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This report provides an analysis of the state of play for tourism in Romania and examines opportunities and challenges for destination development at the subnational level. In addition, it includes an operating manual providing practical guidance for tourism practitioners, setting out the steps required to establish and operate an effective DMO. It has been produced to help public and private sector stakeholders in Romania to work in partnership to plan, develop, manage and market their destinations. The aim is to strengthen tourism structures at local, regional and national levels, so that Romania is able to compete effectively in international markets, in a way that will bring maximum benefit to the country and its destinations. Examples of international best practices, and recommendations to develop an effective and self-sustaining network of regional DMOs are also presented.
An enhanced transparency framework is a central component of the Agreement, and will apply to all Parties, with flexibility for developing country Parties that need it in the light of their capacities. This paper examines how such flexibility might be operationalised when reporting information under the future enhanced transparency system for greenhouse gas inventories and for progress towards the mitigation component of NDCs under Article 4. The paper also highlights how improvements over time in reporting of adaptation, and support needed and received could be encouraged. For each individual reporting element in these four areas, the paper identifies possible ways that countries with a range of different capacity levels could provide information for specific elements under the four reporting areas examined in the paper.
This paper identifies and analyses options for the design of the Article 6.4 mechanism in two key areas. These are the possible transition of eligible activities registered under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to the Article 6.4 mechanism; and the registration of new activities under the Article 6.4 mechanism. The paper outlines possible transition options and potential implications for four issues relating to host Party approval of activities and to the use, review and revision of baseline methodologies and accreditation standards. The paper also highlights the steps needed to register new or transitioned activities under the Article 6.4 mechanism, and how co-ordination between different actors can facilitate a transition. The paper concludes that there are options available to ensure that the Article 6.4 mechanism can be implemented within a few years of a formal agreement on the rules, modalities and procedures for Article 6, and can build on the significant experience gained with the CDM. The paper highlights different ways that this CDM experience can be built on, and outlines the varying administrative and environmental implications of doing so.
Technological developments are one of the major forces behind the need for retraining, but they can also be part of the solution. In particular, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to increase training participation, including among currently underrepresented groups, by lowering some of the barriers to training that people experience and by increasing motivation to train. Moreover, certain AI solutions for training may improve the alignment of training to labour market needs, and reduce bias and discrimination in the workplace. In order to realise the benefits of AI for training and ensure that it yields benefits for all, it will be necessary to address potential drawbacks in terms of changing skills requirements, inequalities in access to data, technology and infrastructure and important ethical issues. Finally, even when these drawbacks can be addressed, the introduction and expansion of AI tools for training is constrained by the supply of AI skills in the workforce and the availability of scientific evidence regarding the benefits of AI tools for training and whether they are cost-effective.
This article on public equity financing for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) complements earlier OECD work on market-based finance for SMEs. The development of this market segment could promote investment in SMEs and, together with securitisation and other non-bank debt financing instruments, encourage an enhanced allocation of risk and risk taking, and thus support growth. Despite the benefits of public SME equity, its share is small and an equity gap exists for risk financing more generally. A number of important impediments to the wider use of public equities for SMEs are identified, such as admission cost and listing requirements, lack of liquidity, educational gaps, limited ecosystems, and tax treatment, all of which require attention by regulators and policy makers alike.
Every successful public management reform is an amalgam of opportunity, strategy and tactics. Opportunities are country-specific conditions that facilitate some reforms and retard others; strategies are policies and actions that set goals for government and for the tasks to be undertaken in implementing wanted change; tactics are the methods used to mobilise support for and overcome obstacles to reform....
Many developing countries lack access to future and option markets to hedge the enormous risks arising from the currency exposure of their foreign debt. And even if these markets are accessible, their maturities are often too short compared to the maturities of long-term debt. The important hedging instrument available for any country, however, is the currency mix of foreign debt itself. This paper provides a theory for the optimal currency composition of foreign debt for market constrained developing countries. It also develops the empirical methodology to determine the optimal currency mix which is then applied. Applying the method to Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines and South Korea, the optimal mix is compared to alternative currency compositions, both in terms of foreign exchange gains and losses as well as variability of balance of payments flows ...
recommendations that will truly improve the radiological protection of the public, workers and the environment.
This paper presents a policy framework intended to maximize the benefits of dockless bike share through outcome-oriented system planning that includes monitoring and enforcement of regulations. Operational shortfalls of dockless bike share are categorised and several policy options for each category proposed. Finally, the paper identifies lessons and best practices from the rollout of dockless bike share systems around the world.
This report is the outcome of a joint activity between Science Europe and the OECD, and presents a generic framework for improving the use and operation of national research infrastructures (RIs), which play a key role in enabling and developing research in all scientific domains and represent an increasingly large share of research investment. It includes two guiding models: one for portfolio management and one for user-base optimisation. These identify the key principles of an effective national RI portfolio management system and the factors that RI managers should consider with regards to optimising the user base of national RIs. Both guiding models account for the diversity of national systems and RI operation approaches. The report also contains a series of more generic policy recommendations and suggested actions for RI portfolio managers and RI managers.
Indicators of "trust", "confidence", "optimism" or "sentiment" among consumers and/or investors, are published continuously in the mass media. More importantly, these indices seem not only to reflect how the state of the real economy is perceived by private agents, but can also help predict the future course of the business cycle. Moreover, in econometric analyses they have even been found to "cause" business activity. In this paper, we intend to provide a theoretical foundation for how "pessimism" and "optimism", in conjunction with estimation errors committed by private agents and contagion effects, can drive the real economy. Furthermore, the model presented is capable of incorporating the revision of expectations of private agents through Bayesian updating and to create a fully endogenized business cycle of private consumption.
For many years Greece has not made a systematic effort to redesign the whole tax system. Changes to taxation have been made in a piecemeal fashion, and many of them have led to a complex and non-transparent system, characterised by narrow bases and fairly high rates. There has also been a general lack of strong and uniform tax enforcement. Despite the considerable progress, in recent years, in broadening the tax base and improving tax compliance as well as administration, more needs to be done to enhance efficiency and equity and the overall performance of the tax system. To this end the government has indicated that it plans to introduce wide-ranging measures in 2002. The evidence, reviewed in this paper, suggests that the main priorities for reform should include: further improving transparency and reliability of the tax system including the abolition of the practice of tax amnesties and bank secrecy fo tax purposes; eliminating the strong bias in favour of the self-employed and ...
This paper reviews the Finnish tax system and the scope for further tax reform. Finland is among the most egalitarian countries in the OECD and a high tax burden is required to finance the associated public spending. Nevertheless, capital and corporate income taxation was substantially and effectively reformed in the early 1990s, through significant rate cuts cum base broadening measures. But, despite income tax cuts since the mid-1990s, high taxes, especially on labour income, still hamper growth potential and distort economic behaviour. In this respect, the poor performance of the Finnish labour market is revealing. Tax reforms have a major role to play in improving the long-term performance of the Finnish economy. Though the scope is limited, the tax burden should be shifted as much as possible from labour to property and consumption, while the earned-income tax allowance should play a smaller role, enabling cuts in statutory rates. Redesigning social security contributions to ...
The recent tax reforms have improved incentives to work and removed barriers to the internationalisation of Spanish firms, and have helped to make the tax system simpler and more neutral, especially as regards saving. However, the structure of tax wedges, combined with significant labour market rigidities, continues to inhibit job creation, and particularly job creation for the unskilled. Furthermore, certain tax privileges, in particular incentives favouring owner-occupied housing, and the multiplicity of tax rates and systems applying to business profits, hamper economic efficiency and/or weaken income redistribution. Also, while the territorial authorities’ taxing powers have been increased considerably since 1997, they remain modest by comparison with their prerogatives as regards spending. The absence of adequate mechanism for controlling expenditure at the territorial level, plus the tax revenue guarantees extended to the regions by central government, could jeopardize ...
This paper reviews different methods for assessing and comparing across countries the impact of climate change mitigation policies and policy packages on emissions. Broadening and deepening past and recent mitigation policies’ stocktaking efforts, as well as mapping them to their emission base, is key to comparing pricing and non-pricing policies and feed comparable information to ex-post empirical and ex-ante analytical models. Ex-post empirical approaches can provide benchmark estimates of policies' effectiveness from past data and furnish key parameter estimates to calibrate ex-ante analytical models (partial equilibrium, general equilibrium and integrated assessment models). Moreover, they can complement ex-ante analytical models by empirically validating their assumptions and informing models’ choices. Ex-ante analytical modelling are well suited to provide long-term forward-looking projections also on yet-to-be implemented policies. Sector specific models, such as energy system models, are well suited for a granular assessment of the impact on emissions of a wide range of price- and non-price-based policies. Outputs from the ex-ante sector-specific models can then feed into a Computable General Equilibrium model to quantify the effect of individual policies and policy packages on emissions, taking into account second order effects and reducing the risk of double counting the effect of policies.