OECD releases

New reports released:

Improving cost effectiveness in the health care sector in Iceland
Health outcomes and the quality of health care in Iceland are very good by international comparison, while income related health inequality appears to be smaller than in most other countries. However, the health care system is costly and, according to OECD estimates, public expenditure on health and long term care could reach 15% of GDP by 2050 if no restraining measures are taken.

The challenges of monetary policy in Turkey
Monetary policy has been one of the main pillars of the post-2001 stabilisation programme. Encouraged by its success, the central bank shifted from implicit to explicit inflation targeting in 2006 and set a medium-term inflation target of 4%, applicable from end 2007.

Understanding Russian regions' economic performance during periods of decline and growth – an extreme bound analysis approach
This article uses “extreme-bound”-type analysis to revisit the determinants behind widely differing economic growth in Russian regions. Using data of 77 regions for 1993-2004, it separately examines the growth drivers for the phase of economic decline up to 1998, and for the period of strong growth afterwards.

Do tax structures affect aggregate economic growth? Empirical evidence from a panel of OECD countries
This paper examines the relationship between tax structures and economic growth by entering indicators of the tax structure into a set of panel growth regressions for 21 OECD countries, in which both the accumulation of physical and human capital are taken into account.