Browse by: "C"
Index
Title Index
Year Index
Red tape is burdensome to companies, inhibits entrepreneurship, and reduces competitiveness. This book examines country strategies and tools for reducing red tape and the institutional frameworks set up to reduce red tape, and finds what the trends are and what strategies are working.
The chemicals industry - including industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, food and feed additives and cosmetics - is one of the world’s largest industrial sectors. Many chemical products are traded internationally. Varying national requirements can mean duplication of efforts and significant costs for the chemicals industry, as well as posing barriers to trade. By agreeing on test methods and data quality and sharing the workload of chemical safety testing and assessments, countries together achieve environmentally sustainable and cost-effective results.
For non-clinical health and safety testing, for example, the results of such studies carried out on a chemical product in one OECD country must be accepted by the others as long as it was carried out in accordance with the OECD Test Guidelines and Principles of Good Laboratory Practice. This saves the chemicals industry the expense of duplicative testing for products that are marketed in more than one country.
This report analyses the rigorous and comprehensive system for assessing and managing chemicals that helps governments and industry save about EUR 150 million each year, through “work sharing” facilitated by the OECD.
The Indian Ocean tsunami that hit South and Southeast Asia in December 2004 was one of the worst natural calamities of recent times, the scale of the devastation to coastal communities across the region almost incomprehensible. As befits a disaster of such magnitude, the humanitarian response was massive. In the course of the relief operations, however, Asian governments and donors increasingly expressed the need for measures to prevent corruption amid widespread concern that significant amounts of tsunami aid may be being diverted to unscrupulous hands.
In response to growing concerns about corruption, the ADB-OECD Anti- Corruption Initiative for Asia-Pacific and Transparency International organized an experts meeting on corruption prevention in tsunami relief operations hosted by the Government of Indonesia. The meeting, which brought together the six worst-affected countries—India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand—aimed to identify concrete priority measures to be taken by each stakeholder, including governments, donor agencies, civil society and private sector organizations involved in aid delivery and reconstruction work, to prevent and curb corruption in service delivery and procurement related to tsunami relief.
This publication synthesizes the meeting’s most important deliberations and conclusions, providing a useful resource for the wide range of individuals and organizations working to ensure equitable tsunami assistance. It assembles the issue papers and the conclusions and framework for action developed as a result of discussions and presentations by experts.
Corruption in public procurement has become a major issue in the Asia-Pacific region as elsewhere in the world. As a result of corruption, private mansions are being built instead of bridges; swimming pools are dug instead of irrigation systems; funds destined to run hospitals and buy medicines find their way into the pockets of corrupt officials; economic growth is held back; and public trust in government is undermined.
Governments in Asia and the Pacific have recognized the urgent need to fight corruption in public procurement. To identify risk-areas in their public procurement frameworks and to foster reform in this field, member governments of the ADB/OECD Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia and the Pacific have reviewed the mechanisms and safeguards in place.Large-scale study of populations may contribute significantly to science’s understanding of the complex multi-factorial basis of disease and to improvements in prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment and cure. This book summarises the proceedings of a conference on human genetic research databases. It examines what they are and provides a number of examples. It looks at how they have been established, governed, and funded. And it looks at how they are managed and commercialised, exploring what the policy implications are for governments.
Regulators are the “referees” of markets that provide essential services to citizens; they guarantee that all actors respect the rules and work to achieve the best outcomes. This means that their behaviour must be objective, impartial, consistent and free from conflict of interest – in other words, independent. Yet, regulators need to engage with a number of stakeholders, who may also seek to apply pressure and exert undue influence on regulatory outcomes. The independence of regulators is thus constantly under stress. This report provides practical advice on how to address stress points and protect economic regulators from undue influence, drawing on the experience of over 80 regulators that participate in the OECD Network of Economic Regulators (NER). It presents a practical checklist to support behavioural and organisational change, and helps other stakeholders better understand and appreciate the role of regulators and how to interact with them.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments face both old and new fraud risks, some at unprecedented levels, linked to spending on relief and recovery. Public grant programmes are a high-risk area, where any fraud ultimately diverts taxpayers’ money away from essential support for individuals and businesses. This report identifies how Spain’s General Comptroller of the State Administration (Intervención General de la Administración del Estado, IGAE) could better identify and control for grant fraud risks. It demonstrates how innovative machine learning techniques can support the IGAE in enhancing its assessment of fraud risks in grant data. It presents a working risk model, developed with datasets at the IGAE’s disposal, and maps datasets it could use in the future. The report also considers the preconditions for advanced analytics and risk assessments, including ways for the IGAE to improve its data governance and data management.
This report takes stock of approaches taken by public organisations to counter external fraud in social benefit programmes (SBP) and suggests areas for improvement. It provides insights on preventive and detective measures, and promotes a risk-based approach to addressing fraud and error in SBPs in line with the OECD Recommendation of the Council on Public Integrity. It explores how public organisations can leverage data-driven approaches to improve fraud detection, and how strengthening evaluation activities can promote continuous improvement of anti-fraud measures.
The Swiss economy is innovative and knowledge-intensive. Consequently, it relies heavily on intellectual property rights. Swiss industries are also export-oriented and solidly integrated in the global economy. At the same time, the threats of counterfeiting and piracy are growing, and Swiss industries are vulnerable. This report measures the direct economic effects of counterfeiting on Swiss industry and the Swiss government. It estimates the impact of the global trade in fake products that pose as “Swiss made” in terms of lost jobs, forgone profits and lower tax revenues.
The Swedish economy is innovative and rich in intellectual property (IP), with nearly every industry either producing or using IP. Swedish innovative industries are also export-dependent and very deeply integrated in the global economy, through active participation in global value chains. At the same time, the threats of counterfeiting and piracy are growing – and Sweden is vulnerable. This report measures the direct economic effects of counterfeiting on Swedish industry, government and consumers. It examines both the impact of the imports of fake products to Sweden and – more importantly – the impact of the global trade in fake products that infringe on the IP rights of Swedish innovative companies.
The review analyses key areas of public governance in Costa Rica and identifies opportunities to improve the performance of the state in order to ensure more effective and efficient service delivery for all citizens. It examines co-ordination at the centre of government, public policy monitoring and evaluation and the use of the budget framework for strategic planning. It also looks at human resource management, integrity policies and public procurement, and multi-level governance. The review provides recommendations to assist the government in strengthening the capacity of the public sector to support social and economic development.
This book explores recent developments in environmental cost-benefit analysis (CBA). This is defined as the application of CBA to projects or policies that have the deliberate aim of environmental improvement or are actions that affect, in some way, the natural environment as an indirect consequence. It builds on the previous OECD book by David Pearce et al. (2006), which took as its starting point that a number of developments in CBA, taken together, altered the way in which many economists would argue CBA should be carried out and that this was particularly so in the context of policies and projects with significant environmental impacts.
It is a primary objective of the current book not only to assess more recent advances in CBA theory but also to identify how specific developments illustrate key thematic narratives with implications for practical use of environmental CBA in policy formulation and appraisal of investment projects.
Perhaps the most significant development is the contribution of climate economics in its response to the challenge of appraising policy actions to mitigate (or adapt to) climate change. Work in this area has increased the focus on how to value costs and benefits that occur far into the future, particularly by showing how conventional procedures for establishing the social discount rate become highly problematic in this intergenerational context and what new approaches might be needed. The contribution of climate economics has also entailed thinking further about uncertainty in CBA, especially where uncertain outcomes might be associated with large (and adverse) impacts.
This Glossary explains the key elements required to classify corruption as a criminal act, according to three major international conventions: (1) the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions; (2) the Council of Europe’s Criminal Law Convention on Corruption; and (3) the United Nation’s Convention against Corruption.
The Glossary examines and elaborates on the requirements of the conventions and explains how they can be effectively introduced into the national legislation. The Glossary is also a practical tool for monitoring country compliance with the international anti-corruption conventions, as well as raising awareness of these conventions.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is business's contribution to sustainable development. Today, corporate behaviour must not only ensure returns to shareholders, wages to employees, and products and services to customers, it must also respond to societal and environmental concerns. Local cultures are a countervailing force to the global economy and the struggle between the forces of global commerce and the interests of local cultures brings with it new politics. In overcoming the hurdles of social responsibility, all partners and sectors need to be committed to adhere to a coherent social strategy in the interest of society as a whole. Through partnerships with labour, NGOs, and communities, corporations contribute to tackling social exclusion and other inner city problems in order to define and implement innovative solutions for policy dialogue to meet the social challenges at the local level.
This book provides a comprehensive overview of Corporate Social Responsibility experiences and practices at the local level. It illustrates that partnerships provide a powerful mechanism for helping firms become more socially responsible. It includes interventions from the Conference "Partners for Progress - Towards a new approach to Corporate Social Responsibility", held in Paris in November 2000 and is essential reading for policy-makers, NGOs, business, and all local actors involved in the issues of sustainable development.
Private initiatives for corporate responsibility have been a major development in international management over the last twenty years. The initiatives include issuance of codes of business conduct, implementation of management systems and broader efforts to improve business accountability. Yet, there is little agreement about what these initiatives mean or how effective they are. OECD research on private initiatives sheds light on various aspects of the corporate responsibility movement: what are firms and business associations doing? How have governments influenced the initiatives? What contributions, if any, have these initiatives made to improving the business sector’s ability to comply with law and regulation and to respond to broader societal expectations?
This publication examines the role of corporate governance arrangements in providing the right incentives to contribute to the value creation process within the private enterprises and the implications of the differences in ownership structures on corporate governance practices and frameworks. It also addresses these global changes from emerging markets perspective and the distinguishing features of these economies that shape their capital markets, corporate structures and corporate governance landscape.
This publication is an important reminder that all those corporate governance rules, regulations and practices that we discuss are not a goal in themselves. They are supposed to be means to a greater end. Be it minority rights, mandatory bids, or independent directors, the rules and regulations that we put in place should serve a purpose. And it is against this purpose and these objectives that the quality of any corporate governance system should be evaluated. So, we need to find a benchmark against which we can assess new regulations and evaluate existing ones.
How can the efficiency of state-owned enterprises be improved? What effects do privatisation policies have on corporate governance in privatised enterprises? What role do employees play in corporate governance? This report examines these issues and provides recommendations.
This publication presents the papers of the OECD conference on "State-Owned Enterprises, Privatisation and Corporate Governance" which took place in Paris on 3 and 4 March 1997. It brings together contributions from different countries highlighting different approaches to governance in state-owned enterprises and the impact of the choice of privatisation method on post-privatisation corporate governance and performance. Special attention is paid to the experience of Canada, France, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Presents the OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises as well as a comparative overview of main practices and issues related to corporate governance of state-owned enterprises in the OECD area. The analytical part of the report examines the scale of these enterprises in OECD countries, organisation of the ownership function, relationships with non-state shareholders, the role of stakeholders in corporate governance, transparency and disclosure, and the board of directors. Tables in the annex compare legal status, transparency and disclosure, and board composition and functions, and CEO appointment and remuneration policies of state-owned enterprises across countries.
This publication provides policy makers, board members, managers, equity providers, creditors and other stakeholders an overview of the issues to be addressed in establishing good corporate governance of non-listed companies.
While the corporate governance debate has mostly focused on listed companies with dispersed shareholdings, issues such as financial transparency, the role of access to outside capital and conflict resolution are just as important for non-listed and family controlled companies which play a major role in many economies.
Contributors to this publication are policy makers, regulators and practitioners, mostly from emerging markets and developing countries including Brazil, China, India, Lebanon and Mexico. Drawing on their varied experiences, the contributors address key corporate governance issues such as the role of professional managers, the implications of specific control and ownership structures; the unique characteristics of corporate governance of non-listed companies, the adequate transparency requirements in non-listed companies, and how policy makers should inform themselves in order to facilitate better corporate governance and business performance in non-listed companies.