Despite changes in social norms and policies, on average across 25 European countries, there remains a gap of around 15% in hourly earnings between similarly-qualified men and women. This raises inequality and limits growth by preventing women from reaching their full labour market potential....

Iceland is an innovative country, but has untapped innovation potential. Strengthening innovation, especially in the ICT area, is crucial for strong productivity growth and performance in an increasingly digitalised world, as well as a sustained recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Ensuring more...

Recent technological developments linked to secure messaging and traceability present an opportunity to address certain challenges in international and domestic payment systems. From an international perspective, foreign exchange markets remain costly and relatively less efficient than domestic...

The sanitary crisis, created by the outbreak COVID-19, is accelerating Chile’s digital transformation, which has seen a surge in e-learning, streaming, online shopping and marketing and teleworking. The digital transformation has the potential to revamp productivity and inclusiveness, although...

This paper analyses the role of intangibles and digital adoption for firm-level productivity in the Netherlands drawing on a newly constructed panel data set of Dutch enterprises. It provides robust evidence on productivity effects of intangibles and digital adoption using firms’ exposure to...

Overseas direct investment by Chinese firms increased eight fold over the past decade, making the country as an important investor in stock terms as Japan. Investing in leasing and business services appears to make up nearly half of China’s ODI stock according to official sources, though it is...

Despite the rising importance and economy-wide effects of online platforms, the paucity of cross-country comparable data still hampers understanding of the structural and policy determinants of their diffusion. This study contributes to the understanding of multi-sided online platforms in three...

Online platform use has grown remarkably in the last decade. Despite this, our understanding of its implications for economic outcomes is scarce and often limited to case studies and advanced countries. Using a newly built harmonised international dataset of online platforms and their use across...

Intangible assets are an important driver of productivity and ultimately output growth. Yet, despite their aggregate rise in the past decades, productivity has continued to grow modestly in the majority of OECD countries. This is in part because many firms – particularly young and small ones -...

Australia’s financial sector entered the COVID-19 crisis in a strong position, enabling it to play a key role in cushioning the pandemic’s impact. Once the national economy reopens, policymakers will turn their focus to securing a robust, sustainable and inclusive recovery. However, low...