Debate the Issues: New Approaches to Economic Challenges
To capitalise on the new international resolve epitomised by COP21 and the agreement on the universal Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires a renewed effort to promote new policy thinking and new approaches to the great challenges ahead. Responding to new challenges means we have to adopt more ambitious frameworks, design more effective tools, and propose more precise policies that will take account of the complex and multidimensional nature of the challenges. The goal is to develop a better sense of how economies really work and to articulate strategies which reflect this understanding. The OECD’s New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC) exercise challenges our assumptions and our understanding about the workings of the economy. This collection from OECD Insights summarises opinions from inside and outside the Organisation on how NAEC can contribute to achieving the SDGs, and describes how the OECD is placing its statistical, monitoring and analytical capacities at the service of the international community. The authors also consider the transformation of the world economy that will be needed and the long-term “tectonic shifts” that are affecting people, the planet, global productivity, and institutions.
New Approaches to Economic Challenges in a century of cities
We live in the century of cities. In OECD countries, two out of three people live in cities with 50 000 or more inhabitants. Outside the OECD, the share of urban residents is currently slightly lower, but urbanisation is progressing rapidly. While today over half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, the United Nations (UN) estimate that the global urbanisation rate will reach 60% by 2030 and 70% by 2050. Cities are important drivers of economic performance, and their contribution can be expected to increase. Metropolitan areas with more than 500 000 inhabitants generate 55% of OECD countries’ GDP and more than 60% of their economic growth. Due to agglomeration economies and high levels of human capital, most cities have higher productivity levels than their countries as a whole. As many OECD countries have seen declining rates of productivity growth in recent years, utilising the full potential of productivity-increasing agglomeration effects can create new sources of growth.
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