United Kingdom
The paper is the first in a series of two papers mapping young people’s environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries that were prepared as background for the forthcoming OECD Skills Outlook 2023 publication. The papers are the results of a collaboration between the OECD Centre for Skills and the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (Unit B4) on students’ environmental sustainability competence. The second paper is titled: ‘The environmental sustainability competence toolbox: From leaving a better planet to our children to leaving better children for our planet’.
This paper outlines the rationale, methodologies, key findings and policy implications of the national Value of Travel Time Savings (VTTS) study conducted in Britain during 2014-15. The study found VTTS varied with distance, trip purpose and mode of travel but not with worthwhile use of travel time. Using two case studies, the paper discusses the approach to implementation of the new VTTS estimates and lessons for other countries.
The United Kingdom is preparing a modern industrial strategy to boost labour productivity across the whole country and to narrow regional gaps in living standards. This raises the question of the optimal allocation of scarce resources in meeting these targets. This study identifies industrial strengths of each region and scope to boost regional productivity through the channel of higher capital intensity. Overall regional investment ratios appear weakly linked to regional productivity, but the sectoral composition of regions and their type of investment are more important determinants. Each region has productivity leaders, but the concentration of such firms is the highest in the south of England. Differences in the representation of the most productive firms in regions are strongly related to differences in regional productivity. The empirical methodology quantifies the productivity effects of raising the capital intensity in each sector-region, focusing on viable firms falling behind the national productivity frontier in all but the finance and insurance sectors over 1995-2014. To enhance labour productivity of lagging regions, the industrial strategy should promote the catch up of firms with the national best performers in services sectors, in particular knowledge intensive services such as ICT and business services, but also wholesale and retail trade. This finding is consistent with the UK’s leading global position in high value-added services sectors. The type of investment matters: boosting research and development in the manufacturing sector in some lagging regions would also be effective in stimulating productivity. Manufacturing investment cannot be a substitute to investment in services given the small size of the manufacturing sector and its high exposure to competition from rapidly emerging global hubs. However, this study does not quantify the effects of skills, the benefits of greater industrial diversification and the positive impact that larger cities would have on agglomeration effects.
Capitalising upon its strengths, England could further enhance quality in ECEC through strengthening parental and community engagement. Other country practices would suggest such options as: 1) reflecting on approaches to involve parents and communities; 2) reflecting parental views and opinions in ECEC programming; 3) reflecting upon societal changes to meet family and children’s needs, such as the increase in divorce rates, full-time working parents, increasing income inequality and increasing immigrant populations; and 4) further improving communication skills of ECEC staff.
On policy input indicators, England performs below average on possibilities for paid paternity leave and the quality indicator “staff-child ratio” in child care. However, England has above-average public expenditure levels on young children and family benefits and maternity leave entitlements. England could consider improving possibilities for parental leave for fathers and implementing better staff-child ratios.
This policy brief was developed by the Secretariat of the OECD Network of Economic Regulators (NER) and is based on examples of practice submitted by members of the NER. It reviews emergency measures taken by economic regulators during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure continuity of services in network sectors, as well as to adjust regulatory practices and adapt governance arrangements. It identifies long-term questions and implications of the crisis with regard to market structure, infrastructure investment and the role of regulators.
This paper estimates the data intensity of occupations/sectors (i.e. the share of job postings per occupation/sector related to the production of data) using natural language processing (NLP) on job advertisements in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. Online job advertisement data collected by Lightcast provide timely and disaggregated insights into labour demand and skill requirements of different professions. The paper makes three major contributions. First, indicators created from the Lightcast data add to the understanding of digital skills in the labour market. Second, the results may advance the measurement of data assets in national account statistics. Third, the NLP methodology can handle up to 66 languages and can be adapted to measure concepts beyond digital skills. Results provide a ranking of data intensity across occupations, with data analytics activities contributing most to aggregate data intensity shares in all three countries. At the sectoral level, the emerging picture is more heterogeneous across countries. Differences in labour demand primarily explain those variations, with low data-intensive professions contributing most to aggregate data intensity in the United Kingdom. Estimates of investment in data, using a sum of costs approach and sectoral intensity shares, point to lower levels in the United Kingdom and Canada than in the United States.
The 2012 Recommendation (OECD, 2012[1]) recognises that in today’s globalised context, policy makers and regulators can no longer work in isolation. They have much to learn from their peers abroad, and much to benefit from aligning approaches with them. IRC has become an essential building block to ensure the quality and relevance of regulations today. Principle 12 of the 2012 Recommendation therefore encourages countries to:
This paper examines the link between barriers to trade and investment and productivity performance, in the United Kingdom and selected European countries using both firm-level and sectoral data. Barriers to trade and investment appear to be a robust determinant of productivity in the long term. Control variables such as spending on R&D and human capital also play a role, though their effects depend on the way they are measured or on the sample. The results are robust across a range of productivity measures as well as to changes in the sectoral coverage and the set of controls.
The factors of family and community engagement that matter most in enhancing the quality of ECEC and children’s development are: the quality of the home-learning environment; parenting skills; participation in ECEC activities; partnerships between parents, communities and ECEC centres; and partnerships with the wider community. A combination of these approaches is also possible. Sound research on the effects of family and community engagement approaches and evaluations of engagement initiatives are needed.