Browse by: "2017"

This paper produces a comprehensive assessment of income redistribution to the working-age population, covering OECD countries over the last two decades. Redistribution is quantified as the relative reduction in market income inequality achieved by personal income taxes, employees’ social security contributions and cash transfers, based on household-level micro data. A detailed decomposition analysis uncovers the respective roles of size, tax progressivity and transfer targeting for overall redistribution, the respective role of various categories of transfers for transfer redistribution; as well as redistribution for various income groups. The paper shows a widespread decline in redistribution across the OECD, both on average and in the majority of countries for which data going back to the mid-1990s are available. This was primarily associated with a decline in cash transfer redistribution while personal income taxes played a less important and more heterogeneous role across countries. In turn, the decline in the redistributive effect of cash transfers reflected a decline in their size and in particular by less redistributive insurance transfers. In some countries, this was mitigated by more redistributive assistance transfers but the resulting increase in the targeting of total transfers was not sufficient to prevent transfer redistribution from declining.

Across OECD countries, more and more individuals have attained tertiary education and the share of those with less education has declined. Although there are more tertiary-educated individuals than ever before, they still achieve good labour market outcomes. This confirms that labour market demand is generally keeping pace with rising educational attainment. Only in about one-quarter of OECD countries, the employment advantage of tertiary-educated adults over adults with upper-secondary or post-secondary education has declined over the past two decades, which may be a sign that demand for tertiary-educated people is slowing down. Countries also need to address the situation of young men and women who have not completed upper secondary school and who face low employment prospects.Across OECD countries, more and more individuals have attained tertiary education and the share of those with less education has declined. Although there are more tertiary-educated individuals than ever before, they still achieve good labour market outcomes. This confirms that labour market demand is generally keeping pace with rising educational attainment. Only in about one-quarter of OECD countries, the employment advantage of tertiary-educated adults over adults with upper-secondary or post-secondary education has declined over the past two decades, which may be a sign that demand for tertiary-educated people is slowing down. Countries also need to address the situation of young men and women who have not completed upper secondary school and who face low employment prospects.

This paper analyses the reform undertaken by Iceland to avert a looming crisis and restore fish stocks to sustainable levels. The paper outlines the process involved in designing and implementing this reform. It also reflects on the challenges encountered and the environmental, economic and social impacts of the reform. It concludes by discussing some wider lessons learned for other governments seeking to tackle similar environmental problems. This country study draws on the 2017 OECD report The Political Economy of Biodiversity Policy Reform.

This paper analyses the reform of Switzerland’s agricultural policy framework, which reoriented subsidies to better target policy objectives, including for biodiversity. The paper outline the process involved in designing and implementing the reform as well as its environmental and socio-economic impacts. It also highlights the challenges encountered and concludes by discussing the wider lessons for other governments seeking to tackle similar challenges. The country study draws on the 2017 OECD report The Political Economy of Biodiversity Policy Reform.

The Slovak Republic is a country with a limited natural resource base, an important manufacturing sector and rising materials consumption. Coherent polices that aim at increasing resource efficiency and achieving green growth are vital for sustainable growth and increased prosperity. This paper identifies a number of options for improving resource efficiency in the Slovak Republic.

Switzerland’s overarching agricultural policy objectives reflect societal concerns about various production aspects of agriculture, such as environmental sustainability and animal welfare, and the expectation that agriculture will provide public goods demanded by society. Among the various policy instruments used by Switzerland to achieve these objectives, border protection represents a significant component of support. This study assesses the relevance of border protection for agriculture in Switzerland. It finds that border protection is not relevant for achieving the overarching objectives of Swiss agricultural policy, with one exception. By stimulating domestic production, high levels of border protection ensure that Switzerland meets its target rate of gross food production. But border protection is unlikely to deliver the other outcomes and public goods desired by Swiss society. This is because support provided through border protection is not conditional on delivery of the outcomes and public goods demanded by Swiss society, and is untargeted towards the activities, inputs and regions most strongly related to those outcomes and public goods. Moreover, border protection imposes significant costs on the Swiss economy. The study concludes by proposing alternative policies in place of border protection.

The OECD has been leading the work on international comparisons of patient-reported experience measures (PREMs) across its member states for over a decade. This paper synthesises national developments in relation to measuring and monitoring PREMs between 2006 and 2016 across countries participating in the OECD Health Care Quality Indicator expert group. This report shows that most OECD countries measure patient experience at a national level. It also highlights that efforts to measure and report patient-reported measures which used to be conducted in an ad hoc manner previously, have been institutionalised and standardised in an increasing number of countries. This national progress has enabled the international reporting of patient experiences with ambulatory care across 17 OECD countries in the recent edition of OECD’s flagship publication, Health at a Glance 2017. The scope of these indicators is currently limited, but recent national progress suggests that there is an opportunity to expand PREMs data collection in different domains for international reporting. The OECD plans to continue developing PREMs that would be useful for policy makers, and help drive improvements in health system performance for health care users, building on the PREMs work to date undertaken in consultation with countries.

In response to observed growing inequalities in income and other dimensions of well-being, including health, the OECD launched an initiative on Inclusive Growth in 2012. The objective was to help governments find ways to make economic growth more inclusive, so that it translates into meaningful gains in living standards across key dimensions of well-being and different socioeconomic groups. This paper links health to the overall inclusive growth agenda. It assesses the two-way relationship between health and socioeconomic factors. An empirical health production function is specified, using data from 35 OECD countries for the period 1990-2015. This is complemented by a review of the related empirical literature, as well as successful policies across OECD countries.

Un environnement économique favorable est crucial pour stimuler la productivité en Belgique et l’inclusivité, et est le principal moteur de la prospérité économique à long terme. Ce document analyse l’impact de l’environnement économique sur la performance de productivité. La gestion des innovations, la diffusion technologique, l’investissement des secteurs privé et public ainsi que les politiques de concurrence et de régulation ont tous un impact sur la croissance de la productivité. Les défis clefs pour la Belgique incluent la modulation des exonérations fiscales en vigueur en faveur des activités de recherche-développement afin d’améliorer leur utilisation et leur efficacité ; la réduction des charges administratives sur les entreprises, l’amélioration de l’accès à la finance pour les jeunes entreprises innovantes et la stimulation de la culture entrepreneuriale en matière de jeunes pousses.

A highly educated and skilled workforce has been an important driver of productivity performance and prosperity in Belgium. This paper examines skills policies that could help improve productivity and inclusiveness. An increased focus on lifelong learning, improved and more flexible working conditions for older workers, and a more efficient allocation of students and skills would benefit productivity growth. Improving inclusiveness requires increasing access and participation in tertiary education, especially for students with disadvantaged backgrounds. Digitalisation holds the promise of large gains in labour productivity, but is disrupting the nature of employment relationships. It calls for measures that encourage information and communication technology (ICT) upskilling and for adapting tax and benefit systems to the rise of on-demand jobs linked to the use of e-platforms.

Deepening regional integration within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) will raise potential growth for all member countries. Integrated economies will increase market size, trade opportunities and improve resource allocation across member countries. Key pillars of functioning regional integration are the free circulation of goods and services, mobility of workers and interconnected infrastructure. To boost regional integration, remaining tariff barriers and non-tariffs barriers should be removed. Ensuring greater compliance to agreements by SADC members will also facilitate intra-regional trade and cross-investments. More co-operation between competition authorities should facilitate harmonisation of competition rules in particular in services and transport-related services which would ease circulation of good and services. The other key pillars of regional integration (industrial policy, infrastructure, investment, financial integration and tax) are also reviewed.

Using PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) data for 21 countries, we study interrelationships between formal qualifications, cognitive skills, and labour market outcomes, focusing on comparisons between less and intermediate-educated adults (i.e. between adults with a degree below the upper secondary and at the upper secondary level). Less-educated adults tend to have lower cognitive skills than intermediate-educated adults, yet both groups are internally heterogeneous. In country-specific individual-level regressions, cognitive skills partly explain the lower occupational status of less-educated adults, but cross-national variation in their disadvantage remains substantial after accounting for skills.
Country-level regressions show that the remaining disadvantage increases with the aggregate skills gap and with the internal homogeneity of the two educational groups. We further show that the association between skills and occupational attainment is weaker among the less educated than among the intermediate group. These findings are consistent with the idea that employers statistically discriminate on the basis of formal qualifications.

OECD countries face the multiple challenges of rapidly ageing societies with the associated rise in chronic diseases and the ever-present threat from new or evolving communicable diseases. This is within the context of seeking better value for money from the health sector. While a growing body of evidence shows that many health promotion and disease prevention measures can improve health outcomes at relatively low cost, less has been documented – in an internationally comparable way – on how much countries actually invest in such activities and the drivers of prevention spending over the years. This is particularly pertinent in the context of fiscal sustainability and tight public budgets.
Using newly available data from across OECD countries, this study examines the differences in spending on prevention both at an aggregate and detailed level. This analysis brings a fresh perspective and raises questions as to the optimal resource allocations within the sector. Time series data is also scrutinised in conjunction with collated policy and public health developments from a number of countries to try to identify some of the drivers behind the observed prevention spending trends. In doing so, directions for further improvement in the underlying data as well as policy implications are discussed.

Can reforms that shift the balance among different taxes in the revenue mix lastingly influence the overall prosperity of an economy and the distribution of income across households? The present study takes this question to the data, using the experience of 34 OECD countries over 1980-2014 to assess the effects of changes in the tax structure on the long-term level of average output per capita and the distribution of disposable income across households. Changing the revenue mix while keeping government size constant typically lift long-term output per capita when they involve cuts in the labour tax wedge below or above average incomes, cuts in corporate income taxes or increases in property taxes. The relative-income effects of revenue-neutral reductions in labour tax wedges are broadly in line with intuition: the relative position of those benefitting from them typically improves. In absolute terms, however, nearly all the income distribution benefits from revenue-neutral reductions in labour tax wedges, be they focused on below or average income earners.