This book examines the historical, diplomatic, economic, and strategic aspects of the European Recovery Program (ERP) - popularly known as the Marshall Plan - which brought Europe out of the chaos, hunger, poverty, desperation, and ashes of World War II. In it, authors from a variety of countries who are scholars, policy makers, and business leaders, address applications of the Marshall Plan’s lessons learned to the 21st century for capacity building, human and sustainable development, and the role of public, private partnerships in emerging market economies and democratic societies.
"A careful and vigorously argued monograph… an important book that future research in this area will have to take into account."
– eh.net book review by Hugh Rockoff of Rutgers University.
This report contributes to the discussion of interconnections between scarce resources by highlighting the nexus between land, water and energy (the LWE nexus). It focuses on a dynamic, integrated, and disaggregated analysis of how land, water and energy interact in the biophysical and economic systems. The report provides projections for the biophysical and economic consequences of nexus bottlenecks until 2060, highlighting that while the LWE nexus is essentially local, there can be significant large-scale repercussions in vulnerable regions, notably on forest cover and in terms of food and water security.
The analysis is based on coupling a gridded biophysical systems model with a multi-regional, multi-sectoral dynamic general equilibrium modelling assessment. Numerical insights are provided by investigating a carefully selected set of scenarios that are designed to illustrate the key bottlenecks: one scenario for each resource bottleneck, plus two scenarios that combine all bottlenecks, with and without an overlay of climate change.
Tables of national competitiveness give an easily comparable ranking of the winners and losers of global economic competition. But they don't explain why the “poor” countries are four times less productive than the “rich” ones or why some rich countries are twice as productive as others. Using empirical data from over 50 countries, this book shows how even small differences in a number of factors combine to boost or block productivity. Governments need such information to set priorities. Investors need it too, and two new rankings are proposed as alternatives to a simple comparison of industrial productivity. The first, called the “investor ranking”, is based on infrastructure, human capital and total factor productivity. The second, “exporter ranking”, is for investors whose prime concern is for a production platform well-integrated into world trade. Combining the new rankings with a more traditional one produces three groups of countries, termed balanced, high potential, and vulnerable. Group membership reserves some surprises: you may be rich, but that doesn’t mean you’re not vulnerable.
The Impact of Regulation on International Investment in Finland examines what drives FDI into Finland and which domestic regulatory aspects may discourage foreign investment. The report analyses trends in FDI flows towards Finland and other Nordic-Baltic countries and discusses the benefits of foreign investment for the Finnish economy. It provides a comparative overview of the regulatory frameworks in force in Finland and its Nordic-Baltic peers, outlining both economy-wide and sector-specific findings, and explores how changes in these regulatory frameworks are linked to changes in FDI inflows in the region. Foreign investors’ views on Finland’s business environment complement these findings. The report underlines potential areas for reform and suggests policy actions that could further improve Finland’s investment climate and contribute to attracting and retaining more FDI, while also strengthening its positive impact.
As the 20th century draws to a close, powerful forces of change are converging that could set the stage for a long, sustained economic boom in the next few decades -- the transition to a knowledge-based society with its potentially huge productivity gains; the emergence of more deeply integrated, global markets for goods, services, capital and technology; and a fast-growing environmental awareness that could greatly accelerate the shift to new, less resource-intensive production and consumption patterns. The result could be several decades of above-average economic growth, substantial increases in income and wealth, and significant improvements in well-being across the world.
But what will it take to unleash these dynamic forces? Not only will it call for a range of initiatives to establish the rules and frameworks for guiding the transition to a sustainable global knowledge economy, but above all, it will require exceptional efforts among decision makers in government, business and society at large to encourage continuous innovation, creativity and high levels of investment, and to promote bold new approaches to closer international co-operation and institution building. Inevitably some countries will benefit more than others, but a long boom with all its wealth creating capacity would offer a unique opportunity to reverse the trends of the last decades towards deepening inequality and exclusion.
This book reviews the forces driving economic and social change in today's world. It asesses the likelihood of a long boom materialising in the first decades of the 21st century and explores the strategic policies essential for making it happen.
The Future of Rural Manufacturing provides insights on the transformations that have occurred in manufacturing across rural regions in recent decades. It describes opportunities and challenges in this context, highlighting those relating to climate and demographic change and digitalisation, as well as shifting patterns in globalisation. With support from the European Commission, the project combines a wide range of both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The former examines broad trends in manufacturing performance across OECD rural (TL3) regions between 2000 and 2019, with deeper dives that draw on more granular microdata in 14 OECD countries. Case studies were conducted across 12 regions in Slovenia, Germany, Italy, and France. They comprised interviews with over 300 local, regional, and national actors across government, private sector, universities, research institutes, NGOs and non-profit community organisations. The project also benefited from foresight and futures workshops conducted in January and July 2022 with experts and policymakers across OECD countries.
This book addresses the rising productivity gap between the global frontier and other firms, and identifies a number of structural impediments constraining business start-ups, knowledge diffusion and resource allocation (such as barriers to up-scaling and relatively high rates of skill mismatch).
Analysis based on micro and industry-level data highlights the importance of reallocation-friendly policies, including well-functioning product, labour and risk capital markets, efficient judicial systems, bankruptcy laws that do not excessively penalise failure, housing policies that do not unduly restrict labour mobility, and improvements in public funding and organisation of basic research which do not excessively favour applied vs basic research and incumbents vs young firms.
Money's destiny is to become digital. Throughout the ages physical money in the form of objects, coins and notes has increasingly been replaced by more abstract means of payment such as bills of exchange, cheques and credit cards. In the years to come that trend to virtual money will continue apace. As technological advances in ICT and biometrics come on-stream, as intangibles progressively become the primary source of value-added in the burgeoning knowledge economy, and as the public at large come to grasp the advantages of digital transactions, virtual forms of payment will dominate. How quickly will this happen on a major scale, and will cash disappear altogether? How will it affect our daily lives? Will it deepen already existing rifts in society? Does virtual money threaten control of the money supply, raising the spectre of greater inflationary risks? Or will it put central banks out of business? This book tackles these and many other critical questions, offering timely suggestions on why and how to make the transition to the world of digital money.
This book explores the social, economic and environmental forces that may combine to attract migrants of various types and backgrounds to OECD countries, as well as those that may persuade migrants to leave their countries or to stay at home. By analysing different pull and push factors and constructing five different scenarios of migration in the future, this volume casts light on major determinants of global migration flows, which OECD countries will look particularly attractive for migrants, where the pressures to migrate be especially strong and what kind of migration-related issues will policy makers likely be facing as 2030 approaches.
The agro-food sector in OECD countries is heading towards an era of turbulance and transition. With food demand in developing countries growing, barriers to trade and investment falling, and consumer tastes and preferences rapidly diversifying, the landscape of OECD food markets will be radically different 20 years from now. Are food shortages likely and what will happen to food prices? What changes will we see in food retailing and food processing? Will there be more co-operation between the various players in the agro-food industry, more concentration or more competition? To grasp these challenges, this report looks into the prospects for the agro-food sector to 2010-20 and examines the new generation of key issues that lie ahead for governments, business, farmers and consumers.
This report explores likely future changes in family and household structures in OECD countries; identifies what appear to be the main forces shaping the family landscape between now and 2030; discusses the longer-term challenges for policy arising from those expected changes; and on the basis of the three subsequent thematic chapters, suggests policy options for managing the challenges on a sustainable basis.
This report on the funding of school education constitutes the first in a series of thematic comparative reports bringing together findings from the OECD School Resources Review. School systems have limited financial resources with which to pursue their objectives and the design of school funding policies plays a key role in ensuring that resources are directed to where they can make the most difference. As OECD school systems have become more complex and characterised by multi-level governance, a growing set of actors are increasingly involved in financial decision-making. This requires designing funding allocation models that are aligned to a school system’s governance structures, linking budget planning procedures at different levels to shared educational goals and evaluating the use of school funding to hold decision makers accountable and ensure that resources are used effectively and equitably.
This report was co-funded by the European Commission.
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The New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC) initiative was established to distil lessons from the Global Financial Crisis and now the systemic crises sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic. This book publishes short summaries of a diverse range of thinking and proposals from a prestigious series of experts. NAEC invited them to share their expertise with those who wish to learn more about the financial system from those at its heart. They debate the theory and models of the financial system as well as the role of its different component parts, such as currency, insurance or asset management and how they interact. And they offer advice on how financial policy can contribute to making the financial system more resilient.
Though only three years old, electronic commerce over the Internet has the potential to transform the marketplace. E-commerce will change the way business is conducted. Traditional intermediary functions will be replaced, new products and markets will be developed, and new relationships will be created between business and consumers. It will alter the way work is organised and open new channels of knowledge diffusion and human interactivity in the workplace. Workers will need to be more flexible as their functions and skills are redefined. The changes e-commerce will bring are far-reaching. They require new frameworks for doing business and a re-examination of government policies relating to commerce and skills. What is electronic commerce? What is the current state and likely future direction of e-commerce? What are the drivers and what are the inhibitors? What is its impact on costs, prices, and ultimately on economic efficiency? How is it affecting intermediaries? How do firms compete in the electronic environment? What market structure is likely to emerge? What is the impact on jobs? What types of skills will be needed? What major societal transformations will it entail? The full impact of e-commerce remains to be seen. This book begins to address these questions and provides a ground-breaking assessment of the economic and social impacts of electronic commerce and its effects on jobs by drawing on existing qualitative and quantitative evidence. This early analysis of an extremely dynamic activity identifies a number of areas where research is urgently needed and serves as the basis for an informed policy debate.
Information and communications technology (ICT) has become a key driver of economic growth over the past decade. The rapid diffusion of the Internet, of mobile telephony and of broadband networks all demonstrate how pervasive this technology has become. But how precisely does ICT affect economic growth and the efficiency of firms? And how well can these effects be measured?
This report provides an overview of the economic impact of ICT on economic performance, and the ways through which it can be measured. Using available OECD data, the first part of the book examines the available measures of ICT diffusion, the role and impact of ICT investment and the role of ICT-using and ICT-producing sectors in overall economic performance. The second part of the book offers nine studies for OECD countries, based on detailed firm-level data and prepared by researchers and statisticians from a wide range of OECD countries. These studies use a variety of methods and provide detailed insights on the effects of ICT in individual countries.
This report examines how public stockholding policies related to rice in Asia can influence domestic and international markets. Following a review of the working of rice public stockholding programmes in eight Asian countries (Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand), the report examines the impacts of these programmes over the medium term (2018-2030) and analyses how these impacts would change should the selected countries collectively set their public stocks to either a low or high level. Results show that the strongest impacts would occur during the three-year transition period when countries adjust their public stocks to the new levels, but that there would also be structural impacts over the medium term, although at a lower intensity, on procurement, domestic and international prices, availability, private stock levels, and public expenditure. In the event of a global production shock, the model projects that the immediate impact on prices and availability would be less severe under the high public stock scenario, but that recovery would be faster and public expenditure lower when countries hold smaller public stocks.
The Arctic is a vital region that helps preserve the balance of the global climate. The Arctic environment is particularly sensitive to short-lived climate pollutants, including black carbon, due to their strong warming effect. With ambitious policy action to reduce air pollutants, Arctic Council countries would obtain a positive effect on health and the environment throughout their territory, while also helping to slow down climate change by reducing emissions of black carbon. This report calls for ambitious policy action to reduce air pollution in Arctic Council countries, highlighting the environmental, health, and economic benefits from policy action.
How can growing social diversity be harnessed to make for more creative societies in the future? Three powerful forces are simultaneously shaping the social foundations of the future: deep-seated change in underlying economic systems, rapid global integration, and growing social diversity itself. The question is whether the three will combine constructively and lead to social progress or whether another, grimmer scenario lies ahead.
Does growing diversity, commendable in itself, mean we are headed for more inequality across the world's populations? Will access to and use of new knowledge and advanced technologies alleviate or aggravate the differences? What steps can policy makers take to ensure that growing differentiation within and among societies gives rise to increased creativity instead of mounting tensions?
This book asks some hard questions about our changing world, and examines the policy opportunities that need to be grasped if we are to foster sustainable social foundations for the 21st century.
The biological sciences are adding value to a host of products and services, producing what some have labelled the “bioeconomy” and offering the potential to make major socio-economic contributions in OECD countries. Using quantitative analyses of data on development pipelines and R&D expenditures from private and public databases, this book estimates biotechnological developments to 2015. Moving to a broader institutional view, it also looks at the roles of R&D funding, human resources, intellectual property, and regulation in the bioeconomy, as well as at possible developments that could influence emerging business models to create scenarios to 2030. These scenarios are included to stimulate reflection on the interplay between policy choices and technological advances in shaping the bioeconomy. Finally, the book explores policy options to support the social, environmental and economic benefits of a bioeconomy.