This Round Table examines the basic case for liberalisation of the taxi industry, and reviews experiences with taxi (de-)regulation in OECD and ECMT member countries. There are a number of aspects to regulation of the taxi industry including entry, price and service quality regulation. The discussions of these aspects concluded that little empirical evidence supported the argument that entry restrictions improved capacity utilisation. On the contrary, the case could be made that increased entry and associated economies of density, as well as shorter passenger waiting times, warranted subsidies for entry.

Will the next century see the private sector become more involved in decisions regarding the construction and funding of infrastructure? Which technologies will dominate the transport market? Where will new markets emerge? Will transport still have a social role to play? What safeguards will there be for the environment? Will there still be a role even for the authorities?
The list of the questions that transport will pose in the next century is certainly both long and diverse, reflecting as it does the problems now confronting the sector. The aim of the 14th Symposium was to take an initial look at what the future might hold by means of 13 introductory reports -- drafted by rapporteurs from 11 different countries -- and a debate between leading experts in the transport field.
This publication goes over the introductory reports and faithfully reflects the substance of the Symposium discussions. By considering the shape of things to come, this review defines the challenges awaiting all those concerned with transport and the solutions open to them.

This publication includes three recent reports of the Committee on Fiscal Affairs that resulted in changes to the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and Capital (those changes were included in the update adopted by the Council of the OECD on 28 January 2003): "Restricting the Entitlement to Treaty Benefits", "Treaty Characterisation Issues Arising From E-Commerce: Report Adopted by the Committee on Fiscal Affairs", and "Issues Arising Under Article 5 (Permanent Establishment) of the Model Tax Convention".

Multilateral aid accounts for over a third of total official development aid. The scale at which the multilateral system is used reflects donors’ views of it as an important aid channel. However, a clearer picture of the multilateral system is needed to analyse this channel, and the first ever OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) report on multilateral aid aims to address this gap. The report provides a snapshot of the multilateral aid architecture, from the funding of multilateral organisations by DAC members to their own multilateral aid strategies and policies. The report also highlights issues such as fragmentation, multilateral effectiveness, reform processes and partner country views.

This survey report which presents the results from the second, follow-up survey on monitoring the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, assesses progress in 55 developing countries and helps us understand the challenges in making aid more effective in advancing development. The findings are clear: progress is being made, but not fast enough. Unless they seriously gear up their efforts, developing countries and their external partners will not meet their international commitments and targets for effective aid by 2010. Action is needed now. This report makes three high-level policy recommendations that will help accelerate progress and transform the aid relationship into a full partnership.

The 2013 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Gender Equality in Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship recommends adopting practices that promote gender equality in education, promoting family-friendly policies and working conditions which enable fathers and mothers to balance their working hours and their family responsibilities and facilitate women to participate more in private and public sector employment. It also recommends increasing the representation of women in decision-making position, eliminating the discriminatory gender wage gap, promoting all appropriate measures to end sexual harassment in the workplace, reducing the gender gap in entrepreneurship activity, and paying attention to the special needs of women from disadvantaged minority groups and migrant women.

The 2015 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Gender Equality in Public Life promotes a government-wide strategy for gender equality reform, sound mechanisms to ensure accountability and sustainability of gender initiatives, and tools and evidence to inform inclusive policy decisions. It also promotes a “whole-of-society” approach to reducing gender stereotypes, encouraging women to participate in politics and removing implicit and explicit barriers to gender equality. This Recommendation is unique, as it provides not only governments, but also parliaments and judiciaries, with clear, timely and actionable guidelines for effectively implementing gender equality and gender mainstreaming initiatives, and for improving equal access to public leadership for women and men from diverse backgrounds.

The outcome of COP21 urged developed countries to scale up their level of financial support, over and above their initial finance pledges, with a concrete roadmap to achieve their USD 100 billion a year commitment by 2020. This note provides analytical support to country preparation of such a roadmap, assessing the scale of future climate finance as well as identifying and discussing some key uncertainties. It sets out the resulting projections for climate finance in 2020 along with the underlying assumptions and methodologies.

Drawing on material presented at the OECD Programme on Educational Building's conference in London on "Creating 21st Century Learning Environments," this richly illustrated book presents the latest in innovative design for schools and analyses needs for the future.  It does this through a series of thematic analyses, presentations, and school visits. The conclusions summarize planning and construction issues and make suggestions for the construction industry.

Literacy in the 21st century is about constructing and validating knowledge. Digital technologies have enabled the spread of all kinds of information, displacing traditional formats of usually more carefully curated information such as encyclopaedias and newspapers. The massive information flow of the digital era demands that readers be able to distinguish between fact and opinion. Readers must learn strategies to detect biased information and malicious content like fake news and phishing emails. What the PISA 21st-century readers report reveals is that students’ access to digital technologies and training on how to use them greatly vary between countries and students’ socio-economic profiles. This report explores how 15-year-old students are developing reading skills to navigate the technology-rich 21st century. It sheds light on potential ways to strengthen students’ capacity to navigate the new world of information. It highlights how countries need to redouble their efforts to combat emerging digital divides. It also explores what teachers can do to help students navigate ambiguity and manage complexity.

These proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Theory and Practice in Transport Economics sketch a broad overview of transport economics research since the inception of the ECMT in 1953 and map out the directions for future work.  The 22 papers presented cover such topics as transport infrastructure's contribution to economic growth, modal split, competition in the transport sector, the need for a supra-national regulatory authority, charging systems, and environmental sustainability. 

In a first-ever joint report by the UN, the OECD, the World Bank and the IMF, the world’s four principal development institutions assess progress towards poverty reduction goals and agree on a common vision for the way forward. The goals for international development address that most compelling of human desires-a world free of poverty and free of the misery that poverty breeds. This report focuses on seven goals, which, if achieved in the next 15 years, will improve the lives of millions of people. In words and pictures, with numbers and charts, it describes progress towards the goals, what has been achieved and the effort required to reach them.

This report provides new evidence on social mobility in the context of increased inequalities of income and opportunities in OECD and selected emerging economies. It covers the aspects of both social mobility between parents and children and of personal income mobility over the life course, and their drivers. The report shows that social mobility from parents to offspring is low across the different dimensions of earnings, education, occupation and health, and that the same prevails for personal income mobility over the life course. There is in particular a lack of mobility at the bottom and at the top of the social ladder – with “sticky floors” preventing upward mobility for many and “sticky ceilings” associated with opportunity hoarding at the top. The lack of social mobility has economic, societal and political consequences. This report shows that there is space for policies to make societies more mobile and protect households from adverse income shocks. It discusses the options and measures that policy makers can consider how to improve social mobility across and within generations.

A new vision of the purpose of social policy is needed. Scaremongers present decision-makers as facing an overwhelming number of complex problems with more and more limited budgets. Society is indeed undergoing profound upheaval. Ageing populations are increasing pressure on the workforce. Changes in the labour market have hit low-skilled workers hard; the term "social exclusion" has entered the political lexicon, and policies can no longer be based on "traditional" family life. But social policy should not be presented as "papering over the cracks" in society caused by economic and demographic change. As knowledge plays an increasing role in generating wealth, empowering individuals to develop their potential is a central and essential part of economic policy. Indeed, economic and social policies are more intertwined than ever.
This book paints a complete and accessible picture of the current situation and pinpoints how policies can be reformed. Social policy should aim to promote employment and healthy living, rather than just coping with joblessness and ill-health. Investing in children and families helps ensure that all can contribute fully to society. Innovations and experiments in new social policies to better equip individuals and families with the support they need in responding to change abound in OECD countries. Ministers from OECD countries have committed themselves to the ambitious task of creating just such a caring world.