Technological change is transforming Ireland’s economic structures, leading to new jobs and innovative products that benefit consumers. Adoption of new technologies by businesses has been high relative to many other OECD economies, but it has been uneven across industries and the impact on...

In this article we investigate - both conceptually and empirically - the relationship between three interconnected elements of the Schumpeterian "engine of progress": the ability of industries' R&D efforts to turn out successful innovations; the ability of innovations to lead to high...

How are OECD countries supporting digital innovation and ensuring that benefits spread across the economy? This paper explores the current landscape of strategies and initiatives implemented in OECD countries to support innovation in the digital age. It identifies common trends and differences...

This report contains an empirical analysis of the productivity and sustainability performance of different types of farms in thirteen countries. Farm productivity performance is measured through estimates of average productivity levels and through annual rates of technical change. Evidence on...

This paper provides some new theoretical speculations and empirical evidence on the relationship between design, innovation and economic performance at the firm level. We posit that design investments may provide firms with a higher capacity of introducing product/process innovations, but that...

Innovation is key to boosting Australia’s productivity and inclusiveness. This paper examines the policies that create good conditions for innovation, not only in science and technology but also wider forms, such as business-model innovation. Competition and flexible markets are particularly...

Productivity is the ultimate driver of sustainable increases in living standards. While Ireland is a high productivity country, it has not been immune from the global productivity slowdown, with the pace of growth on a downward trend throughout the 2000s. Little research has been carried out as...

Productivity growth has slowed across most OECD economies since the mid-2000s. While important aspects of New Zealand’s economic performance have improved over this period, productivity growth is still comparatively low. This continues a long-run trend of poor productivity in New Zealand,...

Using a new survey, we show that the dispersion of marginal products across firms in the European Union is about twice as large as that in the United States. Reducing it to the US level would increase EU GDP by more than 30 percent. Alternatively, removing barriers between industries and...

This paper explores the role of managerial capital and business research and development (R&D) in fostering multifactor productivity (MFP) convergence in a panel of 42 countries. The OECD long-term growth model is augmented to show that, in addition to trade openness, an economy’s speed of...