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Creativity and critical thinking are key skills for complex, globalised and increasingly digitalised economies and societies. While teachers and education policy makers consider creativity and critical thinking as important learning goals, it is still unclear to many what it means to develop these skills in a school setting. To make it more visible and tangible to practitioners, the OECD worked with networks of schools and teachers in 11 countries to develop and trial a set of pedagogical resources that exemplify what it means to teach, learn and make progress in creativity and critical thinking in primary and secondary education. Through a portfolio of rubrics and examples of lesson plans, teachers in the field gave feedback, implemented the proposed teaching strategies and documented their work. Instruments to monitor the effectiveness of the intervention in a validation study were also developed and tested, supplementing the insights on the effects of the intervention in the field provided by the team co-ordinators.
What are the key elements of creativity and critical thinking? What pedagogical strategies and approaches can teachers adopt to foster them? How can school leaders support teachers' professional learning? To what extent did teachers participating in the project change their teaching methods? How can we know whether it works and for whom? These are some of the questions addressed in this book, which reports on the outputs and lessons of this international project.
This report develops new indicators on the impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI) on sustainable development in host countries. Taking into account the country-specific context, policymakers can use FDI Qualities Indicators to assess how FDI supports national policy objectives, where challenges lie, and in which areas intervention is needed. The report includes indicators on five sustainability clusters: productivity and innovation, employment and job quality, skills, gender equality, and carbon footprint. This report is part of OECD’s efforts to enhance socio-economic impacts of private investment, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and following a request of OECD Ministers related to the update of the OECD Policy Framework for Investment.
Australia requires a strong system of adult learning to position firms and workers to succeed as skill demand changes. The country has scope to improve the coverage and inclusiveness of its adult learning system as coverage has declined since 2012, and several vulnerable groups are under-represented. Financial incentives, if carefully designed, can raise participation in adult learning by addressing cost and time barriers. This report summarises the advantages and disadvantages with various financial incentives to promote adult learning based on international and Australian experience. Drawing from these insights, as well as analysis of individual and firm-level barriers, the report provides policy recommendations for how Australia could reform its financial incentives to boost participation.
The WTO plays an important role in supporting efforts to achieve international regulatory cooperation (IRC) and to facilitate trade. First, the WTO provides a multilateral framework for trade among its 164 members, with a view to ensuring that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible. Second, the WTO’s Agreements provide important legal disciplines, helping to promote good regulatory practice and IRC at the domestic level as a means of reducing unnecessary barriers to trade.
This publication highlights how the WTO’s Agreements on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) and the work of their related Committees promote opportunities for regulatory cooperation among governments and ease trade frictions. It demonstrates how members’ notification of draft measures, harmonisation of measures with international standards, discussion of specific trade concerns and other practices help to facilitate global trade in goods. The study also makes recommendations on how to benefit further from the transparency and cooperation opportunities provided by the TBT and SPS Agreements.
This report looks at the challenges faced by Asian countries in addressing inclusive growth and fiscal decentralisation. A series of studies examines how policies in the region have evolved in accordance with changes in demography and the economic environment, reflecting country characteristics, history and political economy forces.
Natural disasters continue to cause widespread damage and losses, with fast growing economies particularly exposed. Governments often shoulder a significant share of the costs of disaster recovery and reconstruction. This is true in OECD countries and even more so in developing economies, where private insurance markets are not as well developed. The fiscal impact of disasters on a government’s budget can be sizeable. Expenditures for the government arise from both explicit and implicit commitments to compensate for disaster losses. This report presents the results of a study that compares country practices in the management of the financial implications of disasters on government finances for a set of OECD member and partner countries particularly exposed to natural hazards.
Den svenska ekonomin är innovativ och rik på immateriella tillgångar, då en stor del av företagens värde finns i de immateriella tillgångarna. Den svenska industrin är global och beroende av export. Samtidigt är hotet från piratkopiering stort, och svenska företag är sårbara.
Denna rapport visar på piratkopieringens direkta ekonomiska effekter för svenska företag, konsumenter och samhälle. Rapporten belyser både importen av piratkopierade varor till Sverige och de immaterialrättsliga effekterna för svenska företag av den globala handeln med piratkopierade produkter.
The OECD reviews national and sector-specific public procurement regimes, to guide and support countries in combatting collusive practices. This review analyses the procurement practices in Argentina's in the public works sector to help the country step up its fight against bid rigging.
This report maps strategies, governance tools, institutional settings and innovative approaches used by governments across the OECD to drive and support society-wide gender equality goals. It covers all state institutions, including legislatures and judiciaries, and discusses the challenges faced by OECD countries in achieving long-lasting impact. Finally, the report provides policy guidance for state institutions, supported by examples of what works across the OECD. This report establishes a baseline for monitoring progress, based on the 2015 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Gender Equality in Public Life.
Sufficient and affordable access to different sources of finance is crucial to allow SMEs and entrepreneurs to reach their full potential. The 8th edition of the Scoreboard on SME and Entrepreneurship Finance report provides data from 46 countries around the world on debt finance, alternative finance instruments and financing conditions, as well as information on policy initiatives to improve their access to finance.
In 2017, SME bank credit increased at a modest pace in many countries and declined in some others, in the context of broadly positive macroeconomic conditions, improvements in the business environment and accommodative credit conditions. In contrast, volumes were generally up for most other sources of finance relevant for SMEs and entrepreneurs, such as leasing, factoring, online alternative finance, and venture capital investments. At the same time, a growing share of SMEs relied on self-financing for their investment needs and cash flow requirements in 2017.
The thematic chapter of this publication investigates the potential for SMEs to leverage their intangible assets to access external finance, especially debt.
The OECD Anti-Bribery Convention is the foremost global legal instrument for fighting the supply side of foreign bribery. The supply side of foreign bribery relates to what bribers do – it involves offering, promising or giving a bribe to a foreign public official to obtain an improper advantage in international business. In contrast, the demand side of foreign bribery refers to the offence committed by public officials who are bribed by foreign persons.
This study explores whether there is a "flip side" to enforcement actions that ended in sanctions for the supply-side of a foreign bribery transaction. It focuses on what happened on the receiving end of this transaction. That is to say, were the public officials in the demand-side country also sanctioned or otherwise disciplined?
Are tax incentives the best way to encourage people to save for retirement? This publication assesses whether countries can improve the design of financial incentives to promote savings for retirement. After describing how different countries design financial incentives to promote savings for retirement in funded pensions, the study calculates the overall tax advantage that individuals may benefit from as a result of those incentives when saving for retirement. It then examines the fiscal cost of those incentives and their effectiveness in increasing retirement savings, and looks into alternative approaches to designing financial incentives. The study ends with policy guidelines on how to improve the design of financial incentives to promote savings for retirement, highlighting that depending on the policy objective certain designs of tax incentives or non-tax incentives may be more appropriate.
Infrastructure worldwide has suffered from chronic under-investment for decades and currently makes up more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. A deep transformation of existing infrastructure systems is needed for both climate and development, one that includes systemic conceptual and behavioural changes in the ways in which we manage and govern our societies and economies. This report is a joint effort by the OECD, UN Environment and the World Bank Group, supported by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. It focuses on how governments can move beyond the current incremental approach to climate action and more effectively align financial flows with climate and development priorities. The report explores six key transformative areas that will be critical to align financial flows with low-emission and resilient societies (planning, innovation, public budgeting, financial systems, development finance, and cities) and looks at how rapid socio-economic and technological developments, such as digitalisation, can open new pathways to low-emission, resilient futures.
The 2009 Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (“Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi” Commission) concluded that we should move away from over-reliance on GDP when assessing a country’s health, towards a broader dashboard of indicators that would reflect concerns such as the distribution of well-being and sustainability in all of its dimensions. This book includes contributions from members of the OECD-hosted High Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, the successor of the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission, and their co-authors on the latest research in this field. These contributions look at key issues raised by the 2009 Commission that deserved more attention, such as how to better include the environment and sustainability in our measurement system, and how to improve the measurement of different types of inequalities, of economic insecurity, of subjective well-being and of trust.
A companion volume Beyond GDP: Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance presents an overview by the co-chairs of the High Level Expert Group, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Martine Durand of the progress accomplished since the 2009 report, of the work conducted by the Group over the past five years, and of what still needs to be done.
The quality of corporate governance regulations matters. If they are well designed, they can help governments achieve important policy objectives, such as higher levels of investment, increased productivity and better business sector dynamics. But for this to happen, the rules and regulations must be allowed to evolve over time. They must also be able to meet the many different needs of those entrepreneurs, investors and stakeholders who are supposed to implement them.
This is why the G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance state that policy makers have a responsibility to shape a regulatory framework that can meet the needs of corporations that operate under widely different circumstances.
Importantly, this concept of flexibility and proportionality is not about less demanding rules or the acceptance of sub-standard practices. On the contrary, it represents a functional and outcome oriented approach to regulation that facilitates implementation and makes enforcement more effective.
This OECD report presents the results of an OECD review on flexibility and proportionality practices in seven different areas of corporate governance regulation. The review covers 39 jurisdictions and six in-depth country case studies.
This report, prepared by FAO and the OECD with inputs from IFPRI, IFAD, the World Bank and WTO, has been submitted to the G20 Presidency of the Argentine Republic in response to the Presidency’s request for information on future trends and challenges faced by global agriculture, with a special focus on the role of soils in promoting food security and the measures that could be undertaken to facilitate sustainable soil management.
The OECD reviews national and sector-specific public procurement regimes, to guide and support countries in combatting collusive practices. This review analyses Mexico's Social Security Institute procurement rules and practices in light of the OECD Recommendation and Guidelines on Fighting Bid Rigging in Public Procurement.
Intergovernmental fiscal frameworks, as considered by the OECD Network on Fiscal Relations Across Levels of Government, are a core driver of inclusive growth. Certain institutions and policies can contribute to a more equitable distribution of economic gains across jurisdictions and income groups, such as equalisation systems. In particular, the quality of public sector outcomes depends on how responsibilities and functions such as education or health care are shared across government levels. This implies that intergovernmental fiscal frameworks, which drive the division of roles of the central and sub-national governments, critically influence growth and the inclusiveness of an economy. This book brings together academics and practitioners to address key aspects of intergovernmental fiscal relations and country experience, as they relate to inclusive growth.
This report applies the lessons from the OECD’s analysis of disaster risk financing practices and the guidance in the OECD Recommendation on Disaster Risk Financing Strategies to the specific case of earthquakes. It provides an overview of the approaches that economies facing various levels of earthquake risk and economic development have taken to managing the financial impacts of earthquakes.
Insgesamt geht es der deutschen Wirtschaft gut. Dennoch meinen viele Deutsche, nicht ausreichend am Wirtschaftsaufschwung teilzuhaben, da ihres Erachtens ihr Wohlstand durch den technologischen Wandel, den Wettbewerb aus dem Ausland und die Ankunft von Migranten herausgefordert wird. Um sich diesen Herausforderungen zu stellen, muss die neue deutsche Regierung nicht nur Wachstum, sondern auch Nachhaltigkeit der Wirtschaft fördern und gleichzeitig sicherstellen, dass alle von der florierenden Wirtschaft in Deutschland profitieren und kein Teil der Bevölkerung zurückgelassen wird. Dafür ist ein robustes Wachstum des Bruttoinlandprodukts wesentlich. Dies setzt jedoch eine bessere Innovationspolitik, den Einsatz der modernsten Technologien in Unternehmen, weitere Investitionen in Infrastruktur und Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie sowie den Aufbau von Kompetenzen voraus. Auch die Arbeits- und Sozialpolitik ist so zu gestalten, dass sie einen reibungslosen digitalen Wandel ermöglicht. Zudem sollten öffentliche Investitionen erhöht werden, vor allem für die Entwicklung der Vorschul- und Primarstufe sowie der Verkehrsinfrastruktur. Ebenfalls erforderlich sind Maßnahmen zur Verringerung des Ungleichgewichts auf dem Wohnungsmarkt und eine bessere Anbindung der ländlichen Gebiete an die dynamischen urbanen Zentren. Schließlich sollte die deutsche Regierung eine Beschäftigungs-, Bildungs- und Steuerpolitik verabschieden, die allen – auch Frauen, jungen Menschen und älteren Arbeitnehmern – den Zugang zu anspruchsvollen Stellen erlaubt und die Klimaziele des Landes umsetzt.