While the second half of the 20th century was characterised by a growing integration of the global economy, in recent years there have been growing calls for protectionism and reshoring. At the same time, COVID-19 resulted in higher levels of remote working, which showed that many jobs could be done from anywhere and could, in theory, be offshored. The future of offshoring and reshoring is therefore highly uncertain. This document summarises some of the key issues and trends with regards to offshoring and reshoring. It then sets out a research agenda which would result in a better understanding the future of offshoring and reshoring and their impact on domestic labour markets, which would help policy makers in OECD countries plan for the changes that lie ahead.

Over the last decade, the space economy has seen significant shifts, welcoming new entrants and types of capital. Annual launch activity has increased, in large part thanks to the influx of private investment. This raises questions about the future development of the sector. Drawing on OECD insights within science, technology, and innovation, this policy paper examines public and private investment trends in the space economy and discusses how public policy decisions and instruments can contribute to attracting more and higher-quality private investment.

This policy brief brings together key reflections from the Policy Dialogues in Focus: International Insights for Digital Education Reform in Brazil. This seminar series from the Education Policy Outlook offered federal and subnational policy makers, civil society actors and researchers in Brazil the opportunity to learn from the experiences of six peer education systems (New South Wales (Australia), Chile, Colombia, Ireland, Korea and Mexico). The seminars also provided insights into other relevant international comparative and empirical work from the OECD. The policy brief builds on the main reflections and insights shared by presenters and participants in the seminars, covering four key topics: digital education governance, infrastructure and resources, capacity building and digital learning resources. The brief proposes pointers for policy makers in Brazil to consider when pursuing the design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of digital education reforms.

Waste crimes create social and economic issues. Offenders commit crime due to either a lack of awareness of waste law or the belief that there is a low risk of being caught and punished. OECD countries are using digital tools to improve their use of resources with the aim to promote compliance and detect violation of waste law. This paper reviews the types of waste crimes, their motivations, and opportunities for governments to use digital tools for their enforcement efforts. It finds that governments have thus far mainly focused on digitalising their data collection and their exchange of information with the public and partners. Further application of digital tools can improve the connection of these tools and test predictive analytical tools such as artificial intelligence systems.

As populations age and the number of people with chronic conditions increases, countries need to assess how their health systems perform with regard to the management of chronic conditions. OECD's Patient-Reported Indicator Surveys (PaRIS) initiative aims to measure outcomes and experiences of healthcare as reported by patients with chronic conditions as part of the efforts to improve quality of care. The PaRIS survey, an international survey of people living with chronic conditions who are managed in primary care, is implemented in twenty countries. Following a rigorous design and development phase, the PaRIS survey was field-tested in participating countries. This paper reports on the implementation and the results of the Field Trial. The Field Trial provided important lessons which have been used to improve the survey tools and the implementation of the Main Survey.

Given the fast pace of global socio-economic development, more tailored, focused, and localised efforts to strengthen public sector capacity in small island developing states (SIDS) is increasingly important. SIDS have unique vulnerabilities, rich histories and contexts, and strengths that can be harnessed for sustainable development. Development partners need to adapt how they provide capacity-strengthening support, taking individual SIDS’ circumstances and needs into account to better help them achieve their ambitions. This report summarises perspectives from small island developing states (SIDS) on current experiences and opportunities to improve capacity-strengthening support to make it more tailored, impactful, and sustainable. The report uses the broad definition of capacity-strengthening as activities that improve the competencies and abilities of individuals, organisations, and broader formal and informal social structures in a way that boosts organisational performance. It concentrates on public sector capacity, including interactions with other stakeholders across sectors.

Decentralised exchanges (DEXs) are on-chain platforms where traders can exchange one crypto-asset for another. DEXs play an increasingly important role in the decentralised finance (DeFi) market, particularly in the aftermath of the recent downturn in the crypto-asset market. This working paper explores the characteristics of DEXs and identifies areas of possible concentration in decentralised exchanges activity and potential associated risks. To substantiate the analysis, it uses an original on-chain dataset covering the largest DEXs. The paper reveals an increased concentration within DeFi trading in the sample observed, which could exacerbate vulnerabilities already present in DeFi markets.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented global economic downturn, affecting productivity, business dynamics, and digital technology adoption. Using a comprehensive commercial database from Spiceworks Ziff Davis, this study analyses the firm-level drivers of digitalisation during the pandemic across 20 European countries. The findings show that a considerable share of firms introduced new digital technologies during the COVID-19 crisis. Notably, firms that were larger, more digitalised, and more productive before the pandemic were more likely to introduce new digital technologies in 2020 and 2021. Additionally, firms with pre-existing complementary technologies had a higher likelihood of adopting digital applications that gained momentum during the pandemic (such as digital commerce, collaborative software, cloud, and analytics). These patterns may increase polarisation among the best-performing firms and the rest of the business population. Public policy can play a key role in fostering an inclusive digital transformation in the post-pandemic era.

Gender inequalities in Australia have steadily declined, but remain particularly visible in the labour market. Women in Australia have lower employment rates, hourly wages and hours worked than their male counterparts. Childbirth is particularly disruptive for their labour market experience. Reforms to the tax and benefits system, childcare and parental leave arrangements are all needed to reduce the barriers to female labour participation of mothers. At the same time, ensuring the adequacy of unemployment benefits will support the living standards of many low-income women given that they have become an increasing share of recipients. Single mothers face particularly high poverty risk and would also benefit from more robust arrangements around child support payments from non-custodial parents.

Australia has committed to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and more recently outlined a more ambitious intermediate target for emission reductions by 2030. However, achieving these targets will be challenging given a historical reliance on coal generation and the presence of significant mining and agriculture sectors. It will require a rapid transformation of the electricity grid, significant emissions reductions in highly-polluting sectors such as industry and agriculture, and sufficient offsets generated by “negative emissions” technologies and practices to counterbalance any emissions that cannot be fully eliminated. At the same time, Australia is particularly vulnerable to the physical impacts of climate change, as the driest inhabited continent on the planet with the majority of the population living on the coasts. Further significant reforms are required to meet the emission reduction goals, support the reallocation of workers and adapt to climate change.

Japan faces serious demographic headwinds. Under current fertility, employment and immigration rates, the population would fall by 45% by 2100 and employment by 52%. Given the challenges of a shrinking and ageing population, the government has pledged to “create a children-first economic society and reverse the birth rate decline”. One priority is to strengthen the weak financial position of youth, which leads many to delay or forgo marriage and children. Making it easier to combine paid work and family is also critical so that women are not forced to choose between a career and children. Policies should also cut the cost of raising children, the key obstacle to couples achieving their desired number of children. Given the challenge of reversing fertility trends, Japan needs to prepare for a low-fertility future by raising productivity and employment, particularly among women and older people. Breaking down labour market dualism, which disproportionately affects youth, women and older people, is a priority. Abolishing the right of firms to set a mandatory retirement age (usually at 60) and raising the pension eligibility age would also promote employment. Foreign workers are helping ease labour shortages, but more needs to be done to attract foreign talent. A comprehensive approach is needed to raise fertility, the employment rates of women and older persons and inflows of foreign workers.

Fertilisers are crucial components of food systems, with impacts beyond agricultural markets. This study utilises the OECD-FAO Aglink-Cosimo model to examine the intricate interplay between fertiliser markets, policies, and their repercussions on agricultural markets, food security, and environmental sustainability over the medium term. Two distinct scenario analyses reveal significant insights. The first scenario shows that while short-term disruptions in fertiliser supply can be mitigated by existing stocks, prolonged deficits will increase global food prices by up to 6%, posing long-term threats to agriculture. In the second scenario, the removal of fertiliser subsidies in India leads to reduced domestic use, resulting in decreased agricultural production and exports coupled with increased imports. Although this will cause a modest 0.8% increase in global food prices, it will substantially cut agricultural greenhouse gas emissions by 7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, highlighting the pivotal role of domestic policies in attaining global environmental sustainability goals.

This Education Spotlight, the second in a series of three, presents key lessons and inspiring examples of policy and practice to inform how traditional higher education programmes, like bachelor’s degrees, can effectively cultivate competencies crucial for green and digital innovation. The Spotlight was prepared by the OECD Higher Education Policy Team as part of the Education and Innovation Practice Community (EIPC), an action of the European Union’s New European Innovation Agenda, flagship 4 on “Fostering, attracting and retaining deep tech talent”. EIPC seeks to bring together peers from policy and practice to advance understanding of the competencies that can trigger and shape innovation for the digital and green transitions, and the mechanisms through which higher education can contribute to their development in secondary education, higher education, and adult upskilling and reskilling.

Greening the economy entails jobs contracting in “high-polluting” economic activities and expanding in environment-friendly activities. Minimizing the corresponding transition costs is crucial to accelerate decarbonisation and reduce displacement costs for affected workers. Using individual-level labour force data for a large sample of European countries, this paper finds that the shares of green and high-polluting jobs remained approximately stable between 2009 and 2019, hinting at a slow or yet-to-come green transition in labour markets. Green and high-polluting jobs are unequally distributed across socioeconomic groups: women are under-represented in both green and high-polluting jobs, while green jobs are associated with higher educational attainment, and high-polluting jobs with lower educational attainment. Equally important from a policy perspective, the results show that high-polluting jobs are concentrated in rural areas. These results are confirmed by analyzing labour market transitions: for instance, while women are more likely to transition from study to job, they are significantly less likely to get a green job. Overall, the results suggest that well designed and targeted policies are needed to support efficient and inclusive labour market transitions in the greening economy: to minimize scarring effects for displaced workers, help individuals’ upskilling and reskilling, and support the matching between workers and jobs in higher demand.

This paper develops a novel classification of high-polluting occupations for a large sample of European countries. Unlike previous efforts in the literature, the classification exploits country-level data on air polluting emission intensity by industry. The country-level data allows to capture important cross-country differences, due to differences in technology and in production focus. Applying the new classification to European Labour Force Survey data shows that, on average across the countries covered, about 4% of workers are employed in high-polluting jobs, ranging from 9% in Czechia and the Slovak Republic to around 2% in Austria. These shares do not exhibit any clear decreasing trend over the past decade. High-polluting jobs are unequally distributed, being over-represented among men, workers with lower and medium educational attainment and those living in rural areas.

The choice and diversity of upper secondary education create great potential to respond to the needs of Indigenous learners, and high stakes at this level make it critical to promote learners' success. Having historically been marginalized in educational settings around the world, it is essential that Indigenous students receive a supportive environment and the resources to succeed at this level. This policy brief provides reflections on the topic of supporting Indigenous learners in upper secondary education from a Peer Learning Discussion hosted by the OECD’s Above and Beyond: Transitions in Upper Secondary Education project. In December 2021, the project organised an informal discussion with participants from New Zealand and two provinces in Canada (Alberta and Manitoba), focusing on the systems’ experiences of supporting Indigenous learners at this level. This policy brief presents a summary of insights shared during this informal discussion, as well as background on the issues participants raised.

Multiple crises are triggering turbulence, instability and insecurity in contemporary societies, with impacts on economies, the environment, politics, and global affairs. An effective response will require governments to be more ambitious and act with greater urgency in their science, technology and innovation (STI) policies to meet global challenges. Sustained investments and greater directionality in research and innovation activities are needed, and these should coincide with a reappraisal of STI systems and STI policies to ensure they are “fit-for-purpose” to contribute to transformative change agendas. This policy paper provides a framework to support governments in making these assessments. It identifies six STI policy orientations for transformative change that should guide these assessments. It applies these orientations across multiple areas of STI policy, including R&D funding, the research and innovation workforce, and international R&D co-operation, and outlines a series of concrete policy actions STI policymakers can take to accelerate transformative change.