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Given the fast pace of global socio-economic development, more tailored, focused, and localised efforts to strengthen public sector capacity in small island developing states (SIDS) is increasingly important. SIDS have unique vulnerabilities, rich histories and contexts, and strengths that can be harnessed for sustainable development. Development partners need to adapt how they provide capacity-strengthening support, taking individual SIDS’ circumstances and needs into account to better help them achieve their ambitions. This report summarises perspectives from small island developing states (SIDS) on current experiences and opportunities to improve capacity-strengthening support to make it more tailored, impactful, and sustainable. The report uses the broad definition of capacity-strengthening as activities that improve the competencies and abilities of individuals, organisations, and broader formal and informal social structures in a way that boosts organisational performance. It concentrates on public sector capacity, including interactions with other stakeholders across sectors.

The state of Paraná in Brazil has turned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a guiding framework for its territorial development policy since 2016. Building on the recommendations from the OECD report on “A Territorial Approach to the SDGs in Paraná, Brazil” (2021), the state has continued to leverage the SDGs as a vehicle to address territorial disparities and challenges in a number of policy domains, including agriculture, health, education, economic growth, environmental conservation and public safety. This report assesses the state’s progress on the 2021 OECD recommendations and offers renewed guidance on how to harness the SDGs to tackle the state’s main challenges, including designing a state-wide Sustainable Development Plan and integrating the SDGs in its new 2053 Strategic Vision.

If test-takers do not engage with the assessment, the reliability of test scores and the validity of inferences about their proficiency may suffer. Test-taker disengagement is particularly likely in low-stakes assessments and, according to prior research, for certain types of students. But levels of engagement may also be related to aspects that test developers can manipulate, such as item characteristics. This paper investigates which item characteristics are associated with two indicators of test-taker disengagement, rapid guessing and breakoffs, in an international assessment of reading. Analyses of data from almost 500 000 students from 67 countries and economies that took part in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that rapid guessing was observed mainly on simple multiple-choice questions. Breakoffs were more likely in the presence of idiosyncratic selected-response formats, such as hot spot or matching tasks. Both rapid guessing and breakoffs were more frequent on tasks involving long and complex texts.

Several states in West Africa have experienced significant episodes of political violence since the early 2010s. These have included civil wars, religiously motivated terrorism, separatist insurgencies, military coups and communal strife, each of which have local, national and transnational dimensions. Intended to help guide responses to the region’s political challenges, the Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC/OECD) created an interactive, spatial tool for policy makers in 2019, the Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi). The SCDi monitors political violence at subnational scales. It combines different quantitative dimensions of conflict into a mappable tool that describes the circumstances in each location. The latest enhancement to the SCDi brings two new features to aid the identification of local conflict trends. First, the tool now identifies regions that are newly entering into or exiting from conflict. This allows a more detailed picture of how the geography of conflict is spreading or contracting within and across national borders. Second, the tool now characterises the current conditions in a location as either worsening or improving, based on past conditions at the same location. The SCDi is implemented in SWAC’s new Mapping Territorial Transformations in Africa (MAPTA) platform.

The paper reviews the diverse experience of OECD countries in establishing and running independent fiscal institutions, offering insights that could be useful for Latin American countries seeking to set-up and strengthen those institutions in the region. Through cluster analysis, we identify different types of OECD independent fiscal institutions and draw practical lessons from cases studies. We also identify key features that could serve as a road map for Latin American countries in their efforts to establish or enhance independent fiscal institutions.

This paper identifies different types of climate change mitigation strategies countries adopted over the last two decades and assesses the policy synergies they might generate. The analysis exploits the rich policy repository of the OECD’s Climate Actions and Policies Measurement Framework (CAPMF). This is the most comprehensive and harmonised mitigation policy database to date, covering more than 120 policy instruments and 50 countries over 2000-20. Statistical cluster analysis yields four types of mitigation strategies, which differ in the variety and stringency of mitigation policies. Until the mid-2000s mitigation strategies were similar and based on few policies and low overall stringency. They started to differentiate in the mid-2000s and then in the mid-2010s as some countries enlarged the variety of policy instruments and raised stringency. Regression results indicate that emissions are negatively associated with the overall stringency of the country’s mitigation strategies. Moreover, this relationship is stronger for mitigation strategies comprising a larger set of instruments, pointing to larger policy synergies.

Raising productivity growth is central to closing the gap with the incomes and well-being enjoyed in many OECD countries. Croatia has internationally competitive firms, and a dynamic economy with many young and potentially productive firms. However, overall performance has been limited by the presence of many less productive firms and more productive firms that often fail to grow. This likely reflects a business environment that weakens competitive pressures and makes investments more costly and risky. Reducing the burdens of lengthy and unpredictable regulatory procedures, resolving legal disputes faster with a more efficient judicial system, and improving public sector integrity, will be key for boosting productivity growth. Developing public equity markets and expanding R&D support would improve access to finance for young and innovative firms. State-owned enterprises play a comparatively large role in Croatia’s economy but tend to underperform financially and in delivering goods and services. Improving their governance, by strengthening the state’s oversight and governance arrangements, can improve outcomes. This Working Paper relates to the 2023 OECD Economic Survey of Croatia.

This document provides an integrated view on income-based tax incentives for R&D and innovation. It brings together the latest evidence on the adoption, design, generosity, cost and take-up of income-based tax incentives, and gives new insights into both the long-term and short-term trends in the take-up of income-based tax incentives by business and their cost to governments, including role of policy design changes. Furthermore, the report explores the scope for developing indicators that provide a more complete picture of the value of expenditure- and income-based tax relief for R&D and innovation in the OECD area and beyond.

Long-term unemployment remains a structural challenge for most OECD countries. Despite major efforts to address this issue, the efficiency and effectiveness of many existing active labour market policies are limited for jobseekers who face major vulnerabilities and have no ties to the labour market. Therefore, there is a need for innovative approaches that specifically address the barriers faced by long-term unemployed individuals in their labour market (re)integration. This paper discusses examples of promising practices from across Europe, which can serve as a source of inspiration for policymakers seeking new approaches to assist vulnerable jobseekers in overcoming the challenge of long-term unemployment.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is one of the largest and most ambitious research infrastructure ever to be built. South Africa will be hosting one of its two main sites. The decision to host such an ambitious project for a middle-income country required careful consideration of the potential benefits and the associated risks for the socio-economic development of the country and the region more broadly. This working paper describes how the potential impact of SKA for South Africa was envisaged from the start of the project, how this was integrated in the project development, what policy initiatives and interventions were taken to maximize impact and the lessons learned, from South Africa’s science policy perspective, during the early phases of the development of the SKA.

Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has had profound effects on the maritime sector. It directly disrupted maritime activities in the Black and Azov seas, causing the suspension of Ukrainian port operations and agricultural exports. Although an export corridor temporarily resumed activities, the termination of the agreement in July 2023 continues to affect Ukrainian shipping. International sanctions against Russia and Belarus have notably targeted shipowners and shipbuilders, restricting Russian ships' access to OECD ports. These sanctions have also halted orders for Russian ship owners in OECD countries, reducing new orders and vessel completions in Russian shipyards. While global seaborne trade and ship demand remain relatively unaffected, the war has prompted longer-term impacts such as altered trading routes, changes in energy demand and costs, potential implications for maritime decarbonisation, and an increase in "dark fleet" vessels.

Intersectionality highlights that different aspects of individuals’ identities are not independent of each other. Instead, they interact to create unique identities and experiences, which cannot be understood by analysing each identity dimension separately or in isolation from their social and historical contexts. Intersectional approaches in this way question the common classification of individuals into groups (male vs. female, immigrant vs. native etc.), which raises important implications for the policy-making process. In education, analyses with an intersectional lens have the potential to lead to better tailored and more effective policies and interventions related to participation, learning outcomes, students’ attitudes towards the future, identification of needs, and socio-emotional well-being. Consequently, as elaborated in this paper, some countries have adjusted their policies in the areas of governance, resourcing, developing capacity, promoting school-level interventions and monitoring, to account for intersectionality. Gaps and challenges related to intersectional approaches are also highlighted.

This paper makes the case for greater transparency of investment incentives and explores how governments can enhance transparency of these measures, notably for investment facilitation purposes. It proposes three overarching principles of transparency that can be used to better inform policy design: availability, accessibility and clarity of information. It also sets out a framework and typology to understand the scope of incentives offered in a country and identify what information could support transparency, drawing on data on the use and level of transparency of incentives (including tax, financial and in-kind benefits) in a sample of 15 developing economies.

In the midst of the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, trade and economic growth face new challenges as the Russian Federation’s large-scale war against Ukraine has increased uncertainty and tensions along supply chains and the People’s Republic of China’s trade performance has fallen short of expectations. Merchandise trade is recovering slowly and has been dampened by high and volatile commodity and energy prices, coupled with monetary tightening. Some durable goods, such as motor vehicles, have not regained their pre-pandemic share in global trade. Services trade has yet to recover losses incurred during the pandemic, with travel services in particular recovering slowly. Russia’s trade is adjusting as the war continues, with repercussions for commodities markets. This report uses detailed trade data to monitor recent developments in trade in goods and services and in commodity markets.

Immigration has increased rapidly since the late 1990s, driven largely by strong economic growth and high standards of living. By mid-2023, foreign citizens made up around 18% of the population. This has brought important economic benefits to Iceland, including by boosting the working age population and helping the country to meet labour demands in fast-growing sectors. However, there are important challenges regarding the integration of immigrants and their children that need to be addressed through a comprehensive approach, helping to make the most of immigration. Successful labour market integration of immigrants requires more effective language training for adults and an improvement in skills recognition procedures. At the same time, immigrants need more opportunities to work in the public sector and the adult learning system should be adjusted to better encompass their training needs. Strengthening language skills is key to improving the weak educational outcomes of immigrant students. Enhancing teachers’ preparedness to accommodate students’ diverse educational needs is another pre-requisite. Strengthening integration further hinges upon meeting the housing needs of the immigrant population, including through an increase in the supply of social and affordable housing.

This paper provides an overview of the ocean economy in the EU Outermost Regions (EU ORs). It discusses the opportunities and challenges that the EU ORs are facing in light of emerging global trends, laying out priority actions for making the ocean a factor of competitiveness and internationalisation. Such actions could be taken together with EU and basin-specific partners such as Small Island Developing States in the Caribbean, Atlantic and Indian Ocean. The paper is developed within the framework of the EU-OECD project on Global Outermost Regions.

This paper explores the innovation dynamics of the EU Outermost Regions (EU ORs) through patenting behaviour. It emphasises the potential for international collaborations with a wide range of partners, and recommends to mobilise the resources and strategies provided by the EU to strengthen research and innovation in the private sector; enhance the impact of public research centres and universities; and foster intra-regional co-operation. It also calls for stronger ties with African countries, the Latin American and Caribbean region, as well as Small Island Developing States (SIDS), to foster innovation-based collaborations, particularly around sustainable agriculture, renewable energy and the ocean economy. The paper is developed within the framework of the EU-OECD project on Global Outermost Regions.

Calls for increased monitoring and evaluation of education policies and practices have not, so far, included widespread and consistent assessments of the inclusiveness of education settings. Measuring inclusion in education has proven to be a challenging exercise, due not only to the complexity and different uses of the concept, but also to its holistic nature. Indeed, measuring inclusion implies analysing a variety of policy areas within education systems, while also considering the different roles of the system, the school and the classroom. This paper discusses the application of the input-process-outcome model to the measurement of inclusion in education, and key indicators that can be adopted by education systems and schools to this end. It makes considerations relevant to policy makers when designing indicators to measure inclusion, such as the extent of their application, the constraints related to data disaggregation and the relevance of intersectional approaches to inclusion.

This paper provides an overview of agro-food value chains in the EU Outermost Regions (EU ORs). It assesses emerging trends, discusses opportunities and challenges, reviews the policy frameworks and tools that can strengthen the beneficial participation of EU ORs in international agro-food value chains, and proposes priority actions. The paper is developed within the framework of the EU-OECD project on Global Outermost Regions.