The unemployment rate in Estonia rose sharply in 2010 to one of the highest levels in the EU, after thecountry entered a severe recession in 2008. While the rate declined relatively rapidly in 2011, it remained high especially for the less educated. In 2009, the Employment Contract Law relaxed...

The basic aim of the research is to investigate the impacts of research and development (R&D) on manufacturing trade. Six hypotheses are tested. The focus is on possible non-linear effect of R&D on trade flows and whether R&D helps overcome the distance and the role of level of economic...

This paper presents evidence regarding the existence of common business cycles in OECD countries. More specifically, the paper examines the extent to which these cycles relate to each other over time. Business cycle components of output are extracted by adopting the Hodrick–Prescott,...

This paper uses an instrumental variable approach to study whether public debt has a causal effect on economic growth in a sample of OECD countries. The results are consistent with the existing literature that has found a negative correlation between debt and growth. However, the link between...

Between 2006 and 2009, the OECD undertook a series of reviews of national rural development policy. The reviews largely followed a consistent approach and used the OECD's New Rural Paradigm (NRP) as a common metric for assessing various national approaches. Although the reviews cannot be...

Even though, there are so many so long discussions on the relation between population increase and economic growth, today, general opinion tends to believe that there is a direct relation between population increase and economic growth. This opinion is supported by some empirical studies....

Based on new estimates of public and private capital stocks for 22 OECD countries we study the dynamic effect of public capital on the real gross domestic product using a vector autoregression approach. Whereas most former studies put effort on examining the effects of public capital in a single...

This paper analyses the reaction of fiscal policy to the cycle in OECD countries. The results suggest that while overall government balances were counter-cyclical in the past and more so in economic downturns than in upswings, discretionary fiscal policy was neutral on average. However,...

The unemployment rate in Estonia rose sharply in 2010 to one of the highest levels in the EU, after the country entered a severe recession in 2008. While the rate declined relatively rapidly in 2011, it remained high especially for the less educated. In 2009, the Employment Contract Law relaxed...