Browse by: "2021"

The COVID-19 crisis has triggered a major shift towards telework and virtual interactions. This paper uses information on job postings from the online job site Indeed to analyse developments in the adoption of telework across 20 countries. It finds, first, that the incidence of advertised telework almost tripled during the pandemic, albeit with large differences both across sectors and across countries. Second, cross-country differences are to a notable extent explained by differences in the extent to which governments restricted mobility during the pandemic. However, while the tightening of restrictions substantially raises advertised telework, their easing only modestly reverses the increase. Third, digital preparedness plays an important role in mediating the response of advertised telework to changes in restrictions. The tightening of restrictions has particularly large effects in sectors that are better prepared to adopt digital business models, while their easing has almost no effect in countries with high-quality digital infrastructure. Overall, these results suggest that telework is here to stay, especially in countries with high levels of digital preparedness. Public policies will need to adapt to reap the potential benefits for productivity and worker well-being.

Motivated by the sudden adoption of telework in the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic, the Global Forum on Productivity (GFP) undertook an online survey among managers and workers in 25 countries about their experience and expectations, with a particular focus on productivity and well-being. This paper presents analysis and results from this endeavour. It finds that managers and workers had an overall positive assessment from teleworking both for firm performance and for individual well-being, and wish to increase substantially the share of regular teleworkers from pre-crisis levels. Respondents, on average, find that the ideal amount of telework is around 2-3 days per week, in line with other recent evidence and with the idea that the benefits (e.g., less commuting, fewer distractions) and costs (e.g., impaired communication and knowledge flows) need to be balanced at an intermediate level of telework intensity. To meet the challenges of this “hybrid” working mode, as the survey finds, further changes from management are needed, such as the co-ordination of schedules to encourage a sufficient degree of in-person interaction, and further investment in ICT tools and skills as well as more soft skills to master online communication.

This study provides an in-depth assessment of Spain’s innovation system and the current state of knowledge transfer and collaboration. It identifies five priority areas for reform and long-term investment that should provide the basis of a new Roadmap. These include granting greater operational autonomy to universities and public research organisations in return for accountability on outcomes, putting in place a better integrated system of incentives that takes both individuals and organisations into account, and ensuring sustained investment in core capabilities to connect science and business. To put these reforms in motion and sustain them over time, a new type of covenant between science and society is needed in Spain today. This should be based on a ‘new deal’ between actors in the science and innovation system and society at large, committing to place the pursuit of concrete social benefits in return for more stable and predictable support.

COVID‑19 hit the long-term care sector hard. This brief looks at mortality rates in care homes, as well as the policy responses undertaken during the pandemic. The brief assesses the emergency preparedness of the sector and highlights the lessons learned, including policies to reduce isolation, testing strategies, care workforce and co‑ordination with the health care sector.

After a decade of steady growth, the tourism sector in Portugal is facing its most acute challenge in modern times, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As inbound visitors return to Portugal, the tourism workforce will need digital skills to make effective use of new technologies, and exploit the opportunities digitalisation is opening up for marketing, as well as product and destination development. Successful digital uptake by businesses will be a driving force in building recovery and resilience in the longer term. While there has been progress in recent years, especially in response to the pandemic, there remains considerable scope to go further. To support this digital transformation, this report examines and assesses current policy approaches to support digital skills and workforce development in the sector, and presents a selection of policy considerations to: i) address digital transformation gaps, shortages and opportunities for workforce organisation and skills development, and ii) enhance governance mechanisms to support the digital skills transformation of the tourism workforce.

Over the past several decades, public debt has increased substantially in many OECD countries, particularly in the aftermath of recessions. The extent of this increase and the resulting debt levels varied across countries, partly reflecting differences in average budget balances. Despite rising debt, governments’ interest payments as a share of GDP have declined, reducing concerns about debt sustainability. Still, high debt levels make public finances vulnerable to negative shocks. Thus, governments will have to balance the need to minimise the risk of fiscal stress and the need to satisfy growing demands on public finances related to population ageing, climate change, low growth, inequalities, accelerated digitalisation and cyclical demand stabilisation. Limitations of various numerical indicators of debt sustainability give some support to a more qualitative assessment of fiscal policy and stress the importance of effective and resilient fiscal frameworks. Credible and transparent fiscal frameworks can help make appropriate policy choices, which are affected by numerous political biases and constraints. However, such frameworks do not guarantee positive outcomes. Further research on interactions between various elements of such frameworks, such as fiscal rules, medium‑term expenditure plans, budget transparency and independent fiscal institutions, is needed.

The landscapes of housing loan markets vary considerably across OECD countries, reflecting differences in preferences and policy settings. This paper first draws a topography of disparities in mortgage structure, documenting considerable variation across OECD countries in key features such as in use of fixed vs variable interest rates and typical maturities. The paper then discusses policies that can influence these outcomes. It highlights the scope for encouraging inclusive access to housing through tax-and-spending programmes that are neutral between renting and owning rather than through often very costly tax advantages for mortgage borrowing. The paper finally proposes a novel indicator to measure the balance between the rights of borrowers and lenders. Mortgage markets are deepest in countries where the index shows that creditor and borrower rights are balanced rather than severely tilted to one side.

Italy’s start-up visa aims to make the national start-up ecosystem more easily accessible to foreign talent, rich with knowledge and skills, and more integrated into global markets. Government reports show that the programme has not yet achieved a critical scale. The analysis of similar initiatives in Chile, France, Ireland and Portugal identifies five gateways for attracting more foreign entrepreneurs, such as an effective policy outreach, smooth inter-institutional co-operation across the migratory process, and the provision of sound support services for a “soft landing” of entrepreneurs upon arrival. These takeaways may also inform new talent attraction policies targeting remote workers, an expanding group in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

This report provides recommendations for regulatory and data governance frameworks to support the development of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in the Brussels-Capital Region. These highlight the need to enable the development of a competitive and innovative MaaS ecosystem, with both public and private actors, in order to maximise the likelihood that sustainable MaaS business models will be developed. The work identifies the necessary scope of a new legal framework for MaaS and recommends how the existing regulation of mobility operators should be modified in order to integrate effectively with the MaaS framework. Finally, the work also addresses key data governance requirements, including data protection, transfer and reporting needed to support the development of MaaS.

Technological developments are one of the major forces behind the need for retraining, but they can also be part of the solution. In particular, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to increase training participation, including among currently underrepresented groups, by lowering some of the barriers to training that people experience and by increasing motivation to train. Moreover, certain AI solutions for training may improve the alignment of training to labour market needs, and reduce bias and discrimination in the workplace. In order to realise the benefits of AI for training and ensure that it yields benefits for all, it will be necessary to address potential drawbacks in terms of changing skills requirements, inequalities in access to data, technology and infrastructure and important ethical issues. Finally, even when these drawbacks can be addressed, the introduction and expansion of AI tools for training is constrained by the supply of AI skills in the workforce and the availability of scientific evidence regarding the benefits of AI tools for training and whether they are cost-effective.

The recession shadowing the COVID-19 pandemic has been frequently characterised as a “shecession,” implying disproportionately negative effects for women. Yet the crisis might more accurately be called a “momcession,” as women’s work losses were driven in large part by the outcomes of mothers specifically. The OECD’s 2020 Risks that Matter survey presents cross-national evidence that when schools and childcare facilities shut down, mothers took on the brunt of additional unpaid care work – and, correspondingly, they experienced labour market penalties and stress. These findings serve as another reminder that governments must consider inequalities in unpaid work and take a gender-sensitive approach when building their policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis.

La récession qui s’est installée dans le sillage de la pandémie de COVID‑19 a souvent été qualifiée de « récession au féminin », sous-entendant des répercussions négatives beaucoup plus marquées pour les femmes. Ce sont pourtant bel et bien les résultats des mères qui expliquent en grande partie les chiffres des pertes d’emploi des femmes. Il ressort en effet des données internationales présentées dans l’enquête 2020 de l’OCDE sur les risques qui comptent qu’au moment des fermetures des établissements scolaires et des structures de garde d’enfants, ce sont les mères qui ont assumé en grande partie le surcroît de travail familial et domestique non rémunéré et qui ont par conséquent été pénalisées et en difficulté sur le marché du travail. Ces résultats viennent également rappeler que les pouvoirs publics doivent prendre en considération les inégalités en matière de travail non rémunéré et intégrer la dimension femmes-hommes dans les mesures qu’ils prennent face à la crise du COVID-19.