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This book is a unique tool providing facts, figures and analysis of economic growth in OECD countries. The analysis focuses on the growth patterns of OECD countries during the last decade and identifies the fundamental drivers of growth. It also looks at how and why countries react differently to these drivers. It examines growth at the macro-economic level, industry level and firm level and also analyses the contribution of information technology (IT) at each of these levels. Packed with over 50 tables and figures, the book provides unique data to better understand the reality of economic growth.
International competition, accelerating technological change and shifting societal concerns are important drivers of structural change, both within and across firms, industries and regions. As well as bringing undoubted opportunities, structural adjustment raises acute challenges. This must be acknowledged in making the case for open markets. This brochure aims to identify, for both developed and developing countries, the requirements for successful trade-related structural adjustment via the reallocation of labour and capital to more efficient uses, while limiting adjustment costs for individuals, communities and society as a whole. It draws on a longer study incorporating detailed sectoral case studies...
Presents recommendations for the design of the tourism satellite account that was established by an inter-secretariat working group that included the United Nations Statistics Division, with the participation of the Statistical Office of the European Communities, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Tourism Organisation. These three bodies will promote the implementation of the recommendations in their member countries. The recommendations were approved by the Statistical Commission at its thirty-first session in 2000.
Following his The World Economy: a Millennial Perspective, Angus Maddison here offers a rare insight into the history and political influence of national accounts and national accounting. He demonstrates that such statistical data can shed light on the analysis of economic phenomena such as growth, market formation and income distribution. This approach is particularly interesting for developing countries often lacking the expertise or data to produce good national accounts. It also serves as a reminder for OECD countries that effective policy making depends on verifiable economic data.
This book includes tables showing Maddison’s estimates for the world and its major regions from as early as the year 1000. It is intended as a research guide for future comparisons of economic performance in space and time. It is for scholars and students of economics and economic history as well as for statisticians.
Angus Maddison provides a comprehensive view of the growth and levels of world population since the year 1000 when rich countries of today were poorer than Asia and Africa. The gap between the world leader, the US and the poorest region, Africa, is now 20:1. The book has several objectives. The first is a pioneering effort to quantify the economic performance of nations over the very long term. The second is to identify forces which explain the success of the rich countries, and explore the obstacles which hindered advance in regions which lagged behind. The third is to scrutinise the interaction between the rich and the rest to assess the degree to which this relationship was exploitative. The book is a monumental work of reference and a sequel to the author's Monitoring the World Economy: 1820-1992, published in 1995 and his 1998 Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run. It is a "must" for all scholars and students of economics and economic history, as well as a mine of fascinating facts for everyone else.
Understand growth disparities between OECD countries over the past twenty years through identification and analysis of underlying factors.
Growth patterns through the 1990s and into this decade have turned received wisdom on its head. For most of the post-war period, OECD countries with relatively low GDP per capita grew faster than richer countries. Since the late 1990s, however, that pattern has broken down with the United States notably drawing further ahead of the field. This publication provides a comprehensive overview of growth drivers across the OECD and the extent to which disparities are attributable to factors like new technology and R&D, macroeconomic policy, education and training, labour market flexibility, product market competition, and barriers to business start-up and closure.
Services are transforming OECD economies on a massive scale, but are still impeded by regulations and policies that stifle innovation and competition. Comprehensive reforms need to be pursued internationally as well as in individual OECD countries. These are the principal conclusions reached by participants in a Business and Industry Policy Forum organised by the OECD on 28 September 1999. The Forum was organised by the Industry Committee, partly to address the mandate of the OECD Ministerial to explain the differences which have emerged in growth performance among OECD countries. It brought together senior government officials, experts, and business and trade union leaders from 30 countries to address issues related to “Realising the Potential of the Service Economy: Facilitating Growth, Innovation and Competition”.
With the market for security goods and services having expanded rapidly since 9/11, this study examines the potential costs of major disruptions, the trade-offs between tighter security and economic efficiency, and the implications of tighter security for privacy and other democratic liberties.
In 2000 commentators everywhere were hailing the boom in some western economies as the dawn of a new economy. In 2001, with a slowdown biting in the US economy, dot.coms folding and information and communications technology firms feeling the pinch globally, the headline writers have swung the other way, saying that it was all a myth. Was it?
The New Economy: Beyond the Hype looks past the elation and gloom to help policymakers think and act with the facts. It explores the causes of the discrepancy in economic performance in the OECD area. It shows that while technology has had a pervasive and profound effect on economies and societies, it alone was not the reason for fast growth. What counts more is how that technology is put to work. The book argues forcefully that whatever the outlook for the business cycle, we are now faced with a new economic environment. It urges policymakers to adopt a comprehensive growth strategy combining five policy areas that can engage ICT, human capital, innovation and entrepreneurship in the growth process alongside policies to mobilise labour and increase investment for the long term. Naturally, good fundamentals -- macroeconomic stability, openness and competition, as well as sound economic and social institutions, and proper social protection -- are a prerequisite for success.
Analysts and policy makers have made increasing use of patent indicators to analyse the rate and direction of technological activity. The Patents Manual, issued in 1994, provides information on how patent data can be used as indicators, and also shows how these can be linked to other statistics on science, technology and economic activity (R&D, scientific publications, trade, production, etc.).
The Frascati Manual, issued in 1994, is the basic international source of methodology for collecting and using research and development statistics. This fifth edition reflects recent changes in the structure of national science and technology systems and revisions in standard international classifications.
As the 20th century draws to a close, powerful forces of change are converging that could set the stage for a long, sustained economic boom in the next few decades -- the transition to a knowledge-based society with its potentially huge productivity gains; the emergence of more deeply integrated, global markets for goods, services, capital and technology; and a fast-growing environmental awareness that could greatly accelerate the shift to new, less resource-intensive production and consumption patterns. The result could be several decades of above-average economic growth, substantial increases in income and wealth, and significant improvements in well-being across the world.
But what will it take to unleash these dynamic forces? Not only will it call for a range of initiatives to establish the rules and frameworks for guiding the transition to a sustainable global knowledge economy, but above all, it will require exceptional efforts among decision makers in government, business and society at large to encourage continuous innovation, creativity and high levels of investment, and to promote bold new approaches to closer international co-operation and institution building. Inevitably some countries will benefit more than others, but a long boom with all its wealth creating capacity would offer a unique opportunity to reverse the trends of the last decades towards deepening inequality and exclusion.
This book reviews the forces driving economic and social change in today's world. It asesses the likelihood of a long boom materialising in the first decades of the 21st century and explores the strategic policies essential for making it happen.
Money's destiny is to become digital. Throughout the ages physical money in the form of objects, coins and notes has increasingly been replaced by more abstract means of payment such as bills of exchange, cheques and credit cards. In the years to come that trend to virtual money will continue apace. As technological advances in ICT and biometrics come on-stream, as intangibles progressively become the primary source of value-added in the burgeoning knowledge economy, and as the public at large come to grasp the advantages of digital transactions, virtual forms of payment will dominate. How quickly will this happen on a major scale, and will cash disappear altogether? How will it affect our daily lives? Will it deepen already existing rifts in society? Does virtual money threaten control of the money supply, raising the spectre of greater inflationary risks? Or will it put central banks out of business? This book tackles these and many other critical questions, offering timely suggestions on why and how to make the transition to the world of digital money.
The agro-food sector in OECD countries is heading towards an era of turbulance and transition. With food demand in developing countries growing, barriers to trade and investment falling, and consumer tastes and preferences rapidly diversifying, the landscape of OECD food markets will be radically different 20 years from now. Are food shortages likely and what will happen to food prices? What changes will we see in food retailing and food processing? Will there be more co-operation between the various players in the agro-food industry, more concentration or more competition? To grasp these challenges, this report looks into the prospects for the agro-food sector to 2010-20 and examines the new generation of key issues that lie ahead for governments, business, farmers and consumers.
Though only three years old, electronic commerce over the Internet has the potential to transform the marketplace. E-commerce will change the way business is conducted. Traditional intermediary functions will be replaced, new products and markets will be developed, and new relationships will be created between business and consumers. It will alter the way work is organised and open new channels of knowledge diffusion and human interactivity in the workplace. Workers will need to be more flexible as their functions and skills are redefined. The changes e-commerce will bring are far-reaching. They require new frameworks for doing business and a re-examination of government policies relating to commerce and skills. What is electronic commerce? What is the current state and likely future direction of e-commerce? What are the drivers and what are the inhibitors? What is its impact on costs, prices, and ultimately on economic efficiency? How is it affecting intermediaries? How do firms compete in the electronic environment? What market structure is likely to emerge? What is the impact on jobs? What types of skills will be needed? What major societal transformations will it entail? The full impact of e-commerce remains to be seen. This book begins to address these questions and provides a ground-breaking assessment of the economic and social impacts of electronic commerce and its effects on jobs by drawing on existing qualitative and quantitative evidence. This early analysis of an extremely dynamic activity identifies a number of areas where research is urgently needed and serves as the basis for an informed policy debate.
Information and communications technology (ICT) has become a key driver of economic growth over the past decade. The rapid diffusion of the Internet, of mobile telephony and of broadband networks all demonstrate how pervasive this technology has become. But how precisely does ICT affect economic growth and the efficiency of firms? And how well can these effects be measured?
This report provides an overview of the economic impact of ICT on economic performance, and the ways through which it can be measured. Using available OECD data, the first part of the book examines the available measures of ICT diffusion, the role and impact of ICT investment and the role of ICT-using and ICT-producing sectors in overall economic performance. The second part of the book offers nine studies for OECD countries, based on detailed firm-level data and prepared by researchers and statisticians from a wide range of OECD countries. These studies use a variety of methods and provide detailed insights on the effects of ICT in individual countries.
How can growing social diversity be harnessed to make for more creative societies in the future? Three powerful forces are simultaneously shaping the social foundations of the future: deep-seated change in underlying economic systems, rapid global integration, and growing social diversity itself. The question is whether the three will combine constructively and lead to social progress or whether another, grimmer scenario lies ahead.
Does growing diversity, commendable in itself, mean we are headed for more inequality across the world's populations? Will access to and use of new knowledge and advanced technologies alleviate or aggravate the differences? What steps can policy makers take to ensure that growing differentiation within and among societies gives rise to increased creativity instead of mounting tensions?
This book asks some hard questions about our changing world, and examines the policy opportunities that need to be grasped if we are to foster sustainable social foundations for the 21st century.
China’s food processing sector has arrived at a decisive stage. While primary agriculture has continued to expand at an astounding pace and final consumers have experienced an extended period of rapid income growth, progress at the intermediary stage, the agro-processing sector, has remained limited. Today, a growing need to catch up with these developments has become manifest, but a number of challenges have emerged simultaneously. They include the need to adjust to increasingly diversified consumer demands, to improve the quality and nutritional content of foods, to introduce new food products, to shift to more sophisticated processing methods, to adopt innovative packaging methods, and to comply with new labelling requirements. These developments give rise to a number of questions. What do these changes mean for China’s food processors? Is China’s agriculture adequately prepared for these changes? How can farmers take advantage of these changes? What structural adjustments are needed to meet the challenges arising from the changes in domestic and international food markets? The papers in this Proceedings document try to answer these and many other important questions revolving around changes in, and challenges for, China’s agro-processing sector.
The System of National Accounts, 1993 (SNA) was a joint publication by the United Nations Statistical Division, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, Eurostat and the OECD. It provides a detailed framework for producing national accounts statistics and is intended for worldwide use. However, Because of the detailed nature of the SNA, it is often difficult to identify precise definitions of the terms commonly used in national accounting. As a result, the OECD has now produced this glossary which provides a quick reference to terms commonly found in the national accounts.
How can we meet the needs of today without diminishing the capacity of future generations to meet theirs? This is the central question posed by "sustainable development". OECD countries committed themselves to sustainable development at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio, yet - almost ten years later - progress accomplished remains partial and uneven. Drawing on analysis carried forward in response to a mandate from OECD Ministers in 1998, this report stresses the urgency to address some of the most pressing challenges for sustainable development. It reviews the conceptual foundations of sustainable development, its measurement, and the institutional reforms needed to make it operational. It then discusses how international trade and investment, as well as development co-operation, can contribute to sustainable development on a global basis, and reviews the experience of OECD countries in using market-based, regulatory and technology policies to reach sustainability goals in a cost-effective way. The report also provides an in-depth analysis of policies designed to address key threats to sustainability in the areas of climate change and natural resource management, as well as of those that respond to sustainability concerns at the sectoral and sub-national level. The common thrust of the report is that substantial opportunities exist to make economic growth, environmental protection, and social development mutually reinforcing.