Browse by: "2012"

This edition of the Southeast Asian Economic Outlook examines the macroeconomic situation, policies and medium-term growth prospects for countries in the region; structural challenges; green growth strategies, policies and institutions; and environmental taxes. It finds that growth for the region will moderate in the near term but solid growth performance will continue until 2016. To sustain this favourable outlook, countries need to meet considerable structural challenges. Green growth offers an alternative growth strategy in the long term.

The solar heating and cooling (SHC) roadmap outlines a pathway for solar energy to supply almost one sixth (18 EJ) of the world’s total energy use for both heating and cooling by 2050.  This would save some 800 megatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per year; more than the total CO2 emissions in Germany in 2009. While solar heating and cooling today makes a modest contribution to world energy demand, the roadmap envisages that if concerted action is taken by governments and industry, solar energy could annually produce more than 16% of total final energy use for low temperature heat and nearly 17% for cooling.  Given that global energy demand for heat represents almost half of the world’s final energy use – more than the combined global demand for electricity and transport – solar heat can make a significant contribution in both tackling climate change and strengthening energy security.

This is the second edition of Society at a Glance Asia -Pacific, the biennial OECD overview of social indicators. This report addresses the growing demand for quantitative evidence on social well-being and its trends. This report includes a special chapter on unpaid work. It also provides a guide to help readers in understanding the structure of social indicators and a summary. Part II reports on social indicators, including chapters covering the general context, self-sufficiency, equity, health, and social cohesion.

This report develops a framework of social unrest within a complex understanding of systemic risk.  The goal is to  try to identify triggers (events that lead to social unrest) and drivers (causal roots) for the emergence of social unrest and, based on this functional analysis, to design policy options on how to avoid, mitigate or handle unrest. The framework should enable a better understanding of the circumstances that may trigger social unrest, how intensely that unrest is likely to materialize and what interventions promise  to de-escalate the conflict or even prevent social unrest in the first place.   Since social unrest is more a process of escalation than a finite state of the world, the term has been conceptualized in a step-by-step escalation scheme.   Each step makes social unrest more severe. It is a gradual framework that identifies the different stages that make social unrest more and more probable. In order to identify relevant drivers and cluster of drivers, three case studies are investigated:  pandemics, cyber-related risk and financial crises. The main question is how did or could these events cause social unrests.  In a second step, an analytic model is used to capture the combined effects learned from the case study analysis. In a third step,the IRGC risk governance model for explaining the risk of social unrest or predicting the consequences of social unrest is applied. Finally , guidelines for normative governance with respect to social unrest are developed.

This book presents a comprehensive review of governance and public management in Slovenia.It identifies how reforms can better reinforce each other in support of overall government objectives and examines reform strategies that have worked in other countries to provide a series of recommendations.

The costs of mental ill-health for the individuals concerned, employers and society at large are enormous. Mental illness is responsible for a very significant loss of potential labour supply, high rates of unemployment, and a high incidence of sickness absence and reduced productivity at work. In particular, mental illness causes too many young people to leave the labour market, or never really enter it, through early moves onto disability benefit. Today, between one-third and one-half of all new disability benefit claims are for reasons of mental ill-health, and among young adults that proportion goes up to over 70%.   Indeed, mental ill-health is becoming a key issue for the well-functioning of OECD’s labour markets and social policies and requires a stronger focus on policies addressing mental health and work issues. Despite the very high costs to the individuals and the economy, there is only little awareness about the connection between mental health and work, and the drivers behind the labour market outcomes and the level of inactivity of people with mental ill-health. Understanding these drivers is critical for the development of more effective policies. This report aims to identify the knowledge gaps and begin to narrow them by reviewing evidence on the main challenges and barriers to better integrating people with mental illness in the world of work.  

In this report, released in May at the annual meeting of the OECD Council at ministerial level, the Secretary-General summarises the activities of the OECD during the previous year.

Part I of this book provides a comparative overview across the region for SME policy development in 10 thematic areas. Part II provides a series of country profiles presenting analysis of the particular situation of the SME sector and the SME policy environment in every partner country. Part III provides a comparative overview across the region on the level of SME policy development in 10 thematic areas at the sub-national levels and provides country-specific analysis of the particular situation of the SME sector and the SME policy environment in every partner country at sub-national level. Annexes provide a list of abbreviations, an assessment grid and a list of SBA coordinators.

This ssessment of SME policy frameworks in eastern partnership countries helps support SME policy development in the eastern partnership countries through identification of strong and weak points in SME policy elaboration and implementation.

The IRTAD Annual report 2011 provides an overview of road safety indicators for 2010 in 32 countries, with preliminary data for 2011. The report outlines recent safety measures adopted nationally, with detailed safety data by road user, location and age. This edition highlights contributions to the development of road safety policies by the IRTAD Group in 2011, with detailed reports for all member countries on targets and national strategies, including new strategies being developed for the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety.

Revenue Statistics in Latin America is a joint publication by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, the OECD Development Centre, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Inter-American Centre of Tax Administrations (CIAT). Its aim is to provide internationally comparable data on tax levels and tax structures for a selection of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. The model is the OECD Revenue Statistics database which is a fundamental reference, backed by a well-established methodology, for OECD member countries. By extending this OECD methodology to LAC countries Revenue Statistics in Latin America enables meaningful cross-country comparisons about tax levels and structures not only between LAC economies, but also between them and their industrialised peers.  This edition's special feature covers taxation and small and medium enterprises in Latin America.

Les données sur les recettes des administrations publiques, et sur le produit de la fiscalité en particulier, constituent la base de la plupart des travaux de description des structures economiques et d’analyse economique, et sont de plus en plus utilisées pour les comparaisons internationales. Cette publication annuelle présente un cadre conceptuel dont le but est de définir les recettes publiques devant être assimilées à des impôts et de classifier les différentes catégories d’impôts. Elle constitue également un ensemble unique de statistiques fiscales détaillees et comparables au niveau international, utilisant une presentation identique pour tous les pays de l’OCDE depuis 1965.

This report gives an update on fiscal consolidation strategies across OECD member countries since last year. Chapter 1 describes the scope and composition of country plans, compares them with calculated fiscal need, and provides information on the timing and details. Chapter 2 contains notes on each of the countries which present the current fiscal position and announced fiscal paths, the consolidation plans, and detailed expenditure and revenue measures. Chapter 3 discusses the financial situation and consolidation needs of sub-national governments, and the policies that are being carried out at both levels of government to reach the consolidation objectives.

Related party transactions involve parties who can control the terms of a transaction in their favor potentially at the cost of the company. They include management, board members and controlling shareholders. The publication reviews provisions covering related party transactions and the protection of minority shareholder rights  in 31 jurisdictions, both OECD and non-OECD. In addition, the regulatory and legal systems that have beeen developed in five jurisdictions are reviewed in detail and allow a wide range of experience to be compared and lessons drawn. They are, Belgium, France, Italy, Israel and India. 

This book describes and examines reforms of fiscal federalism and local government in 10 OECD countries implemented over the past decade. The country chapters identify common patterns and factors that are conducive to reforms of the intergovernmental fiscal framework, using a common methodological approach. The summary chapter highlights the cross-cutting issues emerging from the country chapters and shows the key factors in the institutional, political, economic and fiscal areas that are supporting reform success. The report’s approach results in valuable insights for policy makers designing, adopting and implementing fiscal federalism and local government reforms.

This report compares urbanisation trends in OECD countries on the basis of a newly defined OECD methodology which enables cross-country comparison of the socio-econimic and environmental performance of metropolitan areas in OECD countries. The methodology is presented and results from its application to 27 OECD countries are discussed together with policy implication both on national growth and governance of cities. The report also includes three original papers that present the urbanisation dynamics and prospects in China and South Africa and the governance challenges resulting from the new policy agenda on cities in the United Kingdom.