A. Introduction This submission provides a brief factual survey of statutory minimum wage systems in OECD countries (Section B) as well as a summary of recommendations concerning minimum wages which have been presented in the OECD Jobs Study and recent OECD Economic Surveys (Section C). This is...

This paper was prepared in the OECD Economics Department as a contribution to the Organisation-wide study entitled, “Towards a New Global Age”. It examines macro-structural economic developments in and between OECD and non-OECD economies, the economic linkages and a number of structural...

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the effects of taxation on economic performance, adds marginally to the empirical literature, and draws conclusions for tax policy in OECD countries. Key issues covered are how, in open OECD economies, taxes may have affected...

Since the Finnish unemployment rate has rocketed to a very high level in the beginning of the 1990's, it is worth to study to what extent the unemployment rate prevailing today is due to cyclical or to structural reasons. In this paper we try to estimate two different indicators that represent...

This paper addresses the issue of whether covariation of long-term interest rates across G10 countries has increased in recent years and whether, as a consequence, interest rates have become less subject to the influence of national monetary authorities and domestic fundamentals. A conceptual...

National accounts data provide the most comprehensive overview available of developments in national economies. They are of great interest to a wide range of users of economic information. These users, which include governments formulating budgetary policies, central banks making monetary policy...

Italy has been one of the few industrial countries resorting to incomes policy in the current decade. Many Italian observers have attributed to this policy the remarkable slowdown in wage and price inflation. However, no apparent progress has been made concerning labour market unbalances, as the...

This paper discusses the impact of government-imposed regulations on performance in the distribution sector. It first deals with the role of the distribution sector in OECD economies and gives an overview of competitive conditions in the sector. Next, it provides an overview of recent evidence...

For governments, the advantage of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) to trade is that their effects are more certain than for tariffs. Now that tariff barriers have been substantially reduced, there has been increasing interest in the ways that non-tariff barriers (NTBs) may distort and restrict...