Browse by: "2016"

This paper presents 12 budget institutions that can support planning and delivery of credible fiscal strategies in the fiscal policy-making process. The resulting framework is applied to seven low-income countries and the status of their budget institutions compared to the G20 advanced and emerging market economies. The paper then presents recommendations for designing and implementing appropriate reform strategy for low-income countries. Particular attention is paid to prioritisation and sequencing of reform efforts.

Accidents are a forcing function for change in the nuclear industry. While these events can shed light on needed technical safety reforms, they can also shine a light on needed regulatory system reforms. The TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP) accident in Japan is the most recent example of this phenomenon, but it is not the only one.

Given that safety is the number one priority for the nuclear industry, it would seem normal that procedures exist to ensure the effective implementation1 of the provisions of the conventions on nuclear safety,2 as already exist for numerous international treaties.3 Unfortunately, these procedures are either weak or even nonexistent. Therefore, consideration must be given to whether this weakness represents a genuine deficiency in ensuring the main objective of these conventions, which is to achieve a high level of nuclear safety worldwide.4 But, before one can even address that issue, a prior question must be answered: does the specific nature of the international legal framework on nuclear safety automatically result in a lack of non-compliance procedures in international conventions on the subject? If so, the lack of procedures is justified, despite the drawbacks.

In an effort to reach a wider audience, and keep the information regarding the status of multilateral agreements more up-to-date, this content is now available online at: www.oecd-nea.org/law/multilateral-agreements.

Socio-economic cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a powerful framework that can be very useful to governments making investment decisions. However the standard application of transport CBA has room for improvement. This paper describes efforts to improve the quality of transport CBA and its applicability to decision making. Three areas are addressed in detail: strategies for making the most of CBA, valuing and forecasting reliability benefits, and capturing wider economic impacts. The report is based on the papers and discussions at a Roundtable meeting of 30 experts held in Paris in November 2015. Roundtable participants took the view that a multi-faceted approach is needed to address the shortfalls; CBA theory and practice need to be gradually expanded to incorporate more impacts in the rigorous valuation and forecasting framework; and CBA results need to be more effectively linked to other criteria in the broader decision-making framework, including by bringing in a more diverse evidence base.

This paper compares the dating of growth rate cycles obtained from a Markov switching approach with the reference chronologies based on Economic Indicator Analysis (EIA) given by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), focusing on a set of developed and emerging economies. The developed countries include US, UK, Germany and Japan, which are compared with an emerging economy, India. Using a univariate Markov regime switching model we characterise growth rate cycle phenomena for these countries by identifying turning points and distinct economic regimes, employing data on the growth rate of the coincident index given by ECRI.

This paper examines the relationship between environmental policy and “green” innovation in shipbuilding. The primary motivating question of this work is whether there is evidence of: i) technology push from innovation that enables environmental policy initiatives; and/or, ii) policy pull that induces innovation leading to “green” ships. This paper focuses on four environmental categories of technological innovation in the shipbuilding industry, encompassing oil spill recovery, emissions control, climate change mitigation and ballast water treatment. The analysis draws upon documents filed at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to proxy for policy measures, and uses patent data of the Worldwide Statistical Patent Database, maintained by the European Patent Office (EPO), to account for innovation. Our results show a similar trend between patent activity and IMO document submissions over the years 1998 to 2012 for the two environmental categories, climate change mitigation and emissions control. The key contribution of this work are to provide more insights into environmental policy in shipbuilding and its role in innovation activity, as well as to develop a rich dataset focused on IMO policies aimed at encouraging improved environmental performance by ships.

Independent fiscal institutions serve to promote sound fiscal policy and sustainable public finances. Today IFIs are considered among the most important innovations in the emerging architecture of public financial management. Within the OECD area, their number has more than tripled and is expected to continue to rise. This publication provides a unique set of in depth case studies of IFIs in 18 OECD member countries in light of many of the good practices for effective IFIs identified in the OECD Recommendation on Principles for Independent Fiscal Institutions.