Browse by: "2014"

This Public Procurement Brief presents the new EU public procurement Directive (2014/23/EU) on award of concession contracts. The Directive is part of a recently adopted EU legislative package reforming the EU public procurement rules.

The Brief provides an overview of the new EU legal framework for awarding concessions: general principles, scope, definitions, exclusions, transparency obligations, selection of candidates and award criteria, performance and concessions, procedural guarantees and judicial protection. The Brief is just a short introduction – it is not intended to provide an exhaustive analysis of all of the provisions of the Directive.

This Public Procurement Brief presents two new EU public procurement Directives (2014/24/EU and 2014/25/EU) on procurement by public and utilities sectors. The Directives are part of a recently adopted EU legislative package reforming the EU public procurement rules.

The Brief provides an overview of the new regulations, focusing on the following issues: general principles and scope, exclusions, procedures, centralised purchasing activities, technical specifications, transparency obligations, selection of candidates and contract award criteria, subcontracting and modification and termination of contracts. The Brief is just a short introduction – it is not intended to provide an exhaustive analysis of all of the provisions of the Directives.

Better financial preparedness against risk is a central part of a comprehensive approach to disaster management. Risk financing and risk transfer are approaches to planning for risks that cannot be reduced or avoided practically or cost-effectively and may include a strategy and practical measures to ensure the availability of funds for post-disaster relief and reconstruction, commensurate with the scale and frequency of anticipated risks.

Risk financing is of growing interest to a wide range of development and humanitarian actors searching for solutions to bridge a growing global post-disaster financing gap.

This report describes key features of risk financing and risk transfer, examines some of the current challenges at the contextual and programmatic levels as well as institutional challenges donors might face in engaging in risk financing and recommends a set of principles and policy approaches to guide future donor support and engagement.

This Working Paper studies ways to stimulate the private rental sector (PRS) of the housing market – and compares experiences with policies and reforms in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and the Czech Republic. Although in many countries the PRS has decreased in importance since the Second World War, there are signs of a growing importance and possible ‘revival’ of the PRS. A well-functioning PRS and neutrality in housing policies can improve the functioning of the housing market – by promoting residential mobility, increasing housing options for households and generating competitive supply and affordable prices. The PRS can have positive effects on the economy and labour mobility and reduce inefficiencies and risks of owner-occupied and social housing. Trade-offs between goals in housing policies, and regulatory impediments to a level playing field between segments of the housing market (owner-occupancy, social rental, private rental) are analysed. The article outlines policy options in promoting a well-functioning PRS: lessons are drawn on tenancy security, rent-setting regulations, social housing, demand subsidies, fiscal measures for rental and owner-occupied housing and barriers for PRS supply. Experiences from the countries show that it is hard to create a level playing field – there are inefficiencies in all four countries. Nonetheless, there are many positive experiences of stimulating the PRS: reforms in Finland and the Czech Republic stimulated the PRS to become a competitive and important part of the housing market, and Dutch policies are adapted to stimulate a level playing field. The ‘resilience’ of the German housing system during the economic crisis shows that the large PRS and tenure neutrality have important stabilising effects on the German economy.

Sub-national governments are key players for public investment, as they are responsible on average for 62% of total public investment in OECD countries. This article analyses the different factors affecting sub-national governments’ fiscal space for public investment. It proposes an indicator for measuring this fiscal space and analyses the evolution of its different components over 2007-2012. The article shows that the global financial crisis and the ensuring consolidation drive have reduced sub-national governments’ fiscal space for public investment, through a downward pressure on revenues, increased expenditure obligations, and constrained capacity to borrow or issue debt on financial markets.

Sub-national governments (SNGs) are key players for public investment in OECD countries, responsible for nearly two-thirds of it. At the same time, both the well-being of the population and economic performance depend on an adequate provision of public services, which require public facilities and thus public investment. Ensuring that sub-national governments command the resources for necessary public investment is hence important. While in the immediate, the fiscal space of a SNG for public investment is basically determined by its current fiscal capacities, in a longer-term perspective the evolution of fiscal space comes to depend increasingly on the institutional context. This includes the national framework of fiscal relations across levels of government, the nature and characteristics of SNGs’ revenue sources and spending responsibilities, SNGs resilience to crises, and their structural ability to borrow. This paper explores the institutional ability of SNGs to influence their fiscal space for public investment. In this context, it also analyses the main challenges to be faced by SNG finances in the decades to come, as well as recent reforms implemented by SNGs to tackle these specific issues.

This report examines the approaches being taken to measure broadband performance by reviewing information on official speed tests to date as well as their strengths and drawbacks in methodologies, emerging good practices and the challenges in undertaking a harmonised approach across OECD countries. Measurement projects for Internet connection performance face greater potential hurdles than for traditional telecommunication networks, while at the same time, new opportunities are emerging in terms of “crowd-sourced” data collected through applications installed by users. The report provides classification of those measurement approaches with suggestions on how they can be selected and implemented depending on different policy goals.

Rising household debt has become a major policy concern in Korea. By the end of 2012, it had risen to 164% of disposable income, well above the OECD average of 133%. In addition to the economic impact and the risk to the financial sector, it raises social cohesion issues, as households with low income and credit ratings have limited access to financial markets and many are delinquent on their loans. It is essential to induce the soft-landing of household debt through a two-track approach: i) offering credit to households with low income and credit ratings and restructuring their debt, while limiting moral hazard and developing market-based lending; and ii) containing the risk caused by high household debt by strengthening prudential measures for financial institutions and improving mortgage lending by reducing the share of floating-rate and “bullet repayment” loans. This Working Paper relates to the 2014 OECD Economic Survey of Korea (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-korea.htm)

Multifactor productivity (MFP) is increasingly used in economic policy, not least to compute potential output. Most measures are based on a standard production function combining labour and capital, but do not incorporate the negative by-products of the production process such as air pollution that could have deleterious effect on health and productivity in the medium to long term (see for instance OECD (2014)). The failure to account for the costs of environmental damages and the benefits associated with emission reduction impart a bias to standard measures of MFP. Ignoring these dimensions can give a misleading idea of growth prospects over the medium to long term...

This document explores the key elements of bilateral air service agreements (ASAs) and recent trends towards increasing liberalisation and examines linkages between ASAs and cross border airline alliance. It discusses issues related to antitrust reviews of proposed alliances and summarises and comments on the impacts of international airline alliances.

As a continuation of the 2014 SIGMA assessments and as part of a longer-term programme of work, SIGMA has identified country priorities for public administration reform (PAR) for Albania. Priorities cover the overall PAR needs of the country, including areas which were not covered by the 2014 SIGMA assessments. Priorities in areas outside the scope of SIGMA assessments are based on other analytical sources and SIGMA’s practical experience of working with the country. SIGMA proposes priority 2020 targets for the countries, sub-targets when needed, and sequenced priority activities in 1-2, 3-5 and 5+ year time perspectives.

Each year SIGMA produces assessment reports as a contribution to the EC's annual reports on EU candidate countries and potential candidates, as well as to its programming of technical assistance. These reports assess progress made in public administration reform by our beneficiary countries. The report for Albania analyses and takes stock of progress achieved by this country in 2014, with an aim to also provide inputs into its reform agenda. It focuses on legal framework and civil service management, policy making, and public procurement.

This report evaluates sources of international child well-being data to assess their suitability for supplementing national and transnational data sources to inform policy. The review of the leading surveys of children (and surveys of households with children) summarises the information available from these sources and, as importantly, identifies the gaps in measuring child well-being outcomes not covered by data from these sources. The report then undertakes an in-depth evaluation of possible systematic bias in the underlying survey population to provide confidence in the reliability of outcomes measured from these international surveys. Based on the overall evaluation, the report concludes with recommendations for the use and improvement of international surveys for monitoring child well-being.

This paper uses data from the American Life Panel to understand the determinants of well-being in the United States during the Great Recession. It investigates how various dimensions of subjective wellbeing reflected in the OECD Better Life Framework impact subjective well-being. The results show that income is an important determinant of subjective well-being. The unemployed and the disabled are significantly less satisfied with their lives than the working population, while the retired and the homemakers are more satisfied. The paper expands the existing evidence by showing that homeowners, registered voters and those with access to health insurance have higher levels of subjective well-being. Time spent walking or exercising is positively correlated with happiness, while working more than 50 hours per week or spending time on health-related activities is negatively correlated with subjective well-being, and higher levels of anxiety. This Working Paper relates to the 2014 OECD Economic Survey of United States (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-united-states.htm)

This document provides a detailed technical description of the ENV-Linkages model. The OECD ENV-Linkages Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is an economic model that describes how economic activities are inter-linked across several macroeconomic sectors and regions. It links economic activity to environmental pressure, specifically to emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The links between economic activities and emissions are projected for several decades into the future, and thus shed light on the impacts of environmental policies for the medium- and long-term future. In this paper specific attention is given to the equations that form the core of the model. The version of the model presented here is used for analysis carried out for the OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050 (OECD, 2012). An updated version of the model is expected to play a key role in the new CIRCLE project (OECD, 2013).

This paper provides a detailed description of recent research to re-estimate and re-specify the international trade volume and price equations that are used in the OECD Economics Department to analyse and project international trade developments. The set of countries covered by the estimations has been significantly enlarged, with estimates of the factors affecting export performance, import penetration and trade prices presented for 41 countries, including countries that have recently joined the OECD (Chile, Estonia, Israel and Slovenia) and major emerging countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa). Reflecting the heterogeneity of countries included in the estimations, procedures for grouping them have been modified to allow for country specifics as much as possible. Structural breaks over the estimation period – which now typically covers the mid-1980s to 2012 and includes the global trade collapse of 2009 – are dealt with by the flexible modelling of deterministic trends, including the allowance for several rather than single trend reversals.

The use of antimicrobials in livestock production provides a basis for improving animal health and productivity. This in turn contributes to food security, food safety, animal welfare, protection of livelihoods and animal resources. However, there is increasing concern about levels of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria isolated from human, animal, food and environmental samples and how this relates to use of antimicrobials in livestock production. The report examines antimicrobial usage in livestock and its impact on public health and the food economy. Policy issues and knowledge gaps to manage antimicrobial use and the risk of antimicrobial resistance are identified and discussed.

This paper provides an overview of country specific approaches to metropolitan area governance. It provides brief descriptions of the typical structures of metropolitan governance, with a particular focus on the involved organisations. It points out metropolitan areas that have unusual governance arrangements, but generally does not emphasise individual cases. The paper aims to give a descriptive overview of governance structures while abstaining from evaluating their performance.

This paper takes stock of the available legal protection for trade secrets (undisclosed information) in a broad sample of countries. Drawing on national and international material, the paper develops and presents an indicator of the stringency of protection of trade secrets (the Trade Secrets Protection Index) and provides an assessment of variation in the available protection. The result is a finding that while the sample countries have some similarities, notably with respect to definition and scope of trade secrets, they have many more substantial dissimilarities with respect to implementation of protection for trade secrets. For example, differences are particularly pronounced in evidence gathering and discovery, protection of trade secrets during litigation, technology transfer requirements and the effectiveness of legal systems with respect to enforcement. This diversity is reflected in the wide range of scores in the Trade Secrets Protection Index. Such variation in the stringency of protection for trade secrets may influence firm-level decision-making and may have implications for some aspects of economic performance (in particular, in relation to innovation).