Policy efforts to revitalise entrepreneurship and investment in Spain are key to generating growth and new jobs. The government has a substantial reform program to make it easier to do business in Spain, which should in some cases be deepened. Boosting economic growth requires a new generation...

The global financial and economic crisis has struck Iceland with extreme force. Iceland’s three main banks, accounting for almost all of the banking system, failed in October 2008. They were unable to resist the deterioration in global financial markets following the failure of Lehman...

The financial sector has emerged as the main economic engine over the past two decades. The comparative advantages of placing financial activities in Luxembourg have mostly been in terms of an adaptive legislative and regulatory framework and low taxation. As a result, Luxembourg is today one of...

With sound framework conditions, fine universities, good infrastructure and policies friendly towards foreign direct investment, Ireland scores high in international innovation scoreboards. Overall, policies to boost innovation and entrepreneurship are on the right track, but investment in...

Following Chairman Ben Bernanke’s comments before Congress that the FOMC may ‘take a step down in the pace of asset purchases if economic improvement appears to be sustained’, US 10-year interest rates picked up sharply and gross capital flows to emerging market economies (EMEs) reversed....

This paper examines the channels through which ageing will shape the main economic factors that in turn affect potential growth; identifies current policy settings that may in fact amplify the adverse impact of demographic trends; and sets out policy reforms that will work to temper the effects...

This paper examines the nature and the length of economic adjustments to selected structural reforms, drawing on a variety of approaches: descriptive analysis and simulations using Dynamic General Equilibrium and macro-economic neo-Keynesian models. The descriptive analysis suggests that the...

Apparent characteristics of the Hungarian banking market such as large profits and high margins suggest weak competitive pressures. Weak competition in turn, may reduce efficiency in a lack of pressures to converge to marginal cost and to stimulate managerial efforts to reduce X-inefficiency....

Homeownership rates have increased significantly in many OECD countries over recent decades. Using micro-econometric decomposition techniques, this paper shows that part of this increase can be explained by changes in the characteristics of households, including age, household structure, incomes...