Browse by: "R"

This paper provides an overview of the political economy of oil in the CIS. It briefly situates the region's oil sector potential in the global context, before analysing the structural features of the oil sectors by country. It examines the ways in which CIS oil industries have been organised and governed since 1991, as well as questions of transport infrastructure and export routes, which are especially critical for Central Asia's landlocked producers. The paper finally considers the causes and likely consequences of the recent shift towards greater state ownership and control in Russia and Kazakhstan, the region's most important oil producers. The paper's central argument is that these changes have increased the risk that the full hydrocarbon potential of the CIS may not be developed in a timely and economically efficient way.

This paper discusses Norway’s zero-growth objective for passenger car traffic. It focuses on Oslo’s experience with removing parking space, improving walking and cycling conditions and reducing road capacity on main motorways. The paper highlights the effectiveness of reallocating road and street space to achieving more sustainable uses, reducing car-dependency and lowering traffic volumes.

The impressive emergence of China’s economy is set to lose some momentum as the country catches up with more advanced economies and its rapid ageing also weighs on it. However, China can still reap the “reform dividend”, especially with measures to keep up the sustained growth of productivity. Reforms that enhance competition in product markets are among those that can potentially bring about significant productivity gains. China has been lowering the burden on start-ups and simplifying administrative procedures for a while already, achieving significant progress, though more procedures could go online and a one-stop shop is still to be implemented across the country. State ownership remains dominant in most network industries and there are many SOEs even in commercially-oriented industries such as retail or catering. SOEs enjoy implicit government guarantees and are the main beneficiaries of administrative monopolies, i.e. exclusive rights granted by regulations. In addition, they also benefit from various subsidies, sometimes leading to low-level, repetitious investment, excess capacity and waste of public money. A more level playing field would bring about efficiency-enhancing competition by private and foreign firms. Some network industries such as electricity and gas have recently accelerated their opening up and competition is developing in some segments. Digitalisation is a promising candidate to lift China’s long-term growth potential. Competition, in particular competitive pressure from foreign counterparts when there are few domestic players could be an important source of efficiency gains in digital services. China has been a frontrunner in business digitalisation for a while already, but the outbreak accelerated also the provision of e-government services. While strengthening of IPR protection and promoting innovative ways of financing are welcome steps to nurture innovative industries, generous tax exemptions – which by OECD standards do not constitute good tax policy - reduce the availability of public funds for other priority areas.

The potential to strengthen productivity growth and enhance consumer welfare through more competition is large in the energy and railway sectors. Establishing stronger vertical separation between network access provision and potentially competitive services will be the main challenge for Germany going forward. In particular, it will be a crucial point in designing the envisaged privatisation of state stakes in the railway sector market incumbent Deutsche Bahn AG. In the energy sector, concentration in the wholesale market is another crucial issue that Germany will need to tackle, including by fostering market integration with neighbouring countries as well as market entry of newcomers. A more systematic approach to tendering unprofitable transport services will be key in the railway sector. This Working Paper relates to the 2008 Economic Survey of Germany (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/germany).

The transition to a greener economy supported by international environmental commitments and national policies will entail structural changes in consumption patterns and industry structures, resulting in a reallocation of resources in and between countries. Slovakia will need to build an effective framework for green growth to maximise its chances of exploiting cleaner sources of growth and to seize the opportunities to develop new green industries, jobs, and technologies. This requires addressing environmental externalities (for example by extending environmental taxation and removing subsidies) and improving the adaptive capacities of the economy through eco innovation. Reforms to support innovation and R&D spending, such as making existing R&D public support more efficient, strengthening the protection of property rights and developing the venture capital market, are needed. Also, administrative entry barriers in the product market should be reduced, competition in energy markets fostered, and the tertiary education system reformed. This paper relates to the 2010 OECD Economic Review of the Slovak Republic (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/slovakia).

In 2017, the “Sláintecare Report” proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the Irish health system including a reform proposal to phase out private practice in public hospitals to end the unequal treatment of public and private patients – private patients typically have quicker access to care – and reduce waiting times for public patients. This paper summarises the arguments for and against this practice that were put forward to help inform the subsequent policy debate. The paper compares how private practice is regulated and organised in Ireland with the situation in four other OECD countries – Australia, France, Israel and the United Kingdom - and discusses the costs and benefits of private practice in public hospitals, and highlights potential consequences of a ban on this practice. It also describes the information required when making a decision whether to ban this practice or not. Finally, the paper discusses some alternative policy approaches that could replace or complement a ban of private practice to discontinue the unequal treatment of public and private patients.

The financial crisis has resulted in a substantial increase in unemployment in the OECD. This paper shows that this increase has reversed the reduction in structural unemployment which has been estimated to have occurred in most OECD countries since the late 1990s. Structural unemployment is defined as a time-varying NAIRU derived from the information contained in a reduced Phillips curve equation (linking inflation to the unemployment gap) by means of a Kalman filter. The overall limited revisions in historical NAIRU estimated in 2008 after such a large labour market shock support the robustness of the OECD approach. This approach is therefore extended to almost all OECD countries. Alternative specifications of the Phillips curve are proposed for some specific groups of countries.

This paper reassesses the often-made conclusion that the VAT is regressive, drawing on tax microsimulation models constructed for an unprecedented 27 OECD countries. The paper first assesses the competing methodological approaches used in previous distributional studies, highlighting the distorting impact of savings patterns on cross-sectional analysis when VAT burdens are measured relative to income. As argued by IFS (2011), measuring VAT burdens relative to expenditure – thereby removing the influence of savings – is likely to provide a more meaningful picture of the distributional impact of the VAT. On this basis, the VAT is found to be either roughly proportional or slightly progressive in most of the 27 OECD countries examined. Nevertheless, results for a small number of countries highlight that broad-based VAT systems that have few reduced VAT rates or exemptions can produce a small degree of regressivity. Results also show that even a roughly proportional VAT can still have significant equity implications for the poor – potentially pushing some households into poverty. This emphasises the importance of ensuring the progressivity of the tax-benefit system as a whole in order to compensate poor households for the loss in purchasing power from paying VAT. In the broader context of the COVID-19 crisis, the findings of the paper suggest there may be scope in many countries for VAT reform to help address revenue needs, as this revenue may be generated with less significant distributional effects than previously thought. While standard VAT rates are high in many countries, OECD evidence shows that scope exists to broaden VAT bases. Nevertheless, any VAT increases, including VAT base broadening measures that impact the poor, should be accompanied by compensation measures for poorer households, such as targeted tax credits or benefit payments.

Although the objectives of the Privatisation Programme in Malaysia were clearly stated from the start, there was no overall implementation plan during the first few years. Thus, the early targets of privatisation as well as the specific methods applied were chosen in an ad hoc manner. A major constraint for the implementation of this programme was the political necessity to protect and promote Bumiputra interests.

Following a description and a critical analysis of the various measures and techniques used in both the liberalisation and the privatisation process, with a particular reference to the Port Kelang privatisation experience, the author underlines some major lessons such as: legal changes take time to be materalised; each transaction related to a privatisation programme is different; the private sector must be willing to expand its role; the scarcest resource is skilled technical expertise; the importance of government organisation is often underestimated; developing a ...

The process of adjusting the balance between the public and private sectors, an essential part of structural reforms launched in Ghana, took place in an improved macroeconomic environment. The policies pursued, Economic Recovery Programme I (1983-86) and II (1987-89), have followed so far a consensual scheme, "stabilization first then structural adjustment". In the following study, the author points out the probability of success for this second step, by analysing the components of one of the most successful experiences on the African continent ...

Following the May 2008 earthquake in China, government officials visited the OECD, Italy and Turkey to draw lessons from international experience in seismic safety.

The City of New Orleans is implementing an unprecedented plan for the systemic renovation and rebuilding of its schools and infrastructure. One of the cornerstones of the project was public involvement: more than 10 000 citizens were engaged in developing the plan. Its new schools will be but one element of global, far-reaching community programmes...

With the recent boost of emerging economies in African economic relations, a different philosophy of development co-operation is progressively gaining momentum. Indeed, there are critical differences in the way development co-operation is provided by traditional and emerging partners. For the latter, aid is only one element of a broader economic engagement toolbox. These new realties on the ground mark a qualitative change in the provision of development co-operation both in terms of sectoral allocation and modalities of delivery, which in turn impacts on outcomes as well as the challenges for the recipient countries. We evaluate concerns often raised in this respect (e.g. the lack of policy conditionality destroying Western efforts to promote better governance) and stress that a new set of challenges emerges for African governments in the light of these different engagement modalities. The challenges for African governments to make the most of the new modes of co-operation could be summarised as follows: i) to define a clear strategy; ii) to ensure maintenance; and iii) to enhance their bargaining position.

This paper analyses the contribution to and engagement in global supply chains of Asian emerging economies by measuring several globalisation indicators based on the harmonised input-output and bilateral trade databases developed by the OECD. It focuses on major structural changes in the Asian trade network from the perspective of integration and fragmentation in global supply chains. It shows that greater fragmentation and higher dependence on supplies of intermediate goods and services from neighbouring countries have gone hand-in-hand and led to deepening economic integration between ASEAN and East Asia. ASEAN policy makers, therefore, need to consider their integration strategies from the perspective of the whole East Asian region and not just among ASEAN countries themselves.

This paper provides a survey of recent developments in the reporting of intangible assets. It finds that rather than the wholesale restructuring of the accounting model that was proposed years ago, the trend has been to address gaps in reporting with new forms of reporting. New forms of reporting appear better suited to capture the type of information that users of intangibles data seek. Financial reporting standards continue to change both at the national and the international level with the result that they are better able to capture some types of intangibles data. Even so, some areas such as human capital remain difficult to reflect in traditional financial statements. Users interested in human capital information are much better served by reports that are tailored to their needs, and by reporting techniques that take into account the specificities of human capital. On the policy front, companies are receiving considerable encouragement to provide more information on the intangible drivers of corporate performance than ever before. In Europe, part of the impetus has been the Accounts Modernisation Directive, which requires an “enhanced director’s report” that can include a discussion of human capital to the extent that directors feel that it is important for a full understanding of the business and its performance.

This paper summarizes recent empirical studies contributing towards the OECD Secretariat INTERLINK world macroeconomic model. For a number of topics, it reviews work which is described in more detail in recent Economics and Statistics Department Working Papers. It also covers a number of areas where recent changes have been relatively less substantial in terms of changes in model structure, but nonetheless influential in the evolution of model properties. A final section reviews current Secretariat macroeconometric modelling work which is yet to be implemented in the model and also discusses possible future developments. A separate companion paper, ESD Working Paper No. 47, analyses the single- and multi-country simulation properties of a recent version of the model, one which includes most of the research reported here ...