This paper describes patterns and developments of regulation that potentially affect product market competition in OECD countries over the past decade. It uses the 2008 update and revision of the OECD indicators of product market regulation (PMR) that integrate to a larger extent than in the...

Improving the performance of the services sector is important to enhance aggregate economic growth. This is primarily since the service sector has become the quantitatively most important sector in all OECD economies. The growing role of services is not only the result of a resource...

This paper examines recent patterns in productivity growth of service industries and analyses the role of problems in measuring service productivity growth on industry and aggregate productivity growth. At the aggregate level, unbalanced growth can be observed between a dynamic manufacturing...

This paper examines how measurement problems affect international comparisons of labour productivity. It suggests that these measurement problems do not significantly affect the assessment of aggregate productivity patterns in the OECD area. However, these problems do influence the more detailed...

This paper examines the interaction between services and manufacturing using several types of data and shows that the distinction between manufacturing and services is blurring. Services make important contributions to production, mainly through their direct contribution to total output and...

This paper quantifies and examines the contribution of capital, labour and multifactor productivity (MFP) to GDP growth and analyses the role of measurement of capital and labour inputs for the MFP estimate, using a comprehensive growth accounting exercise for 14 OECD countries. For most OECD...

This paper examines how measurement problems affect international comparisons of labour productivity. It suggests that these measurement problems do not significantly affect the assessment of aggregate productivity patterns in the OECD area. However, these problems do influence the more detailed...

After steady employment growth since the 1990s, Spain has experienced the sharpest increase in unemployment among OECD countries during the crisis, amplified by structural problems of the labour market. Very high de facto severance payment of permanent contracts has resulted in a rigid dual...

In this paper the recently updated product market regulation (PMR) indicators are extended to a larger set of countries including several non-OECD members. It investigates regulatory patterns in this extended set of countries as compared to the OECD countries and analyses the link between...

The unemployment rate among young people has reached painfully high levels, in particular among those young people with low levels of education. There are two crucial policy priorities to improve employment prospects for youth in Spain. First, in the very short term, there is need for quick...