Browse by: "G"

Discriminatory social institutions – formal and informal laws, social norms and practices – restrict women’s rights and empowerment opportunities across 17 West African countries. New laws and measures to protect and promote women’s economic, political and human rights have been accompanied by impressive reductions in gender gaps. However, discriminatory social institutions still constitute significant impediments to women’s access to land assets and restrict women’s physical integrity and decision-making power in both private and public spheres. This holds back women’s education and economic empowerment, thereby decreasing countries’ potential growth. The data and analysis based on the OECD Development Centre’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) aims to provide policy makers with the necessary tools and evidence to design more effective gender-responsive policies. Putting social institutions at the core of policy responses may open new and sustainable vistas to promote gender equality in national and regional development agendas.

This paper uses “centrality” metrics to reflect position with Global Value Chains (GVCs). Central sectors reflect those that are highly connected (both directly and indirectly) and influential within globalproduction networks, whereas peripheral sectors exhibit weak linkages and are less influential. Applying these metrics to OECD ICIO data, reveals there have been profound changes in the structure of GVCs over the period 1995-2011. Whilst some activities remain clustered around the same key hubs as was the case at the start of the period (e.g. motor vehicles), for others there have been dramatic changes in the geography of economic activity (e.g. IT manufacturing), whereas other activities have become more influential for value chains almost universally (e.g. IT services). Several emerging economies and their industries have become more central to global production networks. We find this is particularly true of most peripheral industries of Eastern European countries, with their growing importance coinciding with the timing of their EU accession. Asian value chains have also undergone substantial reorganisation. In particular, the centrality of Japanese industries has fallen from an initial position of being the key hub within Asian value chains and the bulk of this fall does not appear to be due to the decline in size of the Japanese economy over this period. This is in contrast with trends in foreign value added content of exports of these Japanese industries, which increased over the same time period, illustrating that the centrality measure does not seem to simply reflect features captured by existing GVC metrics.

Integration into Global value chains (GVCs) provides opportunities for economic growth and development. However, the nature and extent of these opportunities differ across countries and sectors, and participation in GVCs can support processes of economic transformation in a variety of ways depending on the type of GVC. This paper explores some of the linkages between GVC participation and economic transformation at the sectoral level, with a view to assisting countries in assessing the various policy options for maximising their comparative advantages and their benefits from GVC participation. Three aspects of the relationship between GVC participation – defined as the use of foreign intermediates and integration into international production networks – and economic transformation are explored: i) sectoral differences in upgrading dynamics; ii) the role of services; and iii) resilience to external shocks. A range of qualitative and empirical approaches are used to explore and test the robustness of the relationship for three sectors presenting different characteristics in terms of their trade dynamics and links with economic transformation: mining and quarrying; motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers; and transport and storage services.

Estonia is highly integrated into the global trade system: it exports approximately 80% of GDP and around half of domestic employment is sustained by foreign demand. Given that international trade and foreign direct investment are considered as major channels of technology diffusion and productivity growth, this bodes well for reviving income convergence. To capitalize on the country’s high trade intensity, policymakers need to remove remaining trade barriers and improve policies fostering knowledge diffusion as well as talent retention and attraction. At the same time, to ensure that benefits of more trade are shared across the population, the social safety net should be bolstered, and participation in upskilling programmes and their labour-market relevance increased.
This Working Paper relates to the 2017 OECD Economic Survey of New Zealand (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-estonia.htm).

Contracts are a key tool for vertical co-ordination, enabling dialogue and capacity building across levels of government. They are frequently used for regional development policy in OECD and non-OECD countries. Drawing on contract theory and a variety of national experiences, this paper identifies three main types of contracts between central and subnational governments according to their objectives: i) empowerment; ii) delegation; and iii) policy-sharing contracts. The differentiation of contracts depending on their objective is based on two key factors: the maturity of decentralisation and the capacity of national and subnational governments. It is expected that with the development of subnational /central government capacities (or both), and with the increasing maturity of decentralisation, contracts can shift from one type to another. The paper concludes by suggesting enforcement mechanisms for more effective contracts across levels of government.

Our world is becoming increasingly interconnected. Global risks such as financial crises, cyber risks, pandemics and climate change all require a coordinated international response. Education can play a role in preventing and mitigating these risks by building resilience and developing the responsible and sustainable behaviours needed for a secure, global future.

The paper provides a first assessment of the range of governance statistics that are available in OECD countries, reaching three main conclusions. First, while several statistics relating to various aspects of governance are already available, they differ in terms of the underlying concepts, the labels used to describe them, the range of institutions covered, and the detailed aspect or function considered: developing a common conceptual framework for governance is hence a prerequisite for gathering more robust and useful statistics in this field. Second, efforts should be devoted to thoroughly assess the quality of existing governance statistics, as a preliminary step towards providing general advice to statistical producers and users: the model currently used by the OECD with respect to measuring “trust”, based on an assessment of the reliability and validity of existing measures, could be usefully extended to other aspects of governance. Third, while politically sensitive, there are no a priori reasons why NSOs should consider governance statistics as falling outside their remit; these statistics should become part of their routine production, subject to the same quality standards and requirements that apply to other social, economic and environmental statistics.

Historically across the OECD, the teaching profession has been largely dominated by women. The share of female teachers has been increasing over the past decade – reaching 68% in 2014 for all levels of education combined. The gender disparity decreases gradually with the level of education, from 97% of women in pre-primary education to 43% in tertiary education. Between 2005 and 2014, the gender gap increased at the primary and secondary levels, but decreased at the tertiary level.

This Policy Paper describes the relatively new phenomenon of publicly-capitalised green investment banks and examines why they are being created and how they are mobilising private investment. It draws on the OECD report “Green Investment Banks: Scaling up Private Investment in Low-carbon, Climate-resilient Infrastructure".