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Businesses’ Views on Red Tape provides the first opportunity to systematically compare data across 11 OECD countries. The data show how small and medium-sized enterprises perceive national administrative and regulatory costs. Regulations and government formalities, so-called "red tape", are important tools used by governments to carry out public policies in many policy areas, including safety, health, and environmental protection. However, if they are poorly designed or applied, inefficient, or outdated, they can impede innovation, entry, investment, and create unnecessary barriers to trade, investment, and economic efficiency. The result of poor regulation and formalities is that national economies become less able to grow, compete, adjust, and create jobs. Based on a survey of almost 8 000 businesses, this report assesses the quality, application and burdens of employment, environment and tax regulations and formalities. The results are dramatic: for example, red tape accounts for 4% of the annual turnover of companies, while the hardest hit are the smallest companies, and these costs are growing in most countries.

The changing pattern of international agricultural trade has profound implications for Africa. The book’s authors discuss these trade flows, map the corporate landscape of agro-food, (including the emergent indigenous sector), and assess trends in international development co-operation in the corporate sector. Particular focus is given to “aid for trade” programmes that try to foster private-sector development and trade-capacity building. A final chapter, drawing lessons from five country case studies, provides evidence of the (in)effectiveness of government intervention and donor programmes to promote the marketing of African agriculture.

The days when it was thought that the development process could and should be managed by governments alone are long past. The challenge today is how to involve other parts of society such as the private sector and NGOs. This book details the activities of the private sector in developing and emerging economies and demonstrates how these activities are inter-related with government policies. Understanding these activities and public-private interactions is indispensable for the private sector to play its full role in a nation's development process. To this end, several case studies provide concrete examples from Africa, Asia and elsewhere.

Energy and nuclear policy makers face many challenges as they evaluate options to ensure an adequate supply of electricity while pursuing environmental, economic and energy security goals. Many analysts suggest that nuclear’s share of global energy supply could decrease in coming decades. If energy markets and national energy policies continue along "business as usual" lines, what are the issues that arise? What are the consequences for the long-term availability of nuclear technology and expertise? This book identifies the issues in a series of papers presented at a recent meeting jointly organised by the International Energy Agency and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency. Senior energy policy makers and industry executives from OECD Member countries contributed these analyses. They offer a realistic assessment of nuclear’s potential contribution, and the major challenges awaiting nuclear energy and energy supply in general. For those seeking a review of the current issues facing nuclear power within the broad context of energy policy, this is an essential report.

The analysis of the inner workings of the firm has been largely absent from economic assessments of environmental policy. In an effort to partly fill this vacuum, this book summarises the results of an OECD project which collected and analysed data from over 4,000 facilities in seven OECD countries. Issues addressed include the role of 'flexible' policy instruments in encouraging clean production strategies and environmental research and development; the effectiveness of different environmental policy incentives on the introduction of environmental management systems and tools; and the relationship between environmental and commercial performance.

This handbook is a practical manual on the design and implementation of business tendency surveys, which ask company managers about the current situation of their business and about their plans and expectations for the future.  In this book, the OECD draws on over 20 years of experience to provide, together with the European Commission, a set of harmonised business tendency surveys to collect qualitative information including economic analysis and forecasting from business managers in the manufacturing, construction, trade and service sectors.

Natural resources, and the materials derived from them, represent the physical basis for the economic system. Recent decades have witnessed an unprecedented growth in demand for these resources, which has triggered interest from policy makers in transitioning to a more resource efficient and circular economy. This report presents a typology of five circular business models that could support the transition to a more resource efficient and circular economy: circular supply, resource recovery, product life extension, sharing, and product service system models. It reviews the current market penetration and assesses the potential scalability of each business model. Environmental potential is also discussed, as well as risks and unintended consequences that could result from a more widespread adoption of these business models. The report provides a broad set of policy approaches that could help alleviate some of the barriers that currently hinder the widespread adoption of circular business models.

This study is concerned with trends in and key features of policies and programmes used by governments to support innovation in the business sector. In addition to identifying good practices across a range of programme types, it compares business innovation policies across several countries, with a particular focus on Canada.

In many countries of the OECD business incubators have become an increasingly popular policy instrument for local economic and employment development. Business incubators aim to assist entrepreneurs with enterprise start-ups. Incubators are also being widely used to pursue related objectives such as the commercialisation of university research, providing infrastructure, upgrading the technological capabilities of local firms, and even affording a safe haven for legitimate entrepreneurship where crime is a constraint on business. As this publication makes clear, there is no unique business incubation model. Rather, there is considerable diversity in the types of business incubator, their modes of operation and the objectives they pursue.
Interest in business incubation comes from a variety of sources. Local and regional governments, universities, chambers of commerce, science parks, private real-estate developers and non-profit organisations have all participated in establishing and running incubation programmes. However, this is still a young industry in many countries, and evaluation material is scarce. This publication reviews current experience in business incubation in Australia, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. Indeed, this volume is one of the first to treat the international experience of business incubation.

This handbook aims to help companies identify, prevent and address child labour and forced labour risks, in the cocoa sector. The handbook builds on the leading international, government-backed standards on supply chain due diligence and responsible business conduct: the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the associated OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct, and the OECD-FAO Guidance for Responsible Agricultural Supply Chains. This handbook was developed in collaboration with the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), with financial support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and technical inputs from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ).

This publication focuses on business dynamics across eight countries (Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, United Kingdom) and over time, building upon the evidence collected in the framework of the OECD DynEmp project for 22 countries. It provides new evidence on firms’ heterogeneous responses to shocks (notably the recent financial crisis) in order to evaluate how policies and framework conditions across different firms and countries can foster both employment and productivity growth.

Clusters of firms and related organisations in a range of industry specialisations are a striking feature of the economic landscape in all countries. Their growth and survival depends on internal processes of specialisation, co-operation and rivalry, and knowledge flows that underpin the competitiveness of the firms within them. Cluster building is now among the most important economic development activities in OECD countries and beyond. This book looks at the importance and potential of cluster initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe as these countries integrate ever more strongly into the global economy. Existing clusters are mapped, recent policy advances are described and conclusions are drawn on the potential of business clusters to foster economic growth in the wider Central, East and South East European region. 

This set of common principles for all development actors was adopted by representatives of government, multilateral organisations, civil society, private sector, foundations and other actors in 2011. It centres on: Ownership of development priorities by developing counties; A focus on results; Partnerships for development; Transparency and shared responsibility.

The OECD/NEA Expert Group on Burn-up Credit was established in 1991 to address scientific and technical issues connected with the use of burn-up credit in nuclear fuel cycle operations. Following the completion of six benchmark exercises with uranium oxide fuels irradiated in pressurised water reactors (PWRs) and boiling water reactors (BWRs), the present report concerns mixed uranium and plutonium oxide (MOX) fuels irradiated in PWRs.

The report summarises and analyses the solutions to the specified exercises provided by 37 contributors from 10 countries. The exercises were based upon the calculation of infinite PWR fuel pin cell reactivity for fresh and irradiated MOX fuels with various MOX compositions, burn-ups and cooling times. In addition, several representations of the MOX fuel assembly were tested in order to check various levels of approximations commonly used in reactor physics calculations.

The OECD/NEA Expert Group on Burn-up Credit was established in 1991 to address scientific and technical issues connected with the use of burn-up credit in nuclear fuel cycle operations. Following the completion of six benchmark exercises with uranium oxide (UOX) fuels irradiated in pressurised water reactors (PWRs) and boiling water reactors (BWRs), the present report concerns mixed uranium and plutonium oxide (MOX) fuels irradiated in PWRs.

The exercises consisted of inventory calculations of MOX fuels for two initial plutonium compositions. The depletion calculations were carried out using three representations of the MOX assemblies and their interface with UOX assemblies. This enabled the investigation of the spatial and spectral effects during the irradiation of the MOX fuels.

This report looks at the state of health in Bulgaria.