Investment in OECD Countries: a Primer

Aggregate business investment is a major driver of long-term economic growth. It has been weak in many advanced economies over the last decade, partly due to cyclical demand-side effects. Nevertheless, a number of structural factors and policies interact with and have an effect on business investment. This paper provides a survey of the literature on the main policy drivers of business investment such as finance (including bank and market finance, venture capital and the debt bias in corporate taxation), tax policies, foreign direct investment, product and labour market and environmental regulations, the importance of an efficient insolvency regime, the negative impact of (regulatory) uncertainty and the role of infrastructure investment as a support for business investment.