PISA 2022 finds that two in five students aged 15, across all OECD countries have no clear career plans. The proportion of students who can be described as career uncertain has grown by more than half since 2018. This is a matter of concern. Analysis of multiple longitudinal studies in different countries commonly shows that teenagers who have clear plans can typically expect to go on to better outcomes in employment than comparable classmates who are uncertain. It is young people who are the lowest academic performers who are most likely uncertain. The good news is that programmes of career development can often be expected to reduce levels of career uncertainty, but PISA 2022 shows too few students are engaging in the many effective interventions. This Policy Brief draws on evidence from the OECD Career Readiness project to explore:
- What is career certainty and uncertainty?
- How does career certainty/uncertainty relate to employment outcomes?
- How common is career uncertainty among students and what does PISA tell us about the students who are most likely to express uncertain career plans?
- How can guidance systems respond to career uncertainty?
Concentration – the share of an industry’s output accounted for by its largest firms and a frequently used proxy of competition – has increased in European countries. This paper provides evidence about this development by introducing several methodological refinements in the cross-country measurement of concentration: it defines industries at a disaggregated level, mostly 3-digit; it takes into account the geographic level at which competition takes place - domestic, European or global; and it accounts for linkages between firms within the same domestic and multinational business group in the relevant geographic region of competition. It then applies these improvements to representative data for fifteen European countries, showing that average concentration increased by about 5 percentage points over the period 2000-2019, from 26% to more than 31%. Third, the paper investigates how each of the methodological improvements affects the levels and trends of concentration.
This paper develops a taxonomy of 151 industries, mainly defined at the 3-digit level, indicating at which geographical level competition takes place. It classifies 40 industries as competing at the domestic level, 85 at the European level, and 26 at the global level. First, this paper creates a novel dataset that combines production and international trade data for both goods and services industries, defined at a detailed level of industry aggregation for 15 European countries (based on data availability). Then, by comparing domestic sales with international trade flows, and their source/destination, it identifies the geographic level of competition of each industry. The proposed classification can be used in numerous applications, from the design of trade policies to the assessment of competition by antitrust authorities. The paper shows that the taxonomy is broadly consistent with external data sources that provide alternative ways of inferring the degree of internationalisation of each industry.
This paper looks at green budgeting practices in the Government of Canada relative to the OECD Green Budgeting Framework and best practices by OECD Members. It focuses on Canada’s efforts to enhance its reporting of incremental expenditure in the federal budget that is attributable to climate and environmental goals, as well as to enhance the use of green budgeting alongside other strategic budget initiatives in the federal government. The OECD had specific regard for the objectives of the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, the Quality of Life Framework, the Gender Results Framework, including the Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA Plus) tool, and the 2024 Cabinet Directive on Strategic Environmental and Economic Assessment and its supporting tool, the Climate, Nature and Economy Lens.
Ce document examine les pratiques du gouvernement du Canada en matière de budgétisation verte par rapport au Cadre de budgétisation verte de l'OCDE et les meilleures pratiques des pays membres de l'OCDE. Il met l’accent sur les efforts déployés par le Canada visant à améliorer ses rapports sur les dépenses supplémentaires dans le budget fédéral liées aux objectifs climatiques et environnementaux, et à renforcer le recours à la budgétisation verte parallèlement à d’autres initiatives budgétaires stratégiques au sein du gouvernement fédéral. L'OCDE a accordé une attention particulière aux objectifs de la Loi canadienne sur la responsabilité en matière de carboneutralité, du Cadre pour la qualité de vie, du Cadre des résultats relatifs aux genres, y compris l'outil d'analyse comparative entre les sexes Plus (ACS Plus), et de la Directive du Cabinet de 2024 sur l'évaluation environnementale et économique stratégique et de son outil d'appui, l’Optique de climat, de nature et d'économie.
Infrastructure has been essential in supporting the Philippines’ rapidly growing economy. Yet, infrastructure assets and operations are significantly exposed to climate-related risks. Building climate resilience into infrastructure planning and financing is therefore a strategic priority for the country. This policy paper presents the findings from an OECD policy dialogue carried out in the Philippines on mainstreaming climate resilience in infrastructure planning and development. It provides an overview of current policies and practices as well as policy recommendations for the government to further strengthen the resilience of infrastructure to climate change and raise future ambitions.
This paper explores the geography of “green innovation hubs” and the relationship between green patents and local labour markets. The analysis considers the spatial distribution and evolution of patenting activity for green inventions and identifies green innovation hubs, i.e., regions demonstrating notable strength in green patenting. It also explores the relationship between the regional level of green patenting, economic activity, education, and local labour dynamics across OECD regions. Greater Copenhagen (a cross-border area including parts of Denmark and Southern Sweden) is used as an example to illustrate one region's green innovation ecosystem, assessing its progress, unique opportunities, and challenges.
The home learning environment for 15-year-old students has changed in meaningful ways over the last decade, especially after 2018, according to PISA data. The rise of digital technology has meant books – traditionally the leading pedagogical resource – are increasingly competing with digital devices and Internet access. Since 2015, the overall number of books available at home decreased moderately, while the availability of educational software has surged. Certain types of books, such as dictionaries, have decreased the most, probably replaced by digital equivalents (online dictionaries). In contrast, paper copies of classic literature are more widely available at home than before. While there is potential for digital technologies to enhance education, this largely remains untapped, and the risks for adolescents’ well-being are clearer today. Education policy should explore ways to support families and students to navigate these complex changes in the family learning environment, balancing traditional and digital resources effectively.
An extensive literature explains recession risks using a variety of financial and business cycle variables. The problem of selecting a parsimonious set of explanatory variables, which can differ between countries and prediction horizons, is naturally suited to machine-learning methods. The current paper compares models selected by conventional machine-learning methods with a customised algorithm, ‘Doombot’, which uses ‘brute force’ to test combinations of variables and imposes restrictions so that predictions are consistent with a coherent economic narrative. The same algorithms are applied to 20 OECD countries with an emphasis on out-of-sample testing using a rolling origin, including a window for the Global Financial Crisis. Despite the imposition of additional restrictions, Doombot is found to the best performing algorithm. Further testing confirms the imposition of judgmental constraints tends to improve rather than hinder out-of-sample performance. Moreover, these constraints provide a more coherent economic narrative and so mitigate the common ‘black box’ criticism of machine-learning methods.
Interim measures are enforcement tools available to competition authorities to prevent harm to competition that may occur before a final decision on the existence of an infringement. Most often these decisions are related to an ongoing business practice that may potentially constitute an abuse of dominance infringement, when a dominant market player illegally engages in practices limiting competition. In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries, most competition authorities dispose of interim measures in their legal frameworks and many have used them in past years (e.g. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Paraguay and Peru). This paper provides an overview of the state of play of interim measures in the region covering legal frameworks, recent enforcement experiences, as well as challenges and particularities of LAC countries. The paper highlights that interim measures represent a powerful tool for competition authorities and should be carefully used to mitigate enforcement errors and related reputation risks.
Competition authorities have developed various tools to detect cartels and substantiate the basis for opening investigations. Ex officio investigations, meaning investigations initiated by the authorities themselves, are derived from detection tools that require a higher level of proactivity from the agency, for instance, industry monitoring and cartel screenings. New technologies such as artificial intelligence also provide competition authorities with greater opportunities to improve their detection tools. This paper provides an overview of detection tools to launch ex officio cartel investigations, including recent trends and experiences from Latin America and the Caribbean. It concludes by highlighting the need for competition authorities to implement a variety of approaches to complement one another and enhance cartel detection.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the OECD Local Employment and Economic Development (LEED) Programme, this paper examines determinants and consequences of employment resilience, or lack of, in European NUTS3/TL3/TL3 regions over the last 40 years. Descriptive evidence shows that the least resilient regions (those with the largest percentage drop in employment during a recession) slip to persistently lower post-recession employment-to-population ratio trajectories. On the other hand, regions with higher productivity pre-recession lost proportionally fewer jobs during a recession and were more likely to recover to the pre-recession employment levels (except for the recession induced by the COVID-19 pandemic). Overall, the findings point to the ability of productivity to serve as a shield against negative employment impacts of economic crises.
With each survey cycle, the measurement of socio-economic status in PISA must strike a delicate balance between at-times conflicting goals: accuracy, coverage, cost-efficiency, trend continuity, relevance (keeping up with changes in society) and comparability across countries. Over the past decade, a number of changes were introduced in the instruments and scaling processes; new related questions were added; and experiments were conducted with alternative question formats. In light of these changes, new variables, and experiments, we examine the quality of the indicators and scales that contribute to the index of economic, social and cultural status (ESCS) in PISA. We conclude with implications for questionnaire development, recommendations for scaling, and suggestions for future research.
Social and emotional skills are increasingly recognised as critical skills and are, thus, being increasingly introduced in the curricula in many countries.
Recent evidence demonstrates that stronger social and emotional skills are associated with more positive life outcomes, such as higher academic success, job performance and employment, while also positively correlating with better mental health, civic engagement and prosocial behaviours. Critically, evidence indicates different skills impact different life outcomes. Evidence also clearly establishes that most social and emotional skills are teachable, thus able to be improved through deliberate educational interventions, which is an incentive for teachers, schools and policy makers to invest in social and emotional learning.
The majority of assessments on social and emotional skills currently used in school settings relies on teacher- and self-reports, but there are also many promising innovative tools being developed, which rely on direct measurement of behaviours. In certain settings, these can potentially allow for more objective, standardised and comparable data on students’ performance.
Some educational actors voice concerns on whether focusing on social and emotional skills can compromise academic teaching. Others express the need for clear instructions on how to teach these skills effectively, while raising concerns about how to assess these skills fairly and use the assessment results appropriately.
This policy brief recommends strategies and actionable policies that policy makers can adopt to advance the social and emotional development of children and adolescents, ensuring high-quality, evidence-based teaching and assessment that lead to long-term benefits in students’ lives.
Governments worldwide strive to find the appropriate level and balance of financial support for innovation to address several competing and pressing policy objectives, such as improving productivity or addressing the climate crisis. This policy brief presents the latest OECD evidence on how governments direct support to innovation, drawing on recent OECD measurement and impact analysis. It recommends rebalancing innovation support portfolios and addressing major measurement gaps on directionality that are critical for managing for the transformation of innovation systems for key transitions.
Although uptake of digital practices by SMEs continues to increase, so too has the “digital gap” with larger firms. Understanding the drivers and persisting bottlenecks of SME digitalisation as well as gaining a deeper understanding of their practices and digitalisation processes is key to inform policy decisions to help bridge this gap. This is the primary purpose of the survey this paper draws its findings from, conducted in seven OECD countries (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain and the United States), in co-operation with digital platforms partners of the OECD D4SME Global Initiative. Survey findings provide new insights on SMEs’ digital journeys and how digital tools can support them in navigating short-term challenges and enhancing long-term resilience. The survey also provides evidence about SMEs' use and perception of AI technologies (with a focus on “generative AI”), their application of data analytics for tracking environmental performance, and the impact on mental wellbeing of digital practices in the workplace.
Effective waste management policies are critical for addressing environmental issues ranging from climate change to pollution. This report uses new survey data to provide evidence on the most important factors in determining key waste-related outcomes at the household level. Results show that providing collection services is critical in supporting household waste prevention efforts and that charging schemes for mixed waste can play an important complementary role in supporting sustainable waste management. Based on a discrete choice experiment, most households are shown to be willing to pay a price premium for products with sustainable packaging, but at the same time, around a third of households would require a price discount in order to opt for such products. Taken together, findings from the analysis show that waste policies play an important role in stimulating demand for sustainable consumption.
Les dépenses sociales publiques ont triplé en 60 ans, atteignant 21 % du PIB en 2022, mais avec des variations significatives entre les pays de l'OCDE. Cette hausse à long terme est liée au développement des États-providence, au vieillissement de la population et à une succession de chocs économiques qui ont entraîné des augmentations progressives des ratios de dépenses sociales par rapport au PIB, dont ils ne se sont que partiellement remis. Ce document compare les systèmes de protection sociale en France et en Allemagne, en analysant les règles institutionnelles, l'efficacité des programmes, les sources de financement, et l'impact des politiques fiscales et sociales sur différents types de familles. Il évalue également les réformes depuis 2015, en se concentrant sur les revenus des ménages, les incitations au travail et les coûts de la main-d'œuvre.
In recent years, the call for transparency in pharmaceutical pricing has gained momentum among policymakers and stakeholders. Following a resolution of the 72nd World Health Assembly and the establishment of the Oslo Medicines Initiative, there has been a concerted push for greater transparency in pricing practices. However, the exact scope of transparency measures remains unclear. Key questions persist regarding which prices and for which medicines should be disclosed, the conditions under which countries are willing to share this information, and the barriers hindering such efforts. To clarify these issues and advance the policy debate, the OECD examined the feasibility of sharing medicine price information across countries. A country survey was conducted to explore the willingness, expectations, and motives of governments and payers for sharing information on medicine prices. This report presents the key findings derived from the survey and concludes with an assessment of the feasibility of sharing net medicine price information among OECD countries.
Ce Coup de projecteur s'appuie sur les conclusions de Regards sur l'éducation 2024 sur l'équité dans l'éducation et au-delà, le thème de l'édition 2024. Les indicateurs choisis mettent en évidence les disparités entre les différents groupes démographiques en matière de ressources éducatives, de compétences, d'accès à l'éducation, de choix d'études et de taux de réussite. Le Coup de projecteur s'ouvre sur une vue d'ensemble de l'équité dans l'éducation, en analysant les principales tendances à chaque niveau, de la petite enfance à l'enseignement tertiaire. Il se penche ensuite sur les opportunités qui en découlent, en explorant la manière dont les inégalités éducatives persistent et en évaluant l'adéquation entre les résultats de l'éducation et les expériences sur le marché du travail. Enfin, il cherche à déterminer si les efforts en matière d'éducation améliorent réellement les perspectives d'emploi et les résultats sur le marché du travail.