potential effect of pro-growth structural reforms on wage dispersion and household income inequality and examines whether specific policies driving GDP growth over the past decades may have also contributed to widening inequalities. In doing so, it distinguishes between the main channels via which policies affect growth and income distribution and identifies policy packages to make growth more inclusive.

This chapter examines the environmental pressures related to economic growth, and how these may feed back to future growth and wellbeing. It discusses the role of structural reforms and environmental policies in this respect, and presents recent evidence on the importance of adequate design of environmental policies as well as on their impact on productivity growth.

This chapter provides an overview of reform activity since the early 2000s in the policy areas covered by the regular set of indicators featured in Going for Growth. It examines how policy priorities have evolved since the start of Going for Growth in response to actions taken as well as to shifts in challenges. It also gives an idea of the extent to which reforms in these areas have contributed to economic performance over that period.

This chapter contains a comprehensive set of quantitative indicators that allow for a comparison of policy settings across countries. The indicators cover areas of taxation and income support systems and how they affect work incentives, as well as product and labour market regulations, education and training, trade and investment rules and innovation policies. The indicators are presented in the form of figures showing for all countries the most recent available observation and the change relative to the previous observation.