Browse by: "2024"
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This report presents a synthesis of publicly available information on perfluoropolyethers (PFPEs), with the aim of elucidating the identities of PFPEs on the global market and analysing their life cycle. This includes their production and use, presence of other PFASs as impurities in commercial formulations, degradation mechanisms, and environmental releases of PFPEs and other PFASs present in commercial formulations.
This report introduces OECD tools and analysis to the East African Community (EAC). It is designed as a baseline diagnostic to explore ways to support investment climate reforms in the EAC and provides a focus on how to improve sustainable outcomes from investment. The report analyses the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on selected areas of sustainable development in the EAC. The policy areas comprise the legal framework for investment, including aspects related to protection and non-discrimination of investment, measures to promote and facilitate sustainable investment, the use and design of investment incentives, and the promotion of responsible business conduct. The report provides insights on the preparation of the EAC Investment Strategy, building on the existing EAC Investment Policy.
The Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) offers a large and diverse market of over 400 million people and natural resource wealth, and yet it is not currently living up to its potential as a destination for international investment. Inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the region have been declining over time, and have not always delivered on promoting sustainable development. This report serves as a baseline diagnostic to explore ways to reinvigorate the reform of the ECOWAS investment climate while also improving sustainable outcomes from investment. It also highlights areas where further collaboration between ECOWAS and the OECD could contribute to improved investment climates throughout the region. Building upon the OECD Policy Framework for Investment and the FDI Qualities Policy Toolkit, the report covers the national regulatory framework encapsulated in national investment laws and how this compares with initiatives at a regional level, investment promotion and facilitation, investment incentives, investment for green growth and responsible business conduct.
Well-funded public transport services that provide easy access for all citizens to the opportunities they seek are essential to decarbonising transport, making our cities more liveable, and connecting people living in rural areas. This report aims to help governments meet the challenge of funding public transport sustainably and equitably. It recommends revisiting investment allocations, moving away from a road focus, and ensuring the efficiency of public transport services. Governments must also optimise the contributions of users, indirect beneficiaries of public transport (including landowners and businesses) and the public sector.
This report analyses the legislative and institutional framework in France relating to the transparency and integrity of foreign influence activities. It identifies concrete policy measures adapted to the French context to make foreign influence activities more transparent, and to discourage foreign interference attempts that are made notably through opaque lobbying and influence activities. It also ensures that the risk of foreign interference is better taken into account when public officials move between the public and private sectors.
This assessment report explores the innovative capacity of Bulgaria’s public sector. It looks at how innovation can be better supported as a way to improve the State Administration’s responsiveness and, as a result, strengthen public trust in public institutions. It analyses the importance of public sector innovation in building trust in Bulgaria’s State Administration and reviews recent milestones. Using the OECD Innovative Capacity Framework, the report examines Bulgaria’s performance and provides policy recommendations across key governance areas.
International investment agreements (IIAs) have the potential to mobilise sustainable investment. This report discusses the rationale for including provisions on sustainable investment in IIAs – addressing issues such as policy coherence, stakeholder awareness, and investment promotion and facilitation – and clarifies their alignment with international standards, such as the OECD FDI Qualities Recommendation. The report also discusses how such provisions can be implemented at the domestic level and analyses potential cooperation tools to support implementation.
The impacts of epidemics and pandemics can go beyond health and the health sector, threatening livelihoods and other economic sectors. The complexity and uncertainty surrounding these events and the potential multidimensional and distributional impacts of response options imply that policy-making should be informed by evidence from the integration of disciplines and through intersectoral collaborations. Integrated epidemiologic-macroeconomic modelling (integrated modelling) can serve as a tool to explicitly adopt a multi-perspective and multi-dimensional approach to epidemics and pandemics and systematically consider the benefits and costs of different policy strategies and their distribution within society. Although integrated modelling promises to overcome the siloed disciplines and inherent tensions of priority-setting, the use of mathematical modelling in policy-making and the capacity of producing integrated models vary across country contexts. This guide proposes four initiatives and associated activities that can be adapted to context to enhance the production and use of integrated modelling before, during and after an epidemic or pandemic.
This report looks at efforts by Portugal’s Court of Auditors (Tribunal de Contas, TdC) to make better use of data and analytics in assessing risks in public procurement. It identifies key financial and non-financial risks to refine the TdC’s audit selection process and increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the public procurement system. The report provides recommendations for improving and maintaining data-driven risk assessments that align with the TdC’s Digital Transformation Strategy. The report also includes a data-mapping exercise and data reliability assessment in preparation for the next phase of the project, which includes developing a working model to detect procurement risks and irregularities using real-world data.
In July 2023, following a request from the Indian G20 Presidency, the OECD delivered a report making the case for enhanced tax transparency on real estate and setting out a number of conceptual solutions to improve the existing architecture on a voluntary basis. Since then, technical work has continued at OECD-level to refine the understanding of the information needs of tax administrations, the information they have available and the steps needed to deliver increased transparency in this area. Against this background, this report sets out the building blocks to bring increased transparency into practice. These building blocks can be adopted incrementally by interested jurisdictions, starting with maximising exchanges of readily available information between interested jurisdictions and progressively moving towards more structural solutions for international co-operation on real estate, underpinned by reliable data sources and efficient methods for receiving the information that is relevant for tax purposes. These structural solutions would also ensure access to beneficial owner information when real estate is held through legal entities or arrangements. This report was prepared by the OECD to inform the discussions at the July 2024 meeting of G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, at the request of the G20 Brazilian Presidency.
The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the critical need for health systems to be resilient against major disruptions. Despite the significant impact that crises such as pandemics, climate change effects, geopolitical conflicts, financial collapses or digital failures can have on economies and societies, policy makers in the health sector lack tools to test how their health systems would cope with extreme stress. Seizing a narrowing policy window in a post-pandemic context, the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, with support from the European Commission, developed a comprehensive methodology culminating in a handbook on "Strengthening Health Systems: A Practical Handbook for Resilience Testing." Inspired by stress tests in various sectors, this methodology was piloted in Finland, Greece, and Spain throughout 2023. The handbook provides health policy makers with tools to assess and enhance their systems' resilience. This is intended to foster policy dialogues and the identification of structural weaknesses as the starting point for targeted investments and remedial policies that will allow health systems to withstand the impact of future shocks more effectively.
This report presents a proposal for a National Financial Literacy Strategy for Germany. It builds on the analysis and preliminary recommendations included in the report “Financial literacy in Germany: Supporting financial resilience and well-being”. The report suggests measures to strengthen the financial literacy of adults and young people across different socio-economic groups in Germany, as well as to increase the impact of financial literacy initiatives.
This report assesses the potential for linkages between foreign direct investment (FDI) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Czechia, and provides policy recommendations to foster productivity and innovation spillovers to the local economy. The report examines the quality of investment that the country attracts, the productive and innovative capacities of Czech SMEs, and a broad range of economic, business and policy conditions that can strengthen knowledge and technology diffusion from foreign multinationals to domestic enterprises. It also assesses Czechia’s institutional environment and policy mix across the areas of international investment, SMEs and entrepreneurship, innovation and regional development, noting areas for policy reform. The report includes a regional focus on the potential for FDI and SME linkages and spillovers in South Moravia and Usti.
This report discusses the role of Korea's active labour market policies (ALMPs) and one-stop shops for employment and social services in fostering a more inclusive labour market. It highlights the innovative digital tools that the Korean authorities have adopted using state-of-the-art technologies to provide ALMPs as well as their strategy for continuous improvement of the digital ecosystem. This report on Korea is the fifteenth country study published in this series.
The Goodwill Committee is an Egyptian governance body established within the Ministry of Justice to facilitate the amicable resolution of international parental child abduction cases. Its primary mission is to protect individual rights and promote global co-operation. This report evaluates the Committee's mandate and composition to help Egypt promote child-friendly justice and ensure that the best interests of children are embedded in Committee processes. To support comprehensive reform, the OECD assessment and recommendations focus on three areas: improving existing governance, considering multilateral ratification, and developing mechanisms to address systemic barriers and deter the occurrence of cases.
From steering decision-making in times of complexity to stewarding cross-cutting policies and guiding good practices across the public administration, centres of government (CoGs) play an important role in achieving government ambitions. CoGs have recently found themselves under pressure to help navigate increasingly complex policy challenges in an environment characterised by multiple crises, polarisation and declining trust in public institutions. This compendium gathers and shares practices and experiences of CoGs in undertaking their various roles and functions. It describes the mechanisms CoGs use in roles such as bridging the political-administrative interface, stewarding cross-cutting policies, guiding public administration reform, and engaging with citizens and other stakeholders. Finally, it discusses the lessons learnt and key enablers that emerge from the experiences. This compendium serves CoG leaders and government officials who seek to better understand the role of the centre in contributing to better outcomes for citizens and society.
Society at a Glance 2024: OECD Social Indicators, the tenth edition of the biennial OECD overview of social indicators, addresses the growing demand for quantitative evidence on social well-being and its trends. The report features a special chapter on fertility trends which discusses evidence from recent OECD analysis on the effect of labour market outcomes, housing costs and different aspects of the family policy framework (e.g. parental leave, childcare, and financial supports) on fertility trends and highlights key policy challenges. This edition of Society at a Glance also includes a special section based on the 2022 OECD Risks that Matter Survey on people’s perceptions of social and economic risks and the extent to which they think governments address those risks effectively. Society at a Glance presents 25 social indicators, 5 each in chapters on General context, Self-sufficiency, Equity, Health, and Social cohesion. These indicators include data for 38 OECD member countries and, where available, accession and key partners countries (Argentina, Bulgaria, Brazil, Croatia, China, India, Indonesia, Peru, Romania, and South Africa) and another other G20 country (Saudi Arabia).
Social and Emotional Skills for Better Lives presents results from the OECD’s Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES) 2023. SSES is the largest international effort to collect data on these skills among 10- and 15-year-old students.
The report explores how the following skills differ by socio-demographic groups and how they relate to key life outcomes: task performance skills (persistence, responsibility, self-control and achievement motivation); emotional regulation skills (stress-resistance, emotional control and optimism); engaging with others skills (assertiveness, sociability and energy); open-mindedness skills (curiosity, creativity and tolerance); and collaboration skills (empathy and trust).
The results show that students’ social and emotional skills – or 21st century skills – are linked to better life outcomes, including academic success, greater life satisfaction, healthier behaviours, less test and class anxiety, and more ambitious career plans. The Survey also finds that these skills are inequitably distributed among students by age, gender, and socio-economic background.
SSES 2023 was conducted in Bulgaria, Chile, Peru, Spain, Mexico, Ukraine, Bogotá (Colombia), Delhi (India), Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Emilia-Romagna (Italy), Gunma (Japan), Helsinki (Finland), Jinan (China), Kudus (Indonesia), Sobral (Brazil) and Turin (Italy). Results are compared to SSES 2019, which took place before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Relative to its population, Iceland experienced the largest inflow of immigrants over the past decade of any OECD country. Four out of five immigrants in Iceland have come from EU and EFTA countries, although there has been a recent increase in humanitarian arrivals. Employment rates are the highest in the OECD, for both men and women, reflecting the recent and labour market oriented nature of most immigration to Iceland. However, immigrants’ skills are often not well used, as witnessed by the high rate of formal overqualification. What is more, immigrants’ language skills are poor in international comparison and there is evidence of growing settlement of immigrants. Against this backdrop, Iceland is at a turning point in its integration framework, and seeks to develop a comprehensive integration policy for the first time. This review, the fifth in the series Working Together for Integration, provides an in depth analysis of the Icelandic integration system, highlighting its strengths, weaknesses, and potential areas for improvement. Earlier reviews in this series looked at integration in Sweden (2016), Finland (2018), Norway (2022) and Flanders (2023).
This toolkit offers practical advice to development co-operation and humanitarian assistance providers adhering to the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Recommendation on Enabling Civil Society in Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Assistance. It helps them implement the Recommendation’s provisions to strengthen local ownership and leadership, and support civil society in partner countries as independent development and humanitarian actors – particularly through more equitable partnerships between and within civil society organisations (CSOs). It is a companion piece to the 2023 OECD toolkit of the same series, Funding civil society in partner countries: Toolkit for Implementing the DAC Recommendation on Enabling Civil Society in Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Assistance.