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This symposium proceedings examines three aspects of financial education: monitoring and evaluation, use of behavioral economics, and financial literacy and defined contribution pension plans.
Individuals face an increasing variety of financial risks, including those linked to their retirement. At the same time, public funding has been reduced or is strictly limited in most countries. Private insurance and pensions products therefore play an essential role in social and financial protection. Yet the public might have a low level of awareness of the risks they are exposed to, and lack literacy, knowledge and skills in insurance and private pensions questions and products.
This volume addresses these topical and unexplored issues as part of the ongoing OECD project on financial education. After a comprehensive analysis of the main challenges and presentation of practical solutions, the book highlights good practices, endorsed by OECD governments, to enhance awareness and education on risk, insurance and private pensions issues.
This book, the first major study of financial education at the international level, contributes to the development of consumer financial literacy by providing information to policy makers on effective financial education programmes and by promoting the exchange of views and the sharing of experience in the field of financial education and awareness. It identifies and analyses financial literacy surveys in member countries, highlights the economic, demographic and policy changes that make financial education increasingly important, and describes the different types of financial education programmes currently being offered in OECD countries. Finally, this book evaluates the effectiveness of financial education programmes and introduces the OECD Council Recommendation on Principals and Good Practices for Financial Education and Awareness.
In recent years, Kazakhstan has developed a comprehensive digital government system and begun to create the legal and regulatory conditions for the digital transformation of the country’s economy. The digitalisation of the private sector requires further improvements in framework conditions, such as reliable access to broadband services, quality and affordability of networks, and digital security for businesses.
Based on recent OECD work on digital framework conditions, this report examines the legal and operational environment that is holding back the digital transformation of private firms in Kazakhstan. The report suggests three sets of actions: (1) addressing the remaining Internet quality and connectivity gaps, notably by mobilising the regional public sector to improve the quality and density of networks, and by expanding the inclusion of the private sector in the policy-making process; (2) improving competition in, and the investment attractiveness of, the telecom sector by setting-up an independent national telecom regulator, and by developing a targeted investment attraction strategy to prepare for deployment of next-generation communication networks; and (3) adapting the regulatory and policy framework for firms adapting to new digital challenges and raising their awareness of digital security.
Policy evaluation is a critical element of good governance, as it promotes public accountability and contributes to citizens’ trust in government. Evaluation helps ensure that decisions are rooted in trustworthy evidence and deliver desired outcomes. Drawing on the first significant cross-country survey of policy evaluation practices covering 42 countries, this report offers a systemic analysis of the institutionalisation, quality and use of evaluation across countries and looks at how these three dimensions interrelate. The report also covers cross-cutting aspects related to regulatory assessment and performance budgeting. The analysis illustrates the role and functions of key institutions within the executive, such as centres of government and ministries of finance. It also underlines the role of supreme audit institutions.
With consistent cross-country information on these issues largely absent, the OECD has used lessons learned from case studies in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United States to identify the opportunities offered by ICTs and to analyse under what conditions these technologies are most likely to result in efficiency and quality-of-care improvements. The findings highlight a number of practices or approaches that could usefully be employed in efforts to improve and accelerate the adoption and use of these technologies.
Today’s global policy climate underlines the importance of better addressing non-economic dimensions of well-being and social progress such as health, social engagement, political interest and crime. Education plays an important role in shaping indicators of progress. However, we understand little about the causal effects, the causal pathways, the role of contexts and the relative impacts that different educational interventions have on social outcomes.
This report addresses challenges in assessing the social outcomes of learning by providing a synthesis of the existing evidence, original data analyses and policy discussions. The report finds that education has the potential to promote health as well as civic and social engagement. Education may reduce inequalities by fostering cognitive, social and emotional skills and promoting healthy lifestyles, participatory practices and norms. These efforts are most likely to be successful when family and community environments are aligned with the efforts made in educational institutions. This calls for ensuring policy coherence across sectors and stages of education.
Quality improvement initiatives take many forms, from the creation of standards for health
professionals, health technologies and health facilities, to audit and feedback, and from
fostering a patient safety culture to public reporting and paying for quality. For policymakers
who struggle to decide which initiatives to prioritise for investment, understanding
the potential of different quality strategies in their unique settings is key.
This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides
recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to
understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and
combinations of strategies.
Quality of care is a political priority and an important contributor to population health. This
book acknowledges that "quality of care" is a broadly defined concept, and that it is often
unclear how quality improvement strategies fit within a health system, and what their
particular contribution can be. This volume elucidates the concepts behind multiple elements
of quality in healthcare policy (including definitions of quality, its dimensions, related activities,
and targets), quality measurement and governance and situates it all in the wider context of
health systems research. By so doing, this book is designed to help policy-makers prioritize
and align different quality initiatives and to achieve a comprehensive approach to quality
improvement.
Higher education helps learners acquire the knowledge and skills they need to lead productive working lives, and it sparks the innovation that fosters economic growth and social progress. However, creating higher education systems that operate at a high level of research and teaching quality, with responsiveness to social and labour market demands, requires effective public policies and institutional practices. This report, which focuses on funding and governance reforms to improve higher education in the Slovak Republic, is a collaboration between the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM), the Institute for Strategies and Analysis in the Office of the Government of the Slovak Republic and the OECD’s Directorate for Education and Skills. Building on stakeholder engagement and comparative analysis, the report offers an international perspective on the performance of the Slovak higher education system and provides an action plan focused on governance and funding reforms, placing special emphasis on implementation planning to support reform success.
OECD countries are increasingly attempting to achieve savings through their public procurement systems, in particular in healthcare. In 2012, the State’s Employees’ Social Security and Social Services Institute in Mexico (ISSSTE) asked the OECD to review the effectiveness and integrity of its procurement system and to address bid-rigging. Many of the OECD’s recommendations led to enduring reforms at ISSSTE. In 2015 the OECD conducted a new review focusing on planning and coordination of procurement activities, market research and improvement of medical services. This report presents the findings of the review and notes the ISSSTE’s recent achievements. It also makes recommendations to support the alignment of the ISSSTE’s procurement practices with the 2015 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Public Procurement and includes action plans for priority activities.
Under the Paris Declaration, donors and partner countries commit to “reform procedures and strengthen incentives - including for recruitment, appraisal and training - for management and staff to work towards harmonisation, alignment and results”. This commitment was based on the recognition that the needed changes to behaviour will not happen automatically as there are a number of up-front and long-term costs - institutional, financial and political. The importance of appropriate incentives in influencing managers and officials - and even more importantly political leaders - to bring about the necessary changes has been emphasised in a number of partner countries included in the Evaluation of the Paris Declaration.
If incentives are to shift across the board, determined leadership, reinforced by pressure from well-informed stakeholders in partner and donor countries, will be needed. This publication adddresses this need and aims to provide donor agencies with guidance on how to improve aid effectiveness, and to assist them in identifying their strengths, weaknesses and gaps in incentives for promoting aid effectiveness.
Peace processes hold the promise of re-starting non-violent efforts towards creating more equitable, resilient and developed societies. Yet, such processes are politically and psychologically complex, as well as high-risk. Many fail and such failure is harmful, as it reduces confidence and increases cynicism amongst parties to a conflict, citizens and international partners alike. International support can help a peace process to succeed but its nature and quality matter greatly.
“The Missing Piece” identifies seven recommendations to improve the quality of support that states and international organizations provide to peace processes. It does this through a thorough analysis of: the characteristics of today’s violent conflicts, the factors that influence the success and failure of a peace process and the current strengths & weaknesses of international support.
The demand for help with daily activities – so-called long-term care – is set to increase in Croatia. The population is ageing at a faster rate than the EU average, and by 2050, about one-third of the population is projected to be aged 65 years and over. In addition, with one of the highest poverty rates among older people in EU countries, at 30%, most older people cannot afford long-term care without public support. However, the long-term care system is both fragmented, with multiple benefits and services across different providers, and underfunded with public expenditure among the lowest across EU countries. As a result, long-term care remains unaffordable for most people even after receiving public support, leading to gaps in access, inequities, and a strong reliance on relatives to provide the bulk of long-term care. This report suggests avenues to improve access and equity of long-term care and proposes policy recommendations to enhance the support for family carers.
Plastics have become one of the most prolific materials on the planet: in 2015 we produced about 380 million tonnes of plastics globally, up from 2 million tonnes in the 1950s. Yet today only 15% of this plastic waste is collected and recycled into secondary plastics globally each year. This report looks at why this is the case and what we can do about it, as the pervasiveness of plastics is becoming an urgent public health and planetary problem. Not only is the diffusion of waste plastics into the wider environment creating hugely negative impacts, but plastics production emits approximately 400 million tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions annually as a result of the energy used in their production, transport, and final waste treatment. Improved plastics collection and recycling represents a promising solution to these concerns.
Markets for many classes of potentially recyclable materials are growing. However, market failures and barriers are constraining some markets. Factors such as information failures, technological externalities, and market power can affect the prices, quantity, and quality of materials traded. This report presents the case for the use of 'industrial' policies which address such market failures and barriers and these policies are seen as complements to more traditional environmental policies. Indeed, encouraging ever-higher recycling rates in the absence of such complementary measures may impose very high social welfare costs. This publication covers in particular the markets for waste oils, waste plastics, and used rubber tyres.
This report describes how regulators around the world adapted to the confusion brought by the COVID-19 crisis to ensure the supply of food while maintaining food safety and security. It brings together examples of regulatory responses at regional, national and international levels. The report also discusses how, despite all the challenges, the pandemic has helped uncover new regulatory tools and foster a culture of flexibility and agility in regulatory systems.
Regulations help governments support economic growth, social welfare and environmental protection. The challenge is to design clear, coherent, and efficient regulations and to effectively implement them. This report presents cutting-edge thinking in how to facilitate good regulatory design and implementation. Jointly developed by the OECD and the Korea Development Institute, the report builds on a series of expert papers that analyse the experience of Korea and other OECD members in designing and implementing regulatory oversight, stakeholder engagement, regulatory impact assessment and ex post evaluation. It identifies forthcoming challenges, possible solutions and areas for further analysis that can help governments in OECD member and partner countries improve their regulatory systems.
Passengers and freight shippers alike want reliable transport services. Surprisingly, little research has been undertaken in incorporating reliability into the assessment of transport projects despite the increasing importance of scheduling in economic activities.
This report provides policy makers with a framework to understand reliability issues, to incorporate reliability into project assessment and to design reliability management policies. It also explores a range of reliability performance measures. Case studies across OECD and ITF countries provide examples of several core policy tools that can be used to deliver more reliable networks in a cost-effective manner.
The report makes significant progress in identifying appropriate methodology for incorporating reliability into policy and project evaluation, as well as exploring the pitfalls that need to be avoided.
The global fleet of powered two-wheelers (PTWs) is constantly increasing. In many countries, motorcycles, scooters and mopeds play a significant role in mobility, particularly in many of the world’s large cities. As such, PTWs are becoming an important component of the transport system. However, they represent an important challenge for road safety. PTW riders are at far more risk than car drivers per kilometre ridden in terms of fatalities and severe injuries entailing long-term disability. Moreover, they have not benefited from safety improvements at the same pace as car occupants over recent decades. Addressing the issue of PTW safety is thus an essential contribution to the success of the United Nations’ Decade of Action for Road Safety, which aims at halving the expected number of road deaths worldwide by 2020.
This report reviews recent trends in powered two-wheeler crashes, the factors contributing to these crashes and their severity. It describes a set of countermeasures targeting user behaviours, the use of protective equipment, the vehicles and the infrastructure. Finally, it discusses motorcycle safety strategies in the context of a safe system.
This Toolkit is a professional development tool for individuals or groups. It is designed to help policy makers, practitioners and relevant stakeholders to analyse their current school leadership policies and practices and develop a common understanding of where and how to take action based on the OECD Improving School Leadership policy recommendations.