"Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dramatically increased worldwide and is the most important form of all private capital flows to developing countries. Yet, it is an important empirical question whether FDI affects total factor productivity (TFP) positively. We investigate the effect of FDI...

This paper presents empirical evidence on the role that policy and institutional settings in both product and labour market play for productivity and firm dynamics. It exploits a new firm-level database for ten OECD countries and industry-level data for a broader set of countries, together with...

This paper assesses the performance of the United States health system in an international context and discusses potential directions for reform. The US health system is unique among OECD countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector for both financing and delivery of health care. The...

The relationship between income distribution and economic growth has long been an important economic research subject. Despite substantial evidence on the negative impact on long-term growth of inequality in the literature, however, there is not much consensus on the specific channels through...

We study the cyclical behavior of fiscal policy to explain why some countries exhibit procyclical fiscal policy stances-being expansionary in good times and contractionary in bad times. We develop a model that links the polarization of preferences over fiscal spending to the procyclicality bias....

The 2007-09 Great Recession has led to an unprecedented increase in public debt in many countries, triggering substantial fiscal adjustments. What are the distributional consequences of fiscal austerity measures? This is an important policy question. This paper analyzes the effects of fiscal...