Browse by: "2017"

The port of Jakarta is the incontestable gateway to Indonesia. As an archipelago state, Indonesia has much to gain from improving its maritime connectivity and attracting more direct liner services. These services rely on ever larger ships. What is needed to attract them, and how could Jakarta best handle them? This report brings more clarity to these issues by assessing the impacts of very large container ships for Jakarta. It analyses current policies and offers recommendations on how Indonesia’s largest port could effectively prepare for the arrival of ships.
This report is part of the International Transport Forum’s Case-Specific Policy Analysis series. These are topical studies on specific issues carried out by the ITF in agreement with local institutions.
The port of Jakarta is the incontestable gateway to Indonesia. As an archipelago state, Indonesia has much to gain from improving its maritime connectivity and attracting more direct liner services. These services rely on ever larger ships. What is needed to attract them, and how could Jakarta best handle them? This report brings more clarity to these issues by assessing the impacts of very large container ships for Jakarta. It analyses current policies and offers recommendations on how Indonesia’s largest port could effectively prepare for the arrival of ships.
This report is part of the International Transport Forum’s Case-Specific Policy Analysis series. These are topical studies on specific issues carried out by the ITF in agreement with local institutions.

International research data networks are critical for progress in many scientific domains and underpin efforts to promote Open Science. At the same time, many of these networks are fragile and the responsibilities for their support and performance are frequently distributed across a variety of different actors. This report explores the challenges and enablers for the effective functioning of international research data networks. It analyses the diversity and complexity of these networks, and issues such as governance and funding, in a selection of 32 cases. It includes a set of policy recommendations as a basis for building the shared understanding that is necessary to develop effective and sustainable international research data networks.

Research infrastructures are long-term enterprises. They are increasingly diverse in nature, may operate under very different models of governance and financing, and within diverse and evolving financial and political contexts. They represent strategic investments which are indispensable for enabling and developing research in all scientific domains and also often have broader socio-economic impacts. This report identifies the challenges faced by research infrastructure funders, managers and operators all along the various phases of the research infrastructures life-cycle, presents practical solutions that have been found to be applicable in certain cases, and proposes a series of policy recommendations which could be implemented to increase their effectiveness and sustainability.

Trade is on the rise again globally, and ships are back trawling our seas, connecting places and people. But ships don’t just drive trade, they unfortunately contribute to climate change too. In fact, global shipping is responsible for about 2.5% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and these are projected to rise by between 50% and 250% by 2050 if nothing improves. And yet, maritime transport was excluded from the Paris Climate Agreement struck two years ago.

External evaluation is one of the key principles recommended by the OECD for an Independent Fiscal Institution to function well. External evaluations could take the form of periodic reviews of selected pieces of work, regular annual evaluations of the quality of analysis, permanent installations such as an advisory panel or board, or peer reviews by an IFI in another country.                                                             

Oaxaca recently experienced a period of rapid growth of public expenditure, in response to social and economic priorities. These increases in expenditure were not accompanied with corresponding increases in actual revenues, thus leading to the build-up of deficits. In 2013, the state embraced a consolidation plan, increasing revenue collections and cutting public expenditure and investment, aiming to restore budgetary balance by 2016. The Secretariat of Finance of Oaxaca has recently introduced a more robust legal framework to ensure fiscal sustainability, and avoid such policy fluctuations in the future. Despite recent improvements, there is still space to improve budget practices towards a more planned, accountable, participative and transparent budget process, as well as having an institutional and legal framework in place to ensure these practices have continuity between administrations.                                                       

Within global value chains (GVCs), services and manufacturing activities are intertwined. This report further investigates the role played by services in GVCs by looking at patterns of specialisation in 23 services industries over the period 2000-2014. Relying on the concept of revealed comparative advantage, it highlights that all countries have a comparative advantage in specific services industries, either in services within manufacturing value chains or in services exported as final products to consumers. A value-added approach is important to analyse the specialisation in services. In addition, there are tangible productivity gains out of this specialisation, as well as gains in terms of employment. Finally, empirical results suggest that services trade restrictiveness negatively affects bilateral flows of service value-added within GVCs. Both domestic reforms and the reduction of barriers in partner countries can benefit services sectors and the activities that rely on services inputs.

There is a large variety of repositories that are responsible for providing long term access to data that is used for research. As data volumes and the demands for more open access to this data increase, these repositories are coming under increasing financial pressures that can undermine their long-term sustainability. This report explores the income streams, costs, value propositions, and business models for 48 research data repositories. It includes a set of recommendations designed to provide a framework for developing sustainable business models and to assist policy makers and funders in supporting repositories with a balance of policy regulation and incentives.

Policies that spur more efficient corporate restructuring can revive productivity growth by targeting three inter-related sources of labour productivity weakness: the survival of “zombie” firms (low productivity firms that would typically exit in a competitive market), capital misallocation and stalling technological diffusion. New OECD policy indicators show that there is much scope to improve the design of insolvency regimes in order to reduce the barriers to restructuring of weak firms and the personal costs associated with entrepreneurial failure. Insolvency regime reform can not only address the aforementioned sources of productivity weakness but also enhance the productivity impacts of reducing entry barriers in product markets. As the zombie firm problem may partly stem from bank forbearance, complementary reforms to insolvency regimes are essential to ensure that a more aggressive policy to resolve non-performing loans is effective. Distortions in the banking sector highlight the importance of market-based financing instruments for productivity growth with the inherent debt bias in corporate tax systems emerging as a key barrier to technological diffusion. Finally, well-designed job search and retraining policies are effective at returning workers displaced by firm exit to work, particularly in environments where barriers to firm entry are low.

All countries are investing in the development of electronic health (clinical) records, but only some countries are moving forward the possibility of data extraction for research, statistics and other uses that serve the public interest. This study reports on the development and use of data from electronic health records in twenty-eight countries. It reports on the prevalence of technical and operational factors that support countries in the development of health information and research programmes from data held within electronic health record systems, such as data coverage, interoperability and standardisation. It examines data quality challenges and how some countries are addressing them and it explores the governance of electronic health record systems and data, including examples of national statistical and research uses of data. The report provides an overall assessment of the readiness of countries to further develop health information from data within electronic health record systems and describes the outlook for the future. Ten countries are identified as having high readiness that enables them to develop world-class health information systems supporting health system quality, efficiency and performance and creates a firm foundation for scientific research and discovery.

This paper examines the link between economic globalisation, social protection expenditure, and within-country income inequality. We examine the relationship using income inequality data from both the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) and the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID). The results based on the LIS data confirm previous findings that economic globalisation, especially economic flows, associates with higher income inequality, and that social protection expenditure are negatively associated with inequality.

Dans le contexte d’une défiance accrue envers la globalisation, et reconnaissant que le ressentiment de certains est parfaitement justifié, ce rapport soutient que le commerce n’est en lui-même ni la source ni la solution a bien des problèmes lui étant attribués. Ce qui est necessaire, est l’adoption d’approches intégrées permettant au système de mieux fonctionner dans sa globalité et pour une plus vaste majorité. Cela signifie trois choses. En premier lieu, créer les environnements dans lesquels les bénéfices du commerce se matérialisent au travers de politiques domestiques encourageant la création d’opportunités, l’innovation et la concurrence par la réduction des coûts superflux du commerce et en investissant dans les personnes ainsi que dans les infrastructures physiques et numériques. Deuxièmement, faire plus afin d’embarquer tout le monde, y compris les régions defavorisées dans lesquelles les chocs dus au commerce peuvent se concentrer. Troisièmement, mieux faire fonctionner le système international, en utilisant toute la gamme d’instruments de coopération économique pour créer des conditions internationales équitables, combler les lacunes dans les règles et faire plus pour que tout le monde, aussi bien les entreprises que les gouvernements, respecte ces règles.

Public investment is one of the fiscal tools with the strongest impacts on growth over the long term. However, public investment is in decline compared to the period prior to the 2008 global financial crisis in many OECD countries, and particularly in the EU. The main explanation for the decreased resources available for investment comes from the expenditure side. Subnational governments (SNGs)—defined as all levels of government (regional and local) below the national level, are responsible for a large share of public investment: on average, around 60 per cent in the OECD. Most of this public investment goes to infrastructure. This particular role of SNGs poses specific challenges for both the financing and governance of infrastructure investment. This paper focuses on subnational public investment in OECD countries and the EU, and shows that subnational governments have decreased their capital expenditures after 2010. This adjustment has been larger than at the central government level. The paper argues that only a limited diversification of public investment financing has occurred since 2010. The paper also argues that, beyond the sheer volume of investment spending, the governance of subnational investment is essential to efficient public investment. Based on a 2015 survey of 255 subnational governments in the EU, this paper explores specific challenges that subnational governments encounter in managing capital expenditures, , and possible ways to improve the quality of governance of subnational investments.

Satellites serve as an important option to deliver broadband services to residences and businesses in rural and remote regions throughout the world. In OECD countries, the majority of people live in urban areas or at locations that are closely settled enough to use other broadband access technologies on a cost effective basis. Satellite technology, however, is deploying several significant innovations that result in improved services and may radically change the costs of providing satellite broadband. The purpose of this report is to describe these key recent developments based upon new and anticipated satellite broadband deployments, and discuss their implications for the future use of satellites to deliver broadband services to residential and business users. The report investigates how innovation is changing the role of satellites in extending broadband services to underserved areas in relation to other broadband options and important policy challenges to be considered in light of such innovation.

Large-scale research and development programmes in neuroscience are giving rise to a host of new approaches, techniques and capacities to understand, read and intervene in the human brain. Some of these technologies reframe how we understand mental health and cognition, while others promise new applications for treating disease and even enhancing human capabilities. These developments in neuroscience and associated technologies have many ethical, legal and social implications including issues of product safety, human enhancement, dual use, privacy, and human identity. There is broad agreement among stakeholders that social aspects of brain research must be examined alongside the scientific and technical ones. In fact, good ideas for achieving such integration have emerged within the field of governance of emerging technology and within the national brain initiatives themselves. This report identifies, and seeks to address, key challenges for realising the responsible development of neurotechnology. In particular, the report analyses frameworks and mechanisms for integrating social concerns in the early development of technology, and discusses best practices for research funders across the public and private sector.

This paper analyses for 34 OECD countries the extent to which the calculation of aggregate multi-factor productivity (MFP) is sensitive to alternative parameterisations. The starting point is the definition of MFP used in previous work in the OECD’s Economics Department (e.g. Johansson et al. 2013). They include alternative MFP measures, with human capital included or excluded, with different measures of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) exchange rates, using time-varying capital depreciation rates and different measures of capital stock and labour input (headcount against hours worked). The main result of the paper is that whether or not human capital is included in MFP makes a significant difference for the level and dynamics of MFP. At the same time, MFP measures are less sensitive to other parameters of the calculation.

The paper describes the fiscal framework used in long-term economic scenarios, with some emphasis on revisions made since the 2013 vintage of the long-term model. Long-term projections for public spending on pensions, health and long-term care are now separate from other primary expenditure and sourced from previous OECD work taking account of population ageing and other cost pressures. Other primary expenditure are assumed to remain constant in real terms on a per capita basis, rather than remaining stable as a share of GDP. This difference is important for long-term fiscal projections because government finances are sensitive to the employment rate, whereas expenditure is linked to the total population. A fiscal rule adjusts government revenue to ensure that public debt eventually stabilises as a share of GDP, making government revenue as a share of GDP the preferred indicator of future fiscal pressure.

This paper estimates and quantifies the impact of structural reforms on per capita income for a large set of OECD and non-OECD countries. The findings suggest that the quality of institutions matters to a large extent for economic outcomes. More competition-friendly regulations, as measured by the OECDs’ Product Market Regulation (PMR) indicator improve economic outcomes. Lower barriers to foreign trade and investment help MFP. Lower barriers to entry and less pervasive state control of businesses boost the capital stock and the employment rate. No robust link between labour market regulation and MFP and capital deepening could be established. But looser labour market regulation is found to go hand in hand with higher employment rates. The paper shows that countries at different level of economic development face different policy impacts. Furthermore, PMR effects depend on the level of labour market regulations.