{"title":"What is holding back productivity growth in India ?: Recent microevidence","authors":"Shaun Dougherty, Richard Herd, Thomas Chalaux","doi":"10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2009-ART3-EN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2009-ART3-EN","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines recent micro-evidence on the productivity of Indian firms, helping to explain why India’s manufacturing sector has not performed as well as many observers expected. A series of structural distortions are documented, all of which may depress the performance of manufacturing, and thus the economy as a whole. These distortions exist at multiple levels, and reflect long-standing problems with the reallocation of labour across sectors, the excessively small scale of firms, low firm turnover, poor product market integration, high industry concentration and persistent state ownership. Combined, these phenomena represent severe restraints on the level and growth of productivity in manufacturing, and suggest that much remains to be done to improve the strength and sustainability of India’s development path.","PeriodicalId":416490,"journal":{"name":"Oecd Journal: Economic Studies","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115778891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I. Haščič, F. D. Vries, N. Johnstone, Neelakshi Medhi
{"title":"Effects of environmental policy on the type of innovation","authors":"I. Haščič, F. D. Vries, N. Johnstone, Neelakshi Medhi","doi":"10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2009-ART2-EN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2009-ART2-EN","url":null,"abstract":"This article uses patent data to assess policy factors (domestic and international) for patenting activity in automotive emission control technologies. Particular attention is paid to the role of different policy types and fuel prices on both post-combustion and integrated abatement technologies. The results confirm that fuel prices have played a role in the development of integrated strategies, while regulatory standards have been more important with respect to post-combustion technologies. In addition, ‘integrated’ abatement strategies are more closely linked to general determinants of innovation than is the case for post-combustion technologies. This has implications for the design of policies which encourage innovations with both private and public benefits.","PeriodicalId":416490,"journal":{"name":"Oecd Journal: Economic Studies","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126260832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The policy determinants of hours worked across OECD countries","authors":"O. Causa","doi":"10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2009-ART1-EN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2009-ART1-EN","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the policy determinants of hours worked among employed individuals in OECD countries, focussing on the impact of taxation, working-time regulations, and other labour and product market policies. It explores the factors underlying cross-country differences in hours worked — in line with previous aggregate approaches — while at the same time it looks more closely at labour force heterogeneity — in the vein of microeconomic labour supply models. The paper shows that policies and institutions have a different impact on working hours of men and women. Firstly, while high marginal taxes create a disincentive to work longer hours for women, their impact on hours worked by men is almost insignificant. Secondly, working-time regulations have a significant impact on hours worked by men, and this impact differs across education categories. Thirdly, other labour and product market policies, in particular stringent employment protection of workers on regular contracts and competition-restraining product market policies, have a negative impact on hours worked by men, over and beyond their impact on employment levels.","PeriodicalId":416490,"journal":{"name":"Oecd Journal: Economic Studies","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130123829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Economic resilience to shocks: The role of structural policies","authors":"R. Duval, L. Vogel","doi":"10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART6-EN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART6-EN","url":null,"abstract":"Cyclical fluctuations in economic activity have moderated over time but the extent and dynamics of volatility remain different across OECD countries. A reason behind this heterogeneity is that countries exhibit different degrees of resilience in the face of common shocks. This paper traces divergences in resilience back to different policy settings and institutions in labour, product and financial markets. Using pooled regression analysis across 20 OECD countries over the period 1982-2003, the paper identifies the impact of policy settings on two dimensions of resilience: the impact effect of a shock and its subsequent persistence. Policies and institutions associated with rigidities in labour and product markets are found to dampen the initial impact of shocks but to make their effects more persistent, while policies allowing for deep mortgage markets lower persistence and thereby improve resilience. Combining these two dimensions of resilience, the paper then uses the estimated equations to derive indicators of resilience for the OECD countries concerned, based on their current or recent policy settings. Three groups of countries emerge. In English-speaking countries, simulations suggest shocks have a significant initial effect on activity but this impact then dies out relatively quickly. By contrast, in many continental European countries the initial impact of shocks is cushioned but their effect linger for longer, with the cumulated output loss tending to be larger than in English-speaking countries. Finally a few, mostly small, European countries combine cushioning of the initial shock with a fairly quick return to baseline.","PeriodicalId":416490,"journal":{"name":"Oecd Journal: Economic Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121683907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
François Marical, Marco Mira d’Ercole, M. Vaalavuo, G. Verbist
{"title":"Publicly provided services and the distribution of households' economic resources","authors":"François Marical, Marco Mira d’Ercole, M. Vaalavuo, G. Verbist","doi":"10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART1-EN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART1-EN","url":null,"abstract":"Conventional income distribution statistics subtract taxes from household income but do not take into account the distributional effects of the services financed through these taxes. As many of the functions of government are available to the population free of charge or at a subsidised rate, this means that income distribution figures exaggerate the degree of inequality in the distribution of resources. This article examines the extent to which this is the case, and assesses whether statements about the relative inequality prevailing in different countries are reliable. Estimates of the impact of government services on the static distribution of household income, based on two different approaches, show that publicly-provided goods and services significantly narrow the dispersion of income inequality across countries with only small changes in the ranking of individual countries, and that the effects are larger when looking at the extremes of the distributions.","PeriodicalId":416490,"journal":{"name":"Oecd Journal: Economic Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116476729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The macroeconomic policy challenges of continued globalisation","authors":"Karine Hervé, I. Koske, N. Pain, Franck Sédillot","doi":"10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART5-EN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART5-EN","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the macroeconomic policy challenges associated with a prospective continuation of international trade and financial integration over the next two decades, making use of a global macroeconomic model newly developed by the OECD. The analysis has several important policy implications. First, with the shares of non-OECD economies in world output, trade, and capital markets rising substantially, global economic developments would become much more dependent on developments in these economies than they used to be. Second, the sustainability of existing global current account imbalances will depend in part on the future build-up and composition of international assets and liabilities. While the imbalances could be sustainable for some time if economic integration continues at its current pace, a slowdown of the globalisation process would raise the likelihood of a disruptive adjustment in financial markets. Third, the increase in trade and financial linkages implies that macroeconomic shocks in a given country or region have a larger impact on other economies in the future than they do today. Policymakers in the OECD may have to act more promptly and more vigorously to economic “shocks” in the non-OECD economies in order to limit the impact on OECD economies.","PeriodicalId":416490,"journal":{"name":"Oecd Journal: Economic Studies","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125559105","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Globalisation and OECD consumer price inflation","authors":"N. Pain, I. Koske, M. Sollie","doi":"10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART4-EN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART4-EN","url":null,"abstract":"Over the past 25 years inflation has moderated considerably in all OECD economies. At the same time, the production of many goods and services has become increasingly internationalised and the level of trade between the OECD and non-OECD economies has risen markedly. This paper investigates the extent to which the observed changes in the inflation process can be attributed to the increasing integration of non-OECD economies into the global economy. The results of the analysis show that i) import prices have become a more important driver of domestic consumer prices since the mid-1990s; ii) the sensitivity of inflation to domestic economic conditions has declined whereas the sensitivity to foreign economic conditions has risen, working through import prices; and iii) the strong GDP growth in the non-OECD economies over the past five years has contributed to the growth of real oil and metals prices. A scenario analysis shows that globalisation has put upward pressure on inflation via higher commodity prices and downward pressure via lower non-commodity import prices with the latter effect having dominated in most OECD economies.","PeriodicalId":416490,"journal":{"name":"Oecd Journal: Economic Studies","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134014139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The incidence of carbon pricing: Norway, Russia and the Middle East","authors":"P. Bagnoli, Jean Château, Yong Gun Kim","doi":"10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART7-EN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART7-EN","url":null,"abstract":"Russia, Norway and the Middle East are three regions that have distinct histories in energy policies. Current situations will make it more challenging for Russia and the Middle East to implement greenhouse gas abatement than it will be for Norway, even though all three are major energy producers. Relative to the world as a whole, Russia is most heavily impacted, with the Middle East less so but still significantly affected. Norway’s potential economic loss is only a little larger than the world average. This asymmetry implies that if the differences in impacts are not broadly understood, then international negotiations may be subjected to bargaining under asymmetric information. If so, they may not be able to reach agreement. The result reported here is thus a step in overcoming information asymmetries and facilitating successful negotiation. The results also have clear implications for the speed at which Russia undertakes energy market reforms, and for the manner in which Middle Eastern countries implement diversification of their economies.","PeriodicalId":416490,"journal":{"name":"Oecd Journal: Economic Studies","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116143808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Globalisation and employment in the OECD","authors":"M. Molnár, N. Pain, D. Taglioni","doi":"10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART3-EN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART3-EN","url":null,"abstract":"This article reviews some of the possible changes that may occur in the national labour markets of many OECD countries as a result of the internationalisation of production by multinational companies, with a particular focus on the impact of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from OECD countries on employment in the home country of the investing firms. Existing studies suggest that the overall impact of trade and the internationalisation of production on aggregate labour market outcomes has been comparatively small, although particular skill and occupational groups have been affected more strongly. The empirical findings in the paper suggest that the aggregate employment impact of outward FDI varies across industries and countries. For manufacturing industries with strong commercial links with the non-OECD economies, there is evidence that domestic employment has become more sensitive to movements in domestic labour costs. At the country level, the growth of outward investment is found to have a significant positive effect on domestic employment growth in the United States. In contrast, there is a negative association in Japan, especially from outward investment in China.","PeriodicalId":416490,"journal":{"name":"Oecd Journal: Economic Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133257424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Improving the efficiency of health care spending: What can be learnt from partial and selected analyses of hospital performance?","authors":"E. Erlandsen","doi":"10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART2-EN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1787/ECO_STUDIES-V2008-ART2-EN","url":null,"abstract":"There are no ready-made data on hospital outputs and inputs which would allow comprehensive international comparisons of hospital efficiency to be carried out. This paper, therefore, relies on selected evidence to compare hospital efficiency in a sub-set of OECD countries, based on three different approaches relying on, respectively: i) unit costs for standard hospital treatments; ii) overall efficiency levels in a set of paired countries; iii) within-country dispersion in individual hospital efficiency. The analysis suggests substantial cross-country differences in hospital performance. Although country coverage varies between the different approaches, making it difficult to assess the extent to which comparisons provide a consistent picture of national efficiency levels, cross-checks between the different indicator sets tend to support the robustness of the country rankings.","PeriodicalId":416490,"journal":{"name":"Oecd Journal: Economic Studies","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131965891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}