This paper introduces the OECD Weekly Tracker of economic activity for 46 OECD and G20 countries using Google Trends search data. The Tracker performs well in pseudo-real time simulations including around the COVID-19 crisis. The underlying model adds to the previous Google Trends literature in...

This paper proposes an approach to assess the extent of automatic fiscal stabilisation of aggregate household disposable income after a specific shock. The approach is based on the national account identity of household disposable income and elements of the OECD methodology to cyclically adjust...

Building on the automatic fiscal stabilisers literature, this paper assesses how automatic stabilisers have evolved over the past two decades by analysing changes in the personal income tax and social benefit systems. In three-quarters of the 35 OECD countries analysed, indicators of the...

The COVID-19 outbreak and the resulting disruptions in supply chains of some manufacturing and medical products have renewed the debate on costs and benefits of globalisation and, particularly, on risks associated with international fragmentation of production in global value chains (GVCs)....

With a newly constructed firm-level dataset combining various survey- and registry data from Statistics Estonia, this paper sheds new light on the labour productivity premium from adopting digital technologies and boosting digital skill use. The productivity premium is decomposed into a direct...

Technologies such as cloud computing, software to automate supplier- and customer relations, online platforms and artificial intelligence seem to offer a vast potential to boost productivity and living standards. However, aggregate productivity growth has declined sharply across the OECD over...

Private debt owed to banks and other financial institutions has been at unprecedented high levels. This paper studies the role of these high levels of debt for workers, based on an assembled micro-dataset that harmonises household surveys from 29 OECD countries. High debt is found to be...

In light of population ageing, globalisation, automation, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Thailand’s labour market is being significantly reshaped, and so are the skills required for higher employability. This paper analyses the capacity of Thailand’s education and training system...

Services are an important part of global economic activity and of international trade. Nevertheless, compared to its very large tourism sector, the sector of high-end business services in Thailand remains small. As IT and information, and professional services are traded indirectly through value...

The U.S. population has become increasingly concentrated in large metropolitan areas. However, there are striking differences in between the performances of big cities: some of them have been very successful and have been able to pull away from the rest, while others have stagnated or even...