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Trust is a key component in peer platform markets (PPMs). In 2016, the OECD’s Committee on Consumer Policy (CCP) produced a report on Protecting consumers in peer platform markets: Exploring the issues. The 2016 report examined a number of the mechanisms that peer platforms have themselves developed to help engender trust in and use of their services (e.g. initiatives such as ratings and reviews) and raised a set of questions for further research and reflection. In order to understand better the role and drivers of consumer trust in PPMs, the CCP conducted an online survey of 10 000 consumers across ten OECD member countries. This report discusses the findings of that survey.

Macroeconomic data are indispensable for modern governance, yet it is often unclear how reliable these data are. The production process of macroeconomic data inside the statistical offices is often not very transparent for the general public. Bystanders usually have no choice but to take for granted the published data because criteria by which to judge data quality are wanting. Hoping to contribute to a better understanding of the quality of macroeconomic data, this paper proposes several plausibility checks and applies them to recently published Swiss labour productivity growth figures. Although the proposed checks cannot "prove" or "disprove" the official data, they are capable of either strengthening our confidence in the official data or, alternatively, of casting them into doubt. Policy debates drawing on official data will hardly be able to ignore differences in the degree of confidence with which these data are held to be accurate.

In most countries with available data, public educational institutions charge different tuition fees for national and foreign students enrolled in the same programme.
In Australia, Austria, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, foreign students pay on average about twice or more the tuition fees charged to national students.
In Australia and New Zealand, the estimated revenue from foreign students’ tuition fees exceeds one-quarter of the total expenditure on tertiary educational institutions.
Recent reforms in Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden show that changes in foreign students’ fees are reflected by changes in the number of international new entrants.

Turkey’s current and future economic growth is estimated by OECD “to rise to above 3% in 2013 and, as the global recovery gathers strength, to pick up to 4.5% in 2014”. The energy situation, particularly, in the electricity sector with supply from different energy sources and a high rate of importation has led to recognition by the Turkish government of a need for nuclear energy.

This policy response highlights how Ukraine’s regional development and decentralisation reforms, adopted after the 2014 Maidan Revolution, have contributed to the resilience of the country’s regions and municipalities following Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Based on the OECD report Rebuilding Ukraine by Reinforcing Regional and Municipal Governance, it also sets forth how the achievements of Ukraine’s post-2014 multi-level governance reforms can provide the stepping stones for an effective subnational reconstruction and recovery. Finally, it presents concrete recommendations on how policymakers can leverage local expertise and further build subnational capacities to design and implement reconstruction projects and track progress, as well as contribute to longer-term sustainable regional and local development.

This paper explores the relationship between the diversity within a higher education system and five key factors, namely: the environment, policy intervention, funding, competition and co-operation, and ranking. The exploration is based on the extent to which higher education systems, particularly those of Australia and New Zealand, have accommodated distinctive forms of higher education institutions characterised by the older traditional university at one extreme, and the newer university of technology at the other. Twelve interdependent propositions on diversity are proposed and discussed. These propositions indicate the ways in which each of the five key factors may influence institutional diversity or convergence. In the majority of circumstances, the convergent tendencies of institutions will predominate unless very specific environmental and economic conditions prevail, and/or specific directed policy is implemented.

The idea of an entrepreneurial university caught on fast after the American sociologist Burton R. Clark published his books on entrepreneurship in universities (Creating Entrepreneurial Universities, 1998; Sustaining Changes in Universities, 2004). Inspired by the alluring of the notion of an entrepreneurial university, and by decreasing levels of state funding for universities, we undertook a study on four very active ECIU universities (ECIU = European Consortium of Innovative Universities, www.eciu.org). To evaluate and quantify their level of entrepreneurship, we extracted from Burton Clark’s case studies twenty organisational practices against which a University’s entrepreneurship can be measured. These twenty practices or factors in effect formed the basis for an entrepreneurship audit. During a series of interviews, the extent to which the universities are seen as entrepreneurial by the interviewees was surveyed. We showed that the practices have been implemented only to various degrees and rather unsystematically. There are important differences among the universities, to some extent depending on the level of ambition that each university has regarding each practice. There are also important similarities; especially that entrepreneurship within universities has to be welcomed and facilitated top-down, but organically occurs and develops bottom-up. Implementing entrepreneurship at universities is thus about stimulating a culture of organic intrapreneurship and we provide practical recommendations and further research options to that effect.

The Network on Fiscal Relations has been assessing the degree of sub-central government tax autonomy in OECD countries for almost two decades. This paper provides an in-depth description of the methodology used to characterise tax autonomy. After summarizing the wide-spread use of the tax autonomy results by researchers addressing a range of policy issues, the paper highlights recent trends in sub-central government revenues and presents the results of the latest survey of tax autonomy, completed in 2017. Using the OECD’s tax autonomy methodology, the paper for the first time assesses local government tax autonomy in the 50 US states. The analysis reveals that US local governments have somewhat more tax autonomy than local governments in the average OECD country. The paper includes suggestions for further refinements of the tax autonomy methodology.