Browse by: "2022"
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This policy brief documents how bi- and tri-partite social dialogue at different levels, including collective bargaining, is shaping and implementing measures that support a job-rich recovery – both by assisting workers in moving from declining to expanding job sectors in response to structural change and by retaining experienced workers when needed, so that production responds to increases in demand.
The OECD has constructed an Investment Tax Incentives database which compiles granular details on corporate income tax (CIT) incentives for investment. This paper presents the methodology used to develop the database and insights from an initial data collection in 36 developing countries. The paper describes a classification to structure quantitative and qualitative information on investment tax incentives across three dimensions: design features, eligibility conditions and their legal basis. The data reveal that tax exemptions are the most widely used CIT instrument across the 36 countries and identifies notable differences between the incentives used within and outside of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). In 80% of countries covered, at least one tax incentive supports an area related to the Sustainable Development Goals.
Global warming and air pollution threaten human health, economic prosperity and human capital accumulation. The current review presents empirical findings on the effect of adverse environmental conditions on cognition, with a focus on pollution and high temperatures. The review takes a life-course perspective and quantifies both the direct and indirect effects of cumulative and transitory exposure to adverse conditions on cognition starting in-utero all the way to exposure in old age. The review makes clear that exposure to pollutants and high temperatures has economically meaningful costs for both individuals and societies, stemming from lower human capital accumulation. Furthermore, the evidence presented indicates that adverse environmental conditions have large distributional consequences, leading to widening disparities in educational opportunities both across countries and across socio-economic groups within-countries. The review discusses the mechanisms underpinning these effects and explores policies that have the potential to mitigate the negative impact of adverse conditions on cognition.
This paper provides estimates of the cost of preventing land-based plastic leakage into the ocean, covering 38 OECD member countries and 10 selected major plastic waste emitters in Asia and Africa. The study estimates capital costs at EUR 54 billion in the Moderate Ambition scenario and EUR 74 billion in the High Ambition scenario. The annualised per-capita costs range between EUR 0.2 to 6.5 in the Moderate Ambition scenario and from EUR 0.8 to 6.5 in the High Ambition scenario. These cost estimates are much lower than UNEP and ISWA estimates of the cost of inaction of inadequate waste management, roughly USD 9 to 45 per capita. Differences in estimated costs are found to depend on countries’ waste policy stringency and waste management infrastructure. This paper contributes to OECD work in support of a sustainable ocean economy and the Global Plastics Outlook report.
The OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 (E2030) project’s overall goal is that of looking to the future in terms of how school curricula should evolve given the technological advances and other changes that societies are now facing. Towards that end, the E2030 project centres on the idea that education needs to equip students with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values they need to become active, responsible and engaged citizens.
Mathematics is considered a highly relevant subject for achieving the above stated goals, as such it requires further and more detailed analysis. As a result, it has been chosen as one of the E2030 project’s subject-specific analyses. The project has been named the Mathematics Curriculum Document Analysis (MCDA) study as per the request of participating countries. This working paper presents the findings of the MCDA study, which involves participants from 19 countries and jurisdictions.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Malaysia undertook a series of vigorous reforms, ranging from the improvement of regulatory framework to the digitalisation of the economy, with the aim of boosting productivity. While the protracted pandemic has inevitably stalled reform efforts in many countries, including Malaysia, strengthening the business climate has become all the more important. This will be essential to achieve a robust recovery, accelerate digitalisation, and adopt a new working environment combining productivity and sanitary precautions. This paper discusses: 1) how Malaysia can reinvigorate business dynamism with new regulatory reforms; 2) how it can boost the uptake by businesses of digital solutions; and 3) based on the recent experience of teleworking, how it can prepare an enabling working environment for the digital age.
La recuperación tras la pandemia de COVID-19 provocará probablemente la reubicación de empleos entre sectores y ocupaciones y, con esto, la necesidad de proveer de asesoría y orientación profesional a los adultos en necesidad de mejorar o cambiar sus habilidades. La crisis también ha causado un cambio repentino en la manera de proporcionar orientación profesional, migrando de presencial a distancia. Este informe de política describe el impacto de la pandemia sobre la demanda y la prestación de orientación profesional; documenta los esfuerzos de los países para continuar proporcionando servicios de orientación profesional durante los confinamientos; y explora la futura necesidad de aumentar el alcance de la orientación profesional. Dada la importancia de la orientación profesional para mantener relevantes las habilidades de los trabajadores y mejorar la pertinencia entre la demanda y la oferta de habilidades, este informe también ofrece guía en políticas para mejorar su alcance, uso y calidad.
The recovery from the COVID‑19 pandemic is likely to trigger job reallocation between sectors and occupations and, with it, a need to provide career guidance and advice to adults in need of upskilling and reskilling. But the crisis has also resulted in a sudden shift in much of the delivery of career guidance from in-person to remote. This policy brief describes the impact of the pandemic on the demand for and the delivery of career guidance, documents countries’ efforts to maintain provision of career guidance services during lockdowns, and explores the need to scale up career guidance going forward. Given the importance of career guidance in keeping workers’ skills relevant and improving the match between the demand and supply of skills, this brief also offers policy directions to improve its coverage, use and quality.
By moving goods and people over large distances, air transport facilitates international trade and tourism and thus contributes to economic growth and job creation. At the same time, it also comes with environmental challenges, largely related to air emissions and their impact on global warming. Air transport has been disproportionately negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with associated reductions in air emissions. However, recent projections show that, in the absence of accelerated technological developments and more ambitious policy measures, aviation-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will grow again at a rapid pace after the pandemic. This paper describes a new OECD database providing near-real-time and global information on aviation-related CO2 emissions, with allocations across countries following either the territory or the residence principle. This database provides a public good for both statistical measurement and environmental policy analysis. On the statistical front, it will facilitate the compilation of global Air Emission Accounts according to the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA), bring granular and timely information on a significant source of CO2 emissions, and allow tracking their evolution during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The comparison with official statistics that are available with a significant delay and at lower frequency demonstrates the accuracy of the OECD estimates. On the environmental policy front, it is expected that the OECD database will help monitor the impact of technological developments and policy measures to curb aviation-related CO2 emissions in the future.
Around one-third of the European Union’s budget is dedicated to cohesion policy, which promotes and supports the overall harmonious development of its Member States and regions. The success of this investment relies on effective partnerships among governments, stakeholders, and citizens. Citizens have a key role to play in shaping decisions on public investment, as well as in making public authorities more transparent and accountable. From July 2020-December 2021, the European Commission and the OECD partnered to explore how five authorities across Europe could place citizens at the centre of their investment decisions. This report summarises lessons learned throughout this project and, particularly, the results of applying innovative citizen participation methods to cohesion policy more broadly.
This report explores the issues public authorities must address when establishing data-reporting mandates and policies. Transport systems and the people using them generate an ever-increasing amount of data which can help improve transport system performance. The risks from missing or overly broad reporting policies can be mitigated by following reporting guidelines and principles that focus on the public value of data.
El comercio internacional se desplomó en 2020, pero se recuperó con fuerza en 2021. Si bien los flujos comerciales totales se encuentran ahora holgadamente por encima de los niveles anteriores a la pandemia, los impactos comerciales sobre todos los bienes, servicios y socios comerciales específicos son muy diversos, lo cual presiona a determinados sectores y cadenas de suministro. Los cambios en la estructura del comercio provocados por la pandemia de COVID-19 en un solo año fueron de una magnitud similar a los que suelen ocurrir durante un periodo de cuatro a cinco años. A finales de 2021 prevalecían desequilibrios considerables entre socios comerciales y productos, y no se recuperaron todas las pérdidas acumuladas de las fuertes bajas anteriores. La heterogeneidad de las repercusiones comerciales y de los cambios en los flujos respectivos entre productos, fuentes y destinos despierta gran incertidumbre y costos de ajuste e implica brindar incentivos adicionales para que los consumidores, las empresas y los gobiernos adopten nuevas estrategias de mitigación de riesgos o intensifiquen las actuales.
International trade plunged in 2020 but recovered sharply in 2021. While total trade flows are now comfortably above pre-pandemic levels, trade impacts across specific goods, services and trade partners are highly diverse, creating pressures on specific sectors and supply chains. The changes in the trade structure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in a single year was of a similar magnitude to changes otherwise typically seen over 4-5 years. Substantial imbalances across trade partners and products remained at the end of 2021, and not all of the accumulated losses from the earlier steep declines were recuperated. The heterogeneity of trade impacts and changes in trade flows across products, sources and destinations signifies high uncertainty and adjustment costs, and implies additional incentives for consumers, firms and governments to adopt new — or to intensify existing — risk mitigation strategies.
This paper assesses the role of carbon pricing in a sustainable recovery from COVID-19. It tracks the policy changes in carbon pricing within OECD and G20 countries between January 2020 and August 2021 of the COVID-19 pandemic. Carbon pricing as defined here includes emissions trading schemes, fossil fuel support and carbon, fuel excise or aviation taxes. The paper also highlights the need for the recovery to be sustainable and discusses the advantages, limitations and uses of carbon pricing therein. In addition, it describes additional challenges to as well as increased rationale for carbon pricing in the pandemic. It provides evidence on the effects of carbon pricing on the challenges and discusses carbon pricing design elements to help overcome those challenges. The paper concludes that there were more policy changes with an expected negative impact on climate. However, it is likely that the impact of the climate-positive changes – which are broader in coverage and scope - will outweigh the climate-negative changes.
Across OECD countries, the increasing demand for evidence-based policy making has led governments to design policies jointly with relevant indicators to monitor their implementation. Indicators can be effective tools as they provide key information to pilot implementation towards the achievement of policy objectives. The development of adequate indicators and practices is however a complex exercise, as it requires striking the right balance between guiding development and strengthening accountability.
This Education Spotlight draws on evidence from the OECD Implementing Education Policies programme and expertise developed during partnerships with several countries and the European Commission. It aims to provide insights to policy makers and various education stakeholders, to initiate a discussion on the use and misuse of indicators in education, and to guide future actions towards a better contribution of indicators to education policy implementation.
This brief focuses on the role carbon pricing can play in the COVID-19 recovery and in reaching national and international climate goals, such as those in the Paris Agreement. It outlines the carbon pricing policy changes (Emissions Trading Schemes (ETS), fossil fuel support (FFS), carbon, fuel excise and aviation taxes) that took place during the first 20 months of the pandemic (January 2020 to August 2021) in the 47 OECD and G20 countries. There had been 99 incidents of carbon pricing policy changes during this period, with the majority expected to have a negative effect on greenhouse gas emissions. However, policy changes with climate-positive effects were broader in scope regarding coverage of emissions and sectors and are, thus, likely to outweigh the climate-negative policy changes.
La présente synthèse porte sur le rôle potentiel de la tarification du carbone dans la reprise post-COVID-19 et la réalisation des objectifs climatiques, tels que ceux énoncés dans l’Accord de Paris. Y sont exposés les changements que les 47 pays de l’OCDE et du G20 ont apportés à leurs dispositifs (systèmes d'échange de quotas d'émission (SEQE), aides aux énergies fossiles, taxes carbone, droits taxes d'accise sur les combustibles et les carburants et taxes aéronautiques) au cours des 20 premiers mois de la pandémie (janvier 2020-août 2021). Il y a lieu de penser que la majorité des 99 changements répertoriés influeront défavorablement sur l’évolution des émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Cela dit, les changements climato-favorables couvrent un champ plus vaste et concernent une plus grande partie des émissions si bien qu’ils feront probablement contrepoids. Enfin, il apparaît que l’incidence de la tarification du carbone sur la reprise post-COVID-19 dépendra des caractéristiques des dispositifs retenus.
This policy brief is the third in a series of thematic policy briefs in the OECD's Resourcing Higher Education Project. This wider project aims to provide a shared knowledge base for OECD member and partner countries on policy for higher education resourcing, drawing on system-specific and comparative policy analysis. The policy brief for Ireland addresses a series of specific questions about the funding of higher education institutions, formulated by Ireland’s Higher Education Authority (HEA). The brief first reviews the main factors that affect the cost of delivery in higher education (cost drivers) and the extent to which OECD jurisdictions monitor costs and use cost information to inform the design and implementation of their funding systems. It then provides an analysis of the ways in which OECD jurisdictions design models for allocating public funding to higher education institutions to promote social inclusion objectives, reward institutional performance and provide targeted resourcing for national priorities, such as increasing supply of high-demand skills.
As countries implement stricter environmental policies, the need for tools to compare countries’ environmental policy stringency is becoming more pressing. The OECD Environmental Policy Stringency (EPS) index has become a widely used tool for policy analysis since its creation in 2014. This paper updates the EPS index over three decades from 1990 to 2020, across 40 countries and 13 policy instruments, focussing on climate change and air pollution mitigation policies. It up-grades the index structure across all years, adding a new sub-index that measures the strength of technology support policies, which complements the existing structure of market based and non-market based sub-indices. The paper shows evolving developments – across countries and time – in the stringency of environmental policies.
Self-report data such as those regularly administered with questionnaires in the OECD’s educational large-scale assessments are subject to response biases such as acquiescence, i.e., the tendency to agree with questionnaire items regardless their content. Research has shown that acquiescence affects the psychometric quality of such data, posing a threat to validity. Using a simple index that can be computed in the presence of both positively and negatively keyed items, the author examined the prevalence, the individual-level correlates, the impact on associations between indicators, as well as the county-level consistency of acquiescence for 16 questionnaires administered in four study programmes (PISA, TALIS, SSES, and IELS). Findings suggest that variation in acquiescence exists both between and within countries, the latter of which is determined by factors largely in line with prior research. Impact on associations as well as high levels of country-level consistency are evident. Based on these findings, recommendations for the construction of questionnaires to be administered in future assessments are derived.