Key indicators show Germany belonging to the countries in the OECD with strong innovation activity even though some weakening in Germany’s position relative to other OECD countries has occurred recently. While the redirection of resources towards unification-related spending as well as low...

The potential growth rate of the economy has been low for a long time and the crisis has had a further adverse impact. The meagre growth performance mainly reflects low growth in a number of services sectors; most manufacturing sectors, by contrast, expanded at a rapid pace in the years...

Estonia has already experienced many benefits of increasing international integration, most obviously in significant convergence. From the Russian crisis in 1998 to the great recession in 2009 Estonia gained an impressive 20% in GDP per capita relative to the EU27 average in PPPs. Like the other...

The labour market in Russia is very flexible. Firms adjust to economic shocks through wage cuts, working hour reductions and minimisation of non-wage labour costs. Workers react by changing jobs. This results in a high and stable overall employment rate, but also high wage inequality,...

Since the beginning of the decade, France has seen a marked decline in its export performance, leading to growing concerns on the part of the authorities and of civil society about the economy’s capacity to adapt to the intensified globalisation of trade and investment in goods and services....

Strengthening the innovation system in the Netherlands is a priority for raising productivity growth, which has been relatively weak in recent years. Knowledge creation in the Netherlands is strong -- scientific publications per capita are the sixth highest in the OECD -- but innovation activity...

This paper draws together the key findings from separate detailed analyses of the determinants of R&D, patenting and the commercial introduction of innovations in the business sector in order to identify the policies, institutions and framework factors that provide the most effective means of...

Despite some weakening in the 1990s, partly due to sluggish trend growth, the Swiss innovation performance has been very strong. There are, however, areas in which policy reforms could strengthen innovation further and help Switzerland maintain its lead in the face of a changing global...

Innovation is a broad topic, about which much has been written. Almost every kind of public policy has either a direct or an indirect impact on factors that affect innovative activity. The purpose of this paper is to draw out the key implications from selected studies concerning a small number...

This paper reviews recent studies on the links between competition, innovation and productivity growth in the long run. From a long-run perspective, one can see that gains from competition-enhancing regulatory reform are likely to exceed static gains observed in the short run since firms will...