Global progress towards tackling climate change is lagging. This paper puts forward a framework to design comprehensive decarbonisation strategies while promoting growth and social inclusion. It first highlights the need of evaluating a country’s...

The full potential of digital technologies remains unrealised and their benefits unequally shared because of insufficient investment in enabling intangible assets and communication networks within and across countries. The COVID-19 shock poses new...

This paper updates the long-term scenarios to 2060 last published in July 2018, with a special focus on fiscal sustainability and risks. In a baseline economic and fiscal scenario, trend real GDP growth for the OECD + G20 area declines from around 3%...

The design of intergovernmental fiscal relations can help to ensure that tax and spending powers are assigned in a way to promote sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Decentralisation can enable sub-central governments to provide better public...

This paper was prepared in support of Japan’s G20 Presidency. It takes stock of ongoing and projected population ageing across G20 economies and its far-reaching implications for economic growth, productivity, inequality within and between...

This paper presents a range of policies to enhance adoption of digital technologies and firm productivity. It quantifies illustratively the effect of policy changes by combining the results of two recent OECD analyses on the drivers of adoption and...

Tax and spending reforms offer numerous opportunities to promote inclusive growth. There is potential for so-called win-win reforms that simultaneously boost economic output and enhance income equality. Other changes in the structure of public...

Against a backdrop of the widening income distribution in most countries, OECD governments need to formulate policies that support sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Tax policies play a crucial role in this endeavour. Both tax theory and...

Income inequality has increased in most OECD countries over the past two decades. This is both because market incomes (wages, dividends, interest income) have become more unequally distributed, and also because redistribution through taxes and...

This paper presents long-run economic projections for 46 countries, extending the short-run projections of the Spring 2018 OECD Economic Outlook. It first sets out a baseline scenario under the assumption that countries do not carry out institutional...

Policies that spur more efficient corporate restructuring can revive productivity growth by targeting three inter-related sources of labour productivity weakness: the survival of “zombie” firms (low productivity firms that would typically exit in a...

Considering the deep and long-lasting impact of severe recessions, such as the 2008-09 financial crisis, it is important that measures be taken to minimise the risk of such event. But in doing so the benefits need to be balanced against the potential...

Reforms that boost growth by enhancing economic flexibility often meet strong opposition related to concerns that they may imply adverse consequences for categories of workers. This study investigates how making product or labour market regulation...

World trade growth was rapid in the two decades prior to the global financial crisis but has halved subsequently. There are both structural and cyclical reasons for the slowdown. A deceleration in the rate of trade liberalisation post 2000 was...

Across the OECD, GDP per capita is converging. In contrast, regional disparities – or differences in GDP per capita across jurisdictions – are rising, mainly as a result of widening productivity differences. Fiscal decentralisation could help reduce...

Membership of the European Union has contributed to the economic prosperity of the United Kingdom. Uncertainty about the outcome of the referendum has already started to weaken growth in the United Kingdom. A UK exit (Brexit) would be a major...

The sharp rise in debt experienced by most OECD countries raises questions about debt indicators and the prudent government debt level countries should target. It also raises questions about the fiscal frameworks needed to reach the prudent debt...

Finance is a vital ingredient for economic growth, but there can also be too much of it. This study investigates what fifty years of data for OECD countries have to say about the role of the financial sector for economic growth and income inequality...

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the effects of structural policies on household disposable incomes at different income levels. More specifically, it investigates the extent to which structural policies have differential long-run impacts...

Economic policies shape how much people earn but also how stable their income and jobs are. The level of earnings and the degree of economic stability both matter for well-being. Micro-level data indicate that, across OECD countries, economic...