Browse by: "2022"
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This paper maps the evolving data localisation landscape. It shows that the number of data localisation measures is on the rise and that the measures themselves are becoming more restrictive. The paper highlights the need to better understand and monitor the evolving regulatory environment with a view to enabling empirical analysis of the economic and societal implications of data localisation. This is an issue which is particularly important in the context of ongoing discussions on data localisation, be they in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) or in the context of the WTO Joint Statement Initiative on e-commerce.
Inflation has quickly and significantly increased in most OECD countries since the end of 2021 and further accelerated after Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, mostly driven by surging energy and food prices. Certain categories of households are particularly vulnerable, as large parts of their consumption expenditures are devoted to energy and food. Drawing on national micro-based household budget surveys and on CPI data, this paper provides a quantification of the impact of rising prices on households’ welfare. Declines in household purchasing power between August 2021 and August 2022 are estimated to range from 3% in Japan to 18% in the Czech Republic. This decline is driven by energy prices in most countries, especially Denmark, Italy, and the United Kingdom, while energy prices play a lesser role in countries where inflation is more broad-based like the Czech Republic and the United States. In all considered countries, inflation weighs relatively more on low than high-income households. Rural households are hit particularly hard, most often more than low-incomes ones, and this is driven by energy price inflation. To cushion vulnerable households from rising inflation, especially from energy prices, these findings call for a careful targeting of income and price support measures, notwithstanding their administrative and logistical complexity, taking into account their effects on economic activity, inflation, and, last but not least, environmental goals.
Global progress towards tackling climate change is lagging. This paper puts forward a framework to design comprehensive decarbonisation strategies while promoting growth and social inclusion. It first highlights the need of evaluating a country’s national climate targets and current policy mix, in conjunction with facilitating monitoring tools to assess current and future progress, as a key step to design effective decarbonisation strategies. It then provides a detailed comparison of several policy instruments across different assessment criteria, which indicates that no single instrument is clearly superior to all others. This highlights the need for developing decarbonisation strategies based on a wide policy mix consisting of three main components: 1) emission pricing policy instruments; 2) standards and regulations; 3) complementary policies to facilitate the reallocation of capital, labour and innovation towards low-carbon activities and to offset the adverse distributional effects of reducing emissions. However, there is no one-size-fits-all policy mix, as feasible policy choices depend on countries’ industrial structure, social preferences and political constraints. A robust and independent institutional framework, stakeholders engagement and credible communication campaigns are key to managing these constraints and ultimately enhancing public acceptance of climate mitigation policies.
For decades, governments have relied on space systems for intelligence gathering and satellite connectivity in remote areas, but today’s situation marks a distinct break with the past. Extended coverage, advances in digital technologies and, importantly, free and/or commercial availability of space products allow many new uses by both government and non-government actors. This brings important benefits for users and citizens, but also leads to new challenges in terms of data management, infrastructure and supply chain resilience, and international co-operation. This paper uses illustrations from the war in Ukraine to highlight recent developments in the sector, placing them in a broader context of digitalisation and government space investments. It discusses the growing importance of space technologies for society and provides policy options and resources from other strains of OECD work.
This paper provides a new measure of human capital using PISA and PIAAC surveys, and mean years of schooling. The new measure is a cohort-weighted average of past PISA scores (representing the quality of education) of the working age population and the corresponding mean years of schooling (representing the quantity of education). In contrast to the existing literature, the relative weights of each component are not imposed or calibrated but directly estimated. The paper finds that the elasticity of the stock of human capital with respect to the quality of education is three to four times larger than for the quantity of education. The new measure has a strong link to productivity with the potential for productivity gains being much greater from improvements in the quality than quantity component of human capital. The magnitude of these potential gains in MFP is comparable to a similarly standardised improvement in product market regulation, but the effects materialise with much longer lags. The paper demonstrates through the example of pre-primary education, how to simulate the impact of a particular reform to education policy on human capital and productivity.
Irish authorities are reshaping the nation’s higher education landscape, creating a network of technological universities that merge, build on, and extend the mission of the country’s institutes of technology. Its emerging technological universities are tasked with providing research-informed teaching and learning across all levels of higher education, linking their programmes to the needs of their region’s citizens, businesses and professions. This paper was commissioned by Ireland’s Higher Education Authority and Department for Further and Higher Education, Research and Innovation, who asked the OECD to identify a set of benchmark higher education institutions from other OECD countries that can provide insights for the development of future Irish technological universities through examination of their human resource policies, career paths and organisational structures. Drawing upon this evidence, and analysis of current policies in Ireland’s institutes of technology and technological universities, this analysis identifies options for new career and employment contracts and organisation structures
The Strength through Diversity Policy Survey collected information from 34 education systems on their policies and practices for equity/inclusion. The Survey revealed a great variation among the definitions of equity/inclusion, as well as among the definitions for the analysed dimensions of diversity. Education systems identified equity/inclusion as policy priorities in 2021/22 and, accordingly, changed their curriculum strategies and tailored the provision of instructional and non-instructional support to students. Education systems provided guidelines to promote teachers’ and schools’ collaboration with families and communities, and to help stakeholders respond to the diversity of student populations. Distribution of resources accounted especially for students with special education needs. Most education systems did not implement policies to promote diversity among school staff. Monitoring of diversity was unbalanced and relied heavily on academic outcomes. Few education systems used the term intersectionality in their jurisdictions, although several had policies that target the intersection of student groups.
Accessible and inclusive public communication helps to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their circumstances, can be heard and participate in public life. As part of a collaboration with the French Government Information Service and the activities of the OECD Experts Group on Public Communication, this working paper presents a range of practices and lessons learned about accessible and inclusive public communication in OECD member and partner countries, with a particular focus on persons with a disability. It covers trends, successes and challenges related to governance, audience insights and engagement, digital tools and processes, awareness-raising and training, as well as evaluation of accessibility and inclusion in public communication.
The third in a series of three papers on cross-border government innovation, this paper focuses on hands-on delivery and implementation of cross-border innovation efforts, representing the culmination of the different types of initiatives, structures and mechanisms uncovered in the series of reports. It also discusses how governments are putting in place cross-border enablers to allow for collective design and implementation of innovative policies and services, which can also support all of the topics covered in the series. The paper offers findings based on hundreds of cases in countries as well as research and expertise, and provides lessons and recommendations for successful cross-border collaboration and innovation governance.
This paper explores what the first global stocktake (GST1) under the Paris Agreement could usefully do in relation to two elements of its mandate on adaptation, namely, to review the adequacy and effectiveness of adaptation, and to enhance the implementation of adaptation action. This paper also discusses potential outputs from GST1, and how they could facilitate the intended outcomes of the process on adaptation, taking into account a learning-by-doing approach. This paper highlights that a comprehensive collective assessment of the adequacy and effectiveness of adaptation requires data that is currently not available for various reasons. Nonetheless, this paper finds that the GST’s ability to incorporate learning and its scope for continuous improvement provides an important opportunity to develop, apply and refine approaches and methodologies over time to better address the GST’s mandate on adaptation in subsequent cycles. The paper concludes that the GST1 process could help to inform and enhance Parties’ adaptation efforts by identifying priority data needs and gaps, increasing understanding of different approaches to assessing adaptation actions, identifying enabling factors for effective adaptation, and building linkages with parallel processes including on the Global Goal on Adaptation. In this way, the GST1 could play an important role in helping to set a foundation for improved approaches and data on adaptation over time that can feed into future GSTs and support the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement.
The large-scale aggression by Russia against Ukraine drastically changed how and which administrative services are delivered to its citizens. Physical facilities and communications infrastructure have been damaged or occupied in many areas of the country. This created the need to adapt or propose new ways of providing administrative services and the creation of entirely new services. The system of service delivery has had to be relaunched, adapted and even transformed. During the first days of the war there were almost no services. After three months the system had adapted to wartime conditions. The Ukrainian system of administrative service delivery has proved itself resilient in terms of safety and security, and in terms of responses to the new needs of the population. The simplification, deregulation and digitalisation efforts of the government will continue after the war.
Higher education institutions (HEIs) are more critical than ever to help societies respond to the complex challenges of our times. Recognising that these challenges require HEIs to adopt holistic innovations in teaching, research and collaboration activities, the European Commission (EC) and the OECD have developed the HEInnovate guiding framework. HEInnovate promotes innovation and entrepreneurship in higher education and provides guidance to policy makers and HEIs that want to generate additional societal and economic value.This policy brief distils the main findings and recommendations of 13 HEInnovate Country Reviews that have examined higher education system and institution, identifying factors affecting the delivery of the entrepreneurial and innovation agenda in higher education. Looked at in the round, the country reviews provide HE leaders with peer-learning and best practices, policy makers with tested policy solutions and the European Union and the OECD with a deeper understanding of the state of innovation and entrepreneurship in higher education.
OECD economies are undergoing a seemingly inevitable process of population ageing that has been changing income and consumption patterns. Notably, the demand for health services is expected to increase, while labour forces are projected to shrink. Both factors are projected to negatively impact the sustainability of health systems – the former through an increase in government expenditures on health and the latter through a decrease in government revenues. As health systems and their funding streams tend to be at least partially decentralised in most OECD countries, this fiscal pressure is expected to be asymmetric across levels of government. The objective of this paper is to provide order-of-magnitude estimates of the possible effects of population ageing on government finances across OECD countries, and to discuss reforms to fiscal federalism and intergovernmental relations with the purpose of funding expenditures at all levels of government.
Increased productivity and sustainability of the agricultural sector are core policy objectives in OECD and non-OECD countries. This Guide provides an overview of the current state of the art in measuring sustainable productivity of the agricultural sector and analysing sources of growth in a reliable and comparable manner across countries in a way useful for policy makers. It draws on the contributions from members of the OECD Network on Agricultural Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and the Environment that brings together relevant experts from academia and national statistical agencies. Its insights will be key for designing policies necessary to meet the triple challenge of feeding a growing world population and providing incomes to food system actors whilst ensuring environmental sustainability.The Guide presents recommendations in two areas. First, on how to improve the traditional calculation of TFP based on market prices inputs and outputs, proposing harmonised methods on capital measurement, land pricing, output aggregation and quality adjustment. Second, on how to account for environmental outcomes, considering a reduction in pollution or emissions as a productivity gain, but the increased use of natural capital as a productivity loss. A main challenge is the estimation of “shadow prices” for non-market inputs and outputs. It is recommended to pursue several complementary avenues: investing in improving TFP methodologies and data; continuing investigating its expansion to include environmental outcomes; and mapping traditional TFP with other indicators of agri-environmental performance.
The economic importance and level of employment in agriculture are declining in many rural regions. There are many reasons for this, including demographic changes, deeper urban-rural linkages, technological advances, growing urbanisation, and land use change. To successfully accompany this structural change, agricultural and rural development policies must be coherent. This requires an improved understanding of areas of complementarity and trade-offs between these policies to ensure better integration and to avoid overlaps. Areas of complementarity include rural policies with transferable benefits for agriculture, such as investments in rural infrastructure, digital connectivity, health care, and other public services. With respect to agricultural policies, these complementarities exist with policies that have wider rural benefits, such as investments in agricultural innovation systems, improvements in extension services, and land and water management policies. As the transition towards a diversified low carbon rural economy continues, additional synergies could be developed between agriculture and rural policies.
This case study explores whether the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be used as a shared framework by all actors to manage development co-operation for results in lower middle-income countries, taking Bangladesh as a case study. The study offers an introduction to Bangladesh’s progress in mainstreaming the Goals in national policy making, as well as in monitoring the SDG targets and indicators. The report then focuses on the experiences of development co-operation partners in aligning their country-level programmes and frameworks with the SDGs, and identifies enabling factors, drivers and obstacles that contribute to SDG alignment and monitoring in Bangladesh. The study concludes with recommendations for both the government and its development partners to increase the collective use of the SDG framework and improve the policy coherence, effectiveness and sustainable impact of all development efforts.
A first step to implement effective migrant integration policies is to know who does what in policy sectors key to integration. Responding to this need, this paper offers policy makers a tool to understand the organisation of public action in key sectors for integration - Employment, Education, Housing, and Health/Welfare – in a sample of 10 OECD countries: Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands.
The complexity of the division of powers among levels of government calls for coordination mechanisms between actors, whatever the level of decentralisation. Besides, it throws lights on subnational governments’ role in integrating migrants and enabling them to participate to local development for the benefits of all. The geographic differences that exist in migrant presence and outcomes mean countries should build on local authorities' knowledge of local realities, aptitudes to coordinate different policy fields at the relevant scale and cooperate with non-governmental organisations.
The debate on industrial policy has made a comeback in both academic and policy circles. Yet, no consensus exists on an industrial policy paradigm and the absence of a common reference framework unduly obfuscates the debate – even which interventions are to be considered “industrial policy” is not clear-cut. Against this background, this paper proposes a coherent framework for analysing the formulation of industrial policy, relying on a purposefully broad definition of the latter. Leveraging the proposed framework and a companion paper which synthetises the available empirical evidence, this paper stresses the complementarities between policy instruments, thereby justifying the use of industrial strategies, acknowledges the role of targeted industrial strategies, which can direct technological change and growth, and of demand-side instruments, which can contribute to transformative industrial change, but calls for a stronger emphasis on evaluation and the regular re-assessment of targeted industrial strategies.
The OECD’s new Public Integrity Indicators offer a credible alternative to existing corruption-related indices, as they draw directly on data from member countries instead of expert views. The indicators unpack the general notion of corruption into specific integrity risks and measure the strength of regulations, institutions and practices. A first data set published for 36 countries – on the quality of strategic framework - shows that OECD’s recommended whole-of-society approach to curbing the most serious and detrimental forms of corruption such as undue influence, political and grand corruption – has not yet been translated into concrete policy objectives at the national level. High-level strategic objectives addressing such forms of corruption are missing in many countries. In countries that do set strategic objectives to curb corruption, implementation is weak. Development of integrity and anti-corruption strategies should be more transparent and inclusive.
This paper assesses the impact of crises, in particular the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic crisis, on anti-corruption compliance objectives, resources and operations. It evaluates whether the crisis generated challenges or opportunities for businesses in the area of anti-corruption compliance, and whether it led to long-term, structural changes. The paper offers recommendations for companies to improve their responses to corruption risks during times of crisis, and for governments to better support companies in this context.