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Universal service obligations are common in many of the infrastructure sectors. The obligations are often cited as a justification for limiting entry of new providers because the new providers would cherry-pick the highprofit customers who provide the basis for subsidization of another group of customers. When obligations are beneficial, there are a number of policy traps that can be encountered: Obligations are often poorly defined and not well-focused on the customers who are meant to receive help; Obligations are frequently defined narrowly in ways that disfavour new technologies and cause extensive waste; and financing for the noncommercial obligations can often be raised in more efficient ways than through cross-subsidies and can often be spent on multiple service providers rather than one preferred provider. Falling into these traps can create incentives for over-investment in certain infrastructure technology and under-investment in other technology. This paper provides guidance on the competition problems that can arise from universal service obligations and on some ways to limit these problems. This OECD Competition Committee roundtable was held in October 2003.
- The importance of wages in the analysis and forecasting of macroeconomic developments needs no emphasis. Nominal wage inflation is a crucial component of price inflation, while real wages importantly influence the demand for labour and for other factors of production. More generally, the way in which nominal wages are set is an important determinant of whether or not there is any short- or longer-run trade off between inflation and employment. The way that wages evolve in the current situation of recovering output and profits, where inflation has declined and unemployment remains high, will be critical in determining whether there are pressures which might contribute to a resurgence of inflation. This paper analyses the historical determinants of nominal wages in ten OECD economies and considers the implications for future wage, and hence inflation, developments.
- The Phillips curve represents a dynamic adjustment process of nominal wages to equilibrium and disequilibrium phenomena ...
The empirical literature on development has labelled as “middle-income trap” (MIT) the fact that many developing economies struggle to adjust to new sources of growth after reaching middle-income levels. For Latin America and the Caribbean, this is an especially challenging scenario, as only Chile, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay have become high-income economies in the last six decades while several other LAC countries, already middle-income as early as 1950, stayed in that income range. This paper analyses empirically the main policy areas explaining the MIT, based on the experiences of 76 emerging economies and OECD countries, comparing those which evaded it and those which stayed there since the 1950s. Based on more than 200 000 estimations using a linear discriminant analysis, we identify institutional, social and economic features that help characterise policy priorities to overcome the middle-income trap. Furthermore, using the Synthetic Control Method, we present for selected Latin American countries their main policy gaps according to their unique characteristics.
This brief was developed by the OECD Regulatory Policy Division. It discusses how countries can together manage more effective and consistent responses to the COVID-19 crisis and its vast consequences by learning from each other, ensuring the resilience of supply chains and maintaining the interoperability of essential services through international regulatory co-operation (IRC).
SMEs and entrepreneurs are of critical importance for reaching climate objectives. They have a significant environmental footprint on aggregate, but also make important contributions to reaching net zero through their innovations and greening efforts. This paper discusses the importance of taking entrepreneurs and SMEs into account in climate and environmental policies. It analyses the drivers and barriers of green entrepreneurship and the greening of SMEs, and discusses policy options to support these objectives.
The Working Paper summarises the main findings and recommendations of the pilot study, including first orders of magnitude of TOSSD flows to Nigeria. Estimated TOSSD flows to Nigeria in 2016 amounted to approximately USD 3 billion of official development finance and USD 1.9 billion of private finance mobilised through official development interventions. These first orders of magnitude have been estimated using OECD DAC Statistics. However, these figures are likely to be largely underestimated due to information gaps, notably on the People’s Republic of China (hereafter China) and emerging providers’ official support to Nigeria. The results of the pilot also indicate that the current organisational set up of Nigeria, both from an institutional and an IT system perspective, makes it challenging for the Government to access, collate, collect analyse and use data on external financing to the country using national data.
The TOSSD pilot in Nigeria confirmed the usefulness of country pilots for testing the TOSSD methodology and for ensuring feedback by partner countries on TOSSD as a measurement framework. The findings also helped to ascertain that the International TOSSD Task Force developing the framework is in the right direction with regard to the main parameters of the measure. Findings contained in the present Working Paper will support the discussions to refine the emerging TOSSD Reporting Instructions in 2018 and 2019.
Embracing a policy and culture of diversity and inclusion (D&I) is increasingly considered the norm for public services across the OECD. A growing number of countries acknowledge how diversity has the potential to improve service delivery to citizens and boost performance through greater innovation and employee engagement. But, while some improvements have been made over time, progress has remained slow. In most public services, pay gaps for the same positions persist; the representation - particularly at senior levels of women, visible minorities and people with disabilities - remains markedly lower than in the general population; and in employee surveys, levels of perceived harassment and bullying remain higher than average for certain demographic groups. In many OECD member countries, a new generation of D&I policies is being developed to cultivate a culture of inclusion. The present Working Paper examines how public administrations are addressing this challenge, highlighting good practices in areas such as inclusive leadership models, the use of HR analytics and behavioural approaches to design and implement D&I policies. It also identifies governance mechanisms and tools for managers and organisations to help ensure coherence and accountability for D&I goals. The drive for diversity and inclusion will always be a moving target; public services will need to continually assess, adapt, and strive for public services that reflect the changing societies that they serve.
This paper reviews public expenditure in New Zealand and the scope for further progress. Since the mid-1980s, New Zealand has been a world leader in public management reforms. Government agencies have been transformed by delegating managerial responsibility to them and replacing input controls with an output-based budgeting and management approach. The adoption of a medium-term top-down fiscal management framework contributed to a large reduction in public debt. But while the system is good at producing outputs cheaply and often in innovative, responsive, and customer-driven ways, it is not as good at choosing what to produce in the first place (i.e. technical versus allocative efficiency). This reflects insufficient evaluation of programmes, not enough focus on managing for outcomes, and a budget that is excessively fragmented. The quality of spending could also be improved by a greater willingness to extend the use of market-based mechanisms, including usercharges, competition ...
Extension of the Framework Agreement of International Collaboration on Research and Development of Generation IV Nuclear Energy System
IAEA Practical Arrangements on Nuclear Science Applications
International Nuclear Law Association (INLA), German Branch, 2017 Bonn Conference
22nd Nuclear Inter Jura Congress in New Delhi, 2016
NLA course on “Nuclear Energy and Law”
India national moot court on nuclear liability law