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This landmark study of the material well-being of older people in nine OECD countries -- Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States -- uses a wealth of new data to shed light on the challenges that face policy-makers as they anticipate the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation. The findings are often surprising.
In all the countries surveyed, policies have been fundamentally successful: older people at all income levels tend to maintain or even increase their material standards of living once they stop working. This happens despite large differences in approaches to public policy, including the size of public pensions. The systems that provide resources to older people are considerably more complex than is usually taken into account in policy-making, and the effects of policy, while large, are less direct than often thought.
Demography and changing labour market patterns make reforms to these systems imperative. The challenge is to make needed changes without undermining past success. This is difficult, but entirely possible; the payoffs from relatively small changes in the balance between work and retirement could be particularly large.
The study examines the many diverse ways in which the nine countries are tackling this challenge and the lessons that have been learned from their experiences. It provides invaluable evidence for policy-makers, researchers and citizens concerned about the challenges posed for societies by ageing populations.
OECD countries are undergoing an unprecedented increase in the proportion of elderly people among their total populations. To address these issues, the OECD organised a conference in Oslo in May 2002. This report highlights how ageing will affect urban design and development in terms of housing, land use, transportation and the urban environment and points to the growing role of new technologies in member countries. The book, featuring statistical data, is for sociologists, policy researchers, journalists, librarians and economists.
This report provides policymakers, legislators, businesses, civil society organisations and other stakeholders with an assessment of the legal and institutional environment in which civil society operates, together with recommendations for reform designed to enable civil society organisations, business associations, trade unions and the media to play a more active role in the fight against corruption. The report covers a wide range of issues including public attitudes, civil liberties, existing laws that facilitate the establishment of civil society organisations, freedom of the media, governmental transparency and co-operative partnerships between governments and civil society.
Prepared against this background, the OECD report Behind the Corporate Veil: Using Corporate Entities for Illicit Purposes opens ways to prevent and combat the misuse of corporate entities. The report shows that the types of corporate entities misused most frequently are those that provide the greatest degree of anonymity to their beneficial owners. With that in mind, the report offers governments and other relevant authorities a menu of policy options for obtaining information on the beneficial ownership and control of corporate entities in order to combat their misuse for illicit purposes.
Effective systems for allocating, managing and controlling public sector resources are fundamental elements of good governance. The need for continuing fiscal restraint and demands for more and better public services are changing budgetary practices in OECD countries. Budgets are being used increasingly as instruments for promoting managerial improvement and programme effectiveness, in addition to their control and allocation functions. This report analyses budget practices and innovations in twenty-two OECD countries. It describes how the practice of budgeting is contributing to a greater performance orientation in the public sector. It also provides standard summaries of the institutional framework and procedures governing budgeting in each of these countries.
Businesses’ Views on Red Tape provides the first opportunity to systematically compare data across 11 OECD countries. The data show how small and medium-sized enterprises perceive national administrative and regulatory costs. Regulations and government formalities, so-called "red tape", are important tools used by governments to carry out public policies in many policy areas, including safety, health, and environmental protection. However, if they are poorly designed or applied, inefficient, or outdated, they can impede innovation, entry, investment, and create unnecessary barriers to trade, investment, and economic efficiency. The result of poor regulation and formalities is that national economies become less able to grow, compete, adjust, and create jobs. Based on a survey of almost 8 000 businesses, this report assesses the quality, application and burdens of employment, environment and tax regulations and formalities. The results are dramatic: for example, red tape accounts for 4% of the annual turnover of companies, while the hardest hit are the smallest companies, and these costs are growing in most countries.
In OECD countries, metropolitan areas often enjoy above-average rates of growth; they compete for foreign direct investment, have a leading position in the knowledge-based economy, and attract a disproportionately large share of immigrants. Yet they also are burdened with many problems including congestion, and the renewal of infrastructure, the spread of distressed urban areas. Better strategies for the development of metropolitan areas are vital if their rate of economic growth is to remain strong, but the governance structures currently in place are often outdated and ill-adapted to the tasks they face, especially given the sprawl of many metropolitan cities across many jurisdictions.
Drawing on the lessons from successful and unsuccessful attempts at the reform of metropolitan governance, this book identifies ways by which central and metropolitan governments can work better to optimise the potential of each urban region.
This handbook offers government officials practical assistance in strengthening relations between government and citizens. It combines a brief review of basic concepts, principles, concrete examples of good practice, tools (including new information and communication technologies) as well as tips from practice. The approach and activities shown in this handbook support and complement formal institutions of democracy, and strengthen the democratic process.
In many countries a new concept is emerging as an alternative to command-and-control regulation: the concept of shared responsibility between governments and businesses. Governments and businesses are seeing a need for co-operation and partnership, rather than confrontation and adversarial relations. Increasingly, governments and businesses, often represented by business federations, are engaged in dialogue to find more effective and efficient solutions to conflicts between public and private interests, solutions in which multiple public and private bodies set goals, identify solutions, and monitor outcomes. This Occasional Paper contains case studies on different strategies of public/private co-operation from Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Since regaining independence in the early 1990s, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have developed effective competition policies, as part of a process toward achieving functioning market economies. All three countries have competition laws and competition agencies which enforce them. All three are entering a critical second phase in competition law enforcement as each is undertaking the difficult steps aimed at their full economic integration into Europe.
This is an appropriate time to review competition policy in the Baltic states and to develop future improvements. This publication presents the first comprehensive examination of competition law and policy in these three Baltic countries as well as the highlights of a conference held in Riga in May 1999.
How can governments make the most of contracting out ? What lessons can be learned from past experiences ? This report presents the OECD Best Practice Guidelines for Contracting Out Government Services and accompanying case studies.
Poor corporate governance was identified as one of the root causes of the recent Asian financial crisis. The absence of effective disciplines on corporate managers, coupled with complicated and opaque relationships between corporations, their owners and their finance providers, affected severely investors’ confidence in the region’s corporate sectors. Economies that took early steps to improve corporate governance have been recovering from the crisis at a more rapid pace than those who have not addressed this issue. The Asian crisis showed that good corporate governance is important not only for individual corporations to raise capital but also for an economy to achieve sustainable growth. This publication includes papers submitted to the "Conference on Corporate Governance in Asia: A Comparative Perspective" held in Seoul in March 1999. These papers describe vividly the corporate governance practices in the region and the recent changes largely prompted by the crisis. Also included are papers on corporate governance in major OECD countries, which serve as a good source of comparative information on this issue. This review is part of the OECD's ongoing co-operation with non-Member economies around the world.
How can the efficiency of state-owned enterprises be improved? What effects do privatisation policies have on corporate governance in privatised enterprises? What role do employees play in corporate governance? This report examines these issues and provides recommendations.
This publication presents the papers of the OECD conference on "State-Owned Enterprises, Privatisation and Corporate Governance" which took place in Paris on 3 and 4 March 1997. It brings together contributions from different countries highlighting different approaches to governance in state-owned enterprises and the impact of the choice of privatisation method on post-privatisation corporate governance and performance. Special attention is paid to the experience of Canada, France, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Private initiatives for corporate responsibility have been a major development in international management over the last twenty years. The initiatives include issuance of codes of business conduct, implementation of management systems and broader efforts to improve business accountability. Yet, there is little agreement about what these initiatives mean or how effective they are. OECD research on private initiatives sheds light on various aspects of the corporate responsibility movement: what are firms and business associations doing? How have governments influenced the initiatives? What contributions, if any, have these initiatives made to improving the business sector’s ability to comply with law and regulation and to respond to broader societal expectations?
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is business's contribution to sustainable development. Today, corporate behaviour must not only ensure returns to shareholders, wages to employees, and products and services to customers, it must also respond to societal and environmental concerns. Local cultures are a countervailing force to the global economy and the struggle between the forces of global commerce and the interests of local cultures brings with it new politics. In overcoming the hurdles of social responsibility, all partners and sectors need to be committed to adhere to a coherent social strategy in the interest of society as a whole. Through partnerships with labour, NGOs, and communities, corporations contribute to tackling social exclusion and other inner city problems in order to define and implement innovative solutions for policy dialogue to meet the social challenges at the local level.
This book provides a comprehensive overview of Corporate Social Responsibility experiences and practices at the local level. It illustrates that partnerships provide a powerful mechanism for helping firms become more socially responsible. It includes interventions from the Conference "Partners for Progress - Towards a new approach to Corporate Social Responsibility", held in Paris in November 2000 and is essential reading for policy-makers, NGOs, business, and all local actors involved in the issues of sustainable development.
Debt Management and Government Securities Markets in the 21st Century reviews recent trends in the structure of OECD government securities markets and public debt management operations, and highlights the generic structural policy issues in emerging debt markets.
Over the years, OECD debt managers have developed best practices for raising, managing and retiring debt at the lowest possible price and acceptable risk, largely in the presence of persistent large deficits. New techniques have been developed to cope with the adverse consequences of running surpluses (pricing anomalies and lower liquidity in traditional benchmark markets).
This report analyses the impact of advanced electronic systems on primary and secondary markets. In the future, sophisticated electronic auction systems will enable institutional investors to bid directly in auctions, thereby by-passing primary dealers. Electronic trading systems will inevitably reshape secondary fixed-income markets.
Underlying these challenges is the growing number of OECD sovereign issuers granting greater independence to debt management operations, accompanied by an increased emphasis on risk assessment and risk management.
The report also addresses the introduction of new instruments (index-linked bonds and derivatives), as well as policies related to investor relations.
This book sets out a vision of devolved economic development policies capable of responding to the challenges of globalisation. The key features in this vision are flexible and networked institutions and local strategies emphasising entrepreneurship, human capital and social cohesion.
Based on the proceedings of the OECD-Scottish Enterprise Glasgow conference, this publication examines how city and region governments and development agencies need to use their devolved powers to respond to globalisation. Trends and challenges are discussed and examples drawn from across the OECD. They address how cities and regions can develop strategies to assure their competitiveness in the globalising economy and how they can help counteract the negative effects of globalisation on marginalised people and places.
Devolution is more than just a transfer of power, it is also a new spirit of co-operation and networking between different levels of government and their civil society partners. Brought together at the level of cities and regions, they can apply some promising development tools, for example for strengthening enterprise clusters, promoting training for a knowledge economy and regenerating distressed areas.