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The studies in this volume review concerns that exporters and governments have raised about market access. This publication analyses where and why certain non-tariff measures are being applied to traded goods that are covered by multilateral rules and disciplines, and how they continue to represent challenges for exporters and policy makers. The specific measures examined are prohibitions and quotas, non-automatic import licensing schemes, customs fees and charges and export restrictions. By drawing together available recent data and other information, this volume expands the knowledge base of policy makers, negotiators and anyone interested in learning about the use of these measures across countries, applicable international trade rules and remaining market access issues.

Governments need to ensure that public officials perform their duties in a fair and unbiased way. The pressure comes from a society and a business community that are increasingly well-informed, and specifically from a general demand for unbiased and transparent public decision-making. The OECD Guidelines for Managing Conflict of Interest in the Public Service provide the first international benchmark in this field. They help governments review and modernise their conflict-of-interest policies in the public sector. The report highlights trends, approaches and models across OECD countries in a comparative overview that also presents examples of innovative and recent solutions. Selected country case studies give more details on the implementation of policies in national contexts and on key elements of legal and institutional frameworks

Innovation, skills, entrepreneurship and social cohesion are key drivers of growth, and essential goals of effective economic development strategies. Each has a strong governance component, which requires real partnership between government, business and civil society. In this book, the OECD has brought together top world experts to translate policy lessons into concrete recommendations that will help policy makers and practitioners make the best governance decisions to stimulate growth.

Electricity market reform has fundamentally changed the environment for maintaining reliable and secure power supplies, creating a more integrated and dynamic network environment with new real-time challenges for reliable and secure transmission system operation. But despite these fundamental changes, system operating rules and practices remain largely unchanged. The major blackouts of 2003 and 2004 raised important questions about the appropriateness of these arrangements. This publication presents case studies drawn from recent large-scale blackouts in Europe, North America, and Australia. It concludes that a comprehensive, integrated policy response is required to avoid preventable large-scale blackouts in the future.

This book assesses experience in reforming electricity markets in OECD countries over the past decade, focusing on the issues that are critical for successful liberalisation. Experiences and examples in the study are drawn mainly from the UK, Australian, Nordic and North Eastern United States (the PJM interconnection) markets, which have all operated with considerable success for a number of years. The issues covered in the study are: the rationale and benefits of liberalisation; the governance required to create effective competition; the role of prices and transparent wholesale markets; consumer protection; incentives for investment, and impact of addressing security of supply and environmental policy.

Transition and emerging economies have difficulties developing their financial markets to a level that would provide access to long-term debt finance at an affordable cost. This report examines opportunities beyond the public sector for financing water and other environmental infrastructure. Specifically, opportunities for accessing savings through private financial and capital markets have been examined. The report identifies bottlenecks to the development of local financial markets for environmental infrastructure and discusses policy recommendations to tackle them.

This report helps establish a new agenda for age-friendly employment policies and practices. It sets out the policy challenges presented by rapidly ageing labour forces in OECD countries and draws out the main lessons learned from OECD's series of country reviews on Ageing and Employment policies.  Among other issues, it discusses how to remove work disincentives and increase choice in the work-retirement decision, improve employability of older workers, and change employer attitudes and employment practices.

This annual edition of Labour Force Statistics provides detailed statistics on population, labour force, employment and unemployment, broken down by sex, as well as unemployment duration, employment status, employment by sector of activity and  part-time employment. It also contains participation and unemployment rates by sex and detailed age groups as well as comparative tables for the main components of the labour force. Data are available for each OECD member country and for OECD-Total, Euro area and EU15. The time series presented in the publication cover 20 years for most countries. It also provides information on the sources and definitions used by member countries in the compilation of those statistics.

Building on a recent groundbreaking OECD/World Bank seminar, this volume explores whether and how trade liberalisation can contribute to achieving universal service goals and the types of complementary policies required.  It focuses on experiences in four sectors - telecommunications,  water and sanitation, financial services, and electricity. The unique multi-sector perspective taken in this book, together with the national case studies, yield insights which can help countries promote their universal access goals. A horizontal assessment also helps determine how far the current services negotiations in the WTO, under the General Agreement on Trade in Services, can aid the attainment of universal service goals.

A trend toward decentralisation has meant that sub-national governments increasingly find themselves responsible for providing a host of public goods and services. Rarely, however, can they "go it alone". Co-ordination among levels of government is imperative. This book offers a unique analytic framework for assessing multi-level governance arrangements, which is subsequently applied to five case studies of regional development policy: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The book reveals the importance of contractual arrangements for customised management of interdependencies, for clarifying responsibilities among actors, for dialogue, and for learning.

The long-term safety of deep disposal of radioactive waste is strongly dependent on the performance of the geological setting. The geology fulfils important safety functions including isolating the waste from human contact or intrusion, providing a stable physical and chemical environment, insulating against external disturbances, and preventing or delaying the transport of radioactive materials away from the waste.  Thus, a sound understanding of the geology's history and evolution is central in supporting assessments that examine the long-term performance and safety of deep disposal. This conference proceedings examines how geoscientific arguments and data are compiled and linked to create a unified description of the geological setting to support a safety case. It also examines practical aspects and limitations in collecting, linking, extrapolating and communicating such information.

Local development strategies represent an important response to the challenges of globalisation, while providing a mechanism for seizing the new opportunities that globalisation offers. Nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin wall, this book evaluates progress made and identifies what needs to be done to speed up the drive towards prosperity in Central and Eastern Europe. It demonstrates that the success of local development strategies depends on the capacity of the government and its partners to accelerate change within the policy and governance aspects of economic and social development.