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This paper presents tagging methodologies for 22 environmental domains in the OECD Policy INstruments for the Environment (PINE) database, including seven domains on environmental protection (air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, solid waste, ozone layer, noise and radiation), six domains on natural resource management (fisheries, forests, freshwater, renewable energy, fossil fuels and minerals) and nine cross-cutting domains (climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, land degradation, biodiversity, ocean, chemicals management, energy efficiency, circular economy and mercury). The environmental domains in the PINE database support tracking progress towards domestic and international environmental objectives. Tagging environmental domains allows harmonised comparisons across countries, years and policy instrument types.

The Scottish Government and the OECD co-facilitated an international peer learning event in May 2023 to explore ways and approaches for clarifying the roles and responsibilities of school improvement support provided at different levels of the education system. The event brought together Scottish stakeholders and international experts from Ireland, Norway and Wales (United Kingdom) to collectively reflect on the country’s school improvement system. This report, written between May and September 2023, captures and summarises the peer learning event discussions and proposes policy options to help advance Scotland’s education reform agenda. This report will be valuable not only for Scotland, but also to the many countries that are looking to strengthen their school improvement support systems.

In November 2023, OECD member countries approved a revised version of the Organisation’s definition of an AI system. This document contains proposed clarifications to the definition of an AI system contained in the 2019 OECD Recommendation on AI (the “AI Principles”) to support their continued relevance and technical soundness. The goal of the definition of an AI system in the OECD Recommendation is to articulate what is considered to be an AI system, for purposes of the recommendation.

This Policy Insights draws on data collected as part of the Opportunities module in the 2022 OECD Risk that Matters survey and explores public preferences for policies and measures aimed at reducing inequality and enhancing opportunities for all. The analysis reveals that, despite shared concern over inequalities and limited opportunities, opinions on solutions differ. Across the OECD countries surveyed, there is strong support for policies aimed at fostering equal opportunities and limiting market disparities. On the contrary, redistributive measures receive a milder level of support. A large majority of respondents also believe that the private sector can play a significant role by paying fair wages, addressing wage inequalities, creating jobs in the country and by investing in their workforce. This is the last Policy Insights of a three-part series on Measuring Opportunities: The Role of Public Perceptions.

Many ocean economic activities are not readily visible in official statistics, hindering policymakers' access to crucial information for decision making. The OECD ocean economy measurement project aims to address this by aligning ocean economy statistics with broader economic data and ensuring international consistency. This paper compares the measurement strategies of eight OECD member countries using principles from the system of national accounts. It also highlights the ocean economy thematic accounts of four countries and summarises their methods. The paper concludes with recommendations for integrating ocean economy measurements with national accounting standards, a vital step for improving the evidence base for ocean policymaking.

This paper analyses employment dynamics across firms during the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of job retention schemes (JRS) in shaping these dynamics. It relies on a novel collection of high-frequency harmonised micro-aggregated statistics, computed using administrative data on employment and wages from electronic payroll records across 12 countries linked to monthly information on policy support during COVID-19, as well as on a new indicator of JRS de-jure generosity. The analysis highlights four key findings: i) the employment adjustment margins varied over time, adjusting mainly through the intensive margin in 2020, while both the intensive and the extensive margins contributed to employment changes in 2021; ii) the reallocation process remained productivity enhancing, although to a lower extent on average compared to 2019; iii) JRS were successful in their purpose of cushioning the effect of the crisis on employment growth and firm survival; iv) JRS support did not distort the productivity-enhancing nature of reallocation.

Over the past few decades, economies and technologies have shifted in ways that have made people’s economic prospects more uncertain. This Policy Insights highlights the main findings from On Shaky Ground? Income Instability and Economic Insecurity in Europe, the inaugural report of the OECD Observatory on Social Mobility and Equal Opportunity. It utilises novel techniques to identify the economically insecure, those most vulnerable to income fluctuations, in European OECD countries, and explores the link between income fluctuations, social mobility, and income inequality. It also recommends a range of policies aimed at enhancing social protection timeliness to better support those with highly volatile incomes and at building financial buffers for individuals at risk of economic insecurity.

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) policies can have a major role in levelling the playing field in education and society by providing all children, and especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, with opportunities to participate in high-quality early learning and development experiences. Countries face different challenges in promoting equity and inclusion in ECEC depending on the particular aspects of social, economic and cultural diversity that are salient in their contexts. Examining the prevalence of different dimensions of diversity in ECEC centres and their associations with indicators of quality, this policy brief points to directions that policymakers can take to ensure that ECEC systems address the needs of children from all backgrounds.

The pandemic resulted in a significant increase in the number of deaths in many OECD countries. With detailed data now available by age and sex, this OECD Health Working Paper examines the trends and differences in mortality patterns over the three-year span of the pandemic. While a simple comparison of the raw number of deaths with reference to a historical base period has proved to be an important and straightforward indicator to assess the overall impact of the pandemic, most OECD countries have undergone major changes in population size and structure. This paper reviews the methodology of calculating changes in mortality to take account of such demographic trends and, in producing a revised set of estimates using adjusted numbers of deaths, highlights some important variations in mortality across years, countries and age groups.

This study analyses the economic effects of the EU's ‘Fit for 55’ climate mitigation policies using the OECD ENV-Linkage model, a dynamic, global Computable General Equilibrium model. The model projects macroeconomic, sectoral, energy and emission trends for the EU, and for the five largest EU economies separately, up to 2035. Policy scenarios combine carbon pricing with regulations to reach the ‘Fit For 55’ emission reduction target in 2030. Additional scenarios analyse i) harmonised carbon pricing across countries and sectors, ii) different forms of revenue recycling from carbon pricing, iii) the effect of the EU’s proposed Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism on competitiveness, and iv) the effect of Russia’s war against Ukraine on mitigation costs. Given the short time horizon of the analysis (until 2035), the model does not assess the positive economic benefits associated with fewer climate impacts and extreme climate events. ‘Fit for 55’ policies are projected to lead to a loss of GDP per capita of 2.1% in 2035 compared to the reference scenario (pre-‘Fit for 55’ policies), reflecting increasing production costs on the back of higher carbon pricing. Higher carbon pricing is also projected to lead to a loss of competitiveness in energy-intensive industries. The EU’s proposed Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism may only partly mitigate the loss of competitiveness of energy-intensive industries. Harmonising carbon pricing across sectors would help limit the loss to GDP per capita, as a uniform carbon price is lower and allows for directing emission reduction efforts to sectors and countries with the lowest abatement costs. Finally, Russia’s war against Ukraine has not substantially increased the GDP costs of mitigation. Without the war, lower fossil fuel import prices would have led to higher fossil fuel demand, ultimately requiring more stringent mitigation action.

Multifactor productivity is a comprehensive measure of productivity where the underlying production function accounts for multiple factor inputs, traditionally labour and produced capital. While single-factor productivity is intuitively simple, such measure offers a biased picture of the economy because it attributes all variation in output growth to a single factor input (e.g. consumption of fossil fuels or material resources) while the role of other factors is ignored. Multifactor productivity aims at addressing this shortcoming, and as such it is a valuable component of the OECD set of Green Growth headline indicators. This paper presents further progress in measuring the EAMFP and related growth accounting indicators in 52 countries for 1996-2018. An important novelty is the inclusion of renewable natural resources such as land, timber and fisheries, and ecosystem services such as coastal and watershed protection. Exploratory results on accounting for renewable energy resources are also included.

This analytical report 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 (Strand 1), higher education (Strand 2), and adult upskilling and reskilling (Strand 3). This report for EIPC Strand 1 examines how higher education institutions (HEIs) can support teachers and school leaders in secondary schools to help their students develop competencies for innovation. Drawing on research evidence, practical examples and insights from the EIPC network and a wide range of OECD and EU education systems, it offers five options for consideration by education policy makers on how to strengthen HEIs’ role in supporting secondary education to develop human capacity for innovation.

This analytical report 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 (Strand 1), higher education (Strand 2), and adult upskilling and reskilling (Strand 3). This report for EIPC Strand 1 examines how higher education institutions (HEIs) can support the integration of competencies for innovation into secondary school curricula. Drawing on research evidence, practical examples and insights from the EIPC network and a wide range of OECD and EU education systems, it offers six options for consideration by education policy makers on how to strengthen HEIs’ role in supporting effective curriculum development in schools.

This paper examines the experiences of self-employed online freelancers working on digital labour platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on interviews with freelancers and platform managers and experts in Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. Their experiences during COVID-19 reveal issues of asymmetric power vis-à-vis platforms. Notably, they reported lack of transparency and certainty in their contracts with platforms, lack of power in negotiating with clients, and limited ability to engage with clients on other platforms. In addition, they often experienced difficulties in accessing government temporary supports for businesses during the pandemic. The paper puts forward policy recommendations to address these issues.

This paper exploits the information available in the OECD Key Indicators of Informality based on Individuals and their Household (KIIBIH) to shed light on several elements that could help inform national strategies for the extension of social protection to workers in the informal economy. It provides an assessment of current social protection coverage of informal workers throughout a large sample of developing and emerging economies and proposes a statistical framework to examine country-specific data, upon which a strategy for extending social protection to informal workers could be articulated. While the paper does not intend to provide detailed country-level recommendations, it highlights a number of important findings and policy directions as regards the way to extend non-contributory and contributory schemes to informal workers.

This paper provides empirical evidence on the short and long-term sectoral effect of environmental policy stringency on CO2 emissions, exploiting longitudinal data covering 30 OECD countries and more than 50 sectors. The analysis relies on the OECD Environmental Policy Stringency (EPS) index, a composite index tracking climate change and air pollution mitigation policies. Estimates obtained from panel regressions suggest that more stringent environmental policies are associated with lower emissions, that the effect builds over time and differs across sectors depending on their fossil fuel intensity. A one unit increase in the EPS index (about one standard deviation), is associated with 4% lower CO2 emissions in the sector with median fossil fuel intensity after two years and by 12% after 10 years. For sectors in the top decile of the fossil fuel intensity distribution, the estimates point to a decline in emissions by 11% after two years and 19% after ten years. Environmental policies targeted at energy, manufacturing and transport sectors have the largest potential impact on emissions. Illustrative policy scenarios based on these results indicate that achieving emission reductions consistent with net-zero targets will require raising the stringency of environmental policies more drastically and rapidly than in the past.

The OECD Privacy Guidelines are the first internationally agreed-upon set of privacy principles and are recognized as the global minimum standard for privacy and data protection. They are a solid foundation for building effective protection and trust for individuals, and also for developing common international approaches to transborder data flows. Since their adoption, they have influenced legislation and policy in OECD countries and beyond. This document reproduces the two existing explanatory memoranda that accompany the OECD Privacy Guidelines. The first, published in 1980, was developed alongside the original version of the OECD Privacy Guidelines to help in their interpretation and application. The supplementary Explanatory Memorandum was developed to provide context and rationale for the revisions to the OECD Privacy Guidelines made in 2013.