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Inter-regional migration – the movements of the population from one region to another within the same country – can be an important mechanism of spatial economic adjustment, affecting regional demographic and growth patterns. This paper examines the economic and housing-related factors that affect the decision of people to migrate to another region within the same country, drawing empirical evidence from country-specific gravity models of inter-regional migration for 14 OECD countries. The results suggest that inter-regional migrants move in search of higher income and better employment opportunities, but are discouraged by high housing costs. In particular, house prices are found to be an important barrier to migration, especially in countries having experienced strong increases in the level and cross-regional dispersion of house prices. There is however large heterogeneity across countries in terms of what factors matter the most and in terms of the magnitude of the migration response.
There is no guidance on how to deal with the effects of catastrophic events, like the COVID-19 pandemic, on stated preference survey responses, despite the possible impact such events can have on stated values and survey responses. This paper provides a concise analysis of the likely effects of extreme events on stated preference surveys, focusing on the validity and temporal stability of estimated values, and offers a set of recommendations. These recommendations can also be of use for designing other types of household and individual surveys, beyond economic valuation surveys.
This paper gathers some of the most salient regulatory proposals and amendments to existing laws, which were available to the public as of August 2021 to compare and contrast them. It was prepared as background materials to a discussion on Ex Ante Regulation and Competition in Digital Markets held at the OECD in December 2021.
This policy note explores the different ways in which the digital economy affects investment promotion. As foreign direct investment (FDI) can be a key driver of digital growth and transformation, investment promotion agencies (IPAs) are increasingly seeking to attract firms operating in digital sectors or activities. In turn, IPAs also need to undergo their own digitalisation to become more efficient and improve their performance. Investment promotion practices need to respond to the challenges posed by new technologies and adapt new business models – particularly in the COVID-19 context.
Raising the effectiveness of Italy’s public sector is more urgent than ever. It will be key to revive investment and productivity and improve access to quality public services for the most vulnerable. The quality of public goods and services is variable, weakening Italy’s resilience to shocks like the COVID-19 crisis and the ability to secure a more sustained and inclusive recovery. Excessive regulations and their onerous enforcement add to businesses’ operating costs. Trust in public institutions and public service delivery is one of the lowest across OECD countries. In the coming years Italy will have a unique opportunity to improve the effectiveness of its public sector, through the Recovery and Resilience Plan, the renewal of the public sector workforce, and the potential of technological innovations. This paper proposes options to strengthen public sector effectiveness by looking at what interventions the public sector makes in the economy, how the public sector mobilises its workforce, procures goods and services, and leverages the benefits of digitalisation, and who acts across levels of government and between the public and private sector. It concludes that recruiting and developing the necessary skills in the workforce, monitoring performance, as well as encouraging coordination will be key to better budget allocations, regulatory environment, and delivering quality public goods and services.
On a daily basis, a deluge of academic studies, reports and news tell us that the Earth’s ecosystem is in danger. They further warn that we need more than just information to address the climate crisis, protect the environment, and promote a sustainable way of living. We need action.
Education plays a pivotal role in raising awareness and sensitivity about the environment. It must provide the foundational knowledge and skills to identify and resolve environmental challenges, and shape attitudes and behaviours that lead to both individual and collective action.
This paper proposes a ranking of the countries where forest carbon sequestration is the most cost-efficient among 166 countries for which data are available. Taking into account the main cost factors leads to a more nuanced ranking of the countries to be favoured for cost-efficient forest carbon sequestration compared to the assumption that these would always be in tropical areas with high rainfall. The ranking reflects the differences in the opportunity cost of land use and labour cost (production costs), the quality of the business environment (transaction costs), natural conditions (forest productivity), wildfire risk and the avoided GHG emissions from alternative land use. Cost-efficiency also depends on the type of forest project (afforestation, reforestation or forest conservation) and how private (wood harvest) and non-private (environmental and social) co-benefits are counted. A sensitivity analysis is undertaken to examine the robustness of the results with respect to uncertainties in values of the cost and quantity factors of forest carbon sequestration. The results support the view that forests can be a cost-efficient way to offset GHG emissions and that significant cost reductions are possible by targeting the country and sub-national regions in which to locate forest carbon sequestration projects. The report also reviews the literature on the significance and cost of forest carbon sequestration and provides an overview of forest carbon offset schemes.
Smart Specialisation Strategy is a place-based EU policy that seeks to enhance regional competitiveness through leveraging and bolstering innovation in the selected priority areas (industries or technologies) in each region. The new iteration of S3 requires developing cross-border collaborations with regions possessing complex and complementary technological expertise currently missing in a region to upgrade its technological evolution. The reason for this is that new growth opportunities arise from recombining existing technological capabilities while more complex technologies offer strong competitive advantage. This paper presents a simple roadmap for regional S3 internationalisation and the results of an in-depth case study on the opportunities for and barriers to S3 internationalisation in Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG), a region in the North East of Italy. The paper develops recommendations on how to make the most of the Research, Technology, Development and Innovation endowments in FVG through enhancing the innovation-internationalisation nexus in order to improve competitiveness of the region.
This paper summarises a discussion on "Competition Issues in Books and e-Books" held in November 2021 covering the rationale and impact of the policies and regulations in the books market; the interplay between regulation and market developments, namely the launch of e-books; and whether the enforcement cases on e-books had an impact on market developments.
The full potential of digital technologies remains unrealised and their benefits unequally shared because of insufficient investment in enabling intangible assets and communication networks within and across countries. The COVID-19 shock poses new challenges and opportunities. Drawing on past and ongoing OECD work, the paper proposes a multipronged policy approach to durably accelerate the diffusion and uptake of digital technologies across all layers of society, and share their benefits more widely. The building blocks of the proposed LIFT approach include: Lifelong learning for all to ensure everybody has the opportunity to acquire and upgrade the skills needed to thrive in a digital world; Intangibles finance for the knowledge economy to allow more firms, especially small ones, to increase intangible investment and seize the opportunities offered by the digital transformation; Framework market conditions for the digital age to upgrade policies to the digital age, especially in the areas of taxation, competition law and enforcement, digital security, firms’ entry and exit, and e-government; Technology access via digital infrastructure to facilitate access to communication networks and accelerate the take up of digital technologies and their international diffusion.
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for better tracking and monitoring domestic and international investments in health, including on pandemic preparedness. The total official support for sustainable development (TOSSD) framework can help, as it captures both cross‑border flows to developing countries, such as international assistance, and domestic contributions to global public goods, such as pandemic preparedness. This pilot study tests the current TOSSD methodology for tracking the global financing for health, and explores how TOSSD can be shaped to best respond to the emerging information needs of the international community.
Teaching foreign languages has become a major goal for many education systems around the world. In today’s increasingly interconnected world, speaking multiple languages improves employability, fosters respect for people from other cultures, and gives young people direct access to content that would otherwise be inaccessible, including literature, music, theatre and cinema. For the first time in 2018, PISA asked students whether they studied foreign languages at school and how much class time they had on foreign languages per week. Results show that learning foreign languages is widely available to 15-year-olds in today’s education systems. However, these opportunities are not evenly distributed among students of different socio-economic status: students in advantaged schools have more opportunities to learn foreign languages than students in disadvantaged schools.
This paper shares perspectives and experiences from South Africa in pursuing development goals through trade and competition. It was prepared as background material for the 2021 OECD Global Forum on Competition discussion on trade, development and competition.
This paper considers the role of economics in abuse of dominance cases. Economic analysis and evidence has become increasingly important in the context of effects-based approaches to assessing possible abuse of a dominant position. The paper sets out the core economic framework for assessment of abuse of dominance including the balancing of over- and under- enforcement and the relevance of the characteristics of the markets and economies in question. It comments, in particular, on the challenges faced by authorities in developing and middle-income countries given the rapid expansion of competition law in these jurisdictions. The economic tests in different types of exclusionary and exploitative abuses of dominance are considered along with the practical challenges in the gathering of evidence and undertaking appropriate assessments. The role of economists in cases, including as experts providing testimony on the part of private parties, is examined. This paper was prepared as a background note for a discussion on Economic Analysis and Evidence in Abuse Cases held at the 2021 OECD Global Forum on Competition.
This paper explores the role of social vouchers as a tool for social inclusion and local development. It presents a typology of vouchers and their objectives, governing institutional and regulatory frameworks, use by national and local governments, and the social economy (Section1). It analyses the challenges and opportunities for the development of vouchers in light of the COVID-19 crisis and suggests recommendations to effectively capitalise on social vouchers as a tool to “build back better” (Section 2). Finally, it illustrates and analyses specific cases in Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, France, Mexico, Morocco and Romania (Section 3).
Services play a more important role in trade and employment in the United Kingdom than in most other OECD countries. The UK services sector is supported by an open and transparent trade regime, policies that support competition and innovation, and regulatory transparency that facilitates the creation of new services businesses and start-ups. That said, certain barriers to services trade remain. This report sheds light on the role of services trade in the UK economy, describing recent trends and highlighting future challenges, and explores policy options to support a sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.
Austria is in the process of developing and implementing a comprehensive education monitoring system that is in line with the goals of the 2017 Education Reform Act.
This Policy Perspective presents the final output of this two-year collaboration between the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, the European Commission and the OECD. The overall goal of this project is to support the Austrian Government in the design and implementation of a new education monitoring system that balances traditional top-down implementation processes with more bottom-up approaches that leave room for co-construction and local adaptation. This report issues a set of recommendations for the monitoring system to provide data to support quality assurance, school self-evaluation, effective governance, evidence-based policy making, and allocation and use of resources. This report can be of help for any country looking to support policy development and improvement in the education system through data-informed decision-making.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pose challenges to public services in all countries regardless of their level of development. Their broad scope and interconnectedness, long-term commitment and contextualisation at both local and regional level require dedicated focus on government capacities to deliver. This paper analyses the major capacity areas that can support a shift from siloed policy making to more integrated approaches. It defines an ideal benchmark for assessing both the individual and organisational capacities needed by a public service to successfully deliver the SDGs. The paper, which was commissioned as part of a project to build civil service skills for SDG implementation in Poland, is drafted by Cristophe Dietrich and Marco Gozio of the ICON Institute.
Public policy can play an important role in steering the large-scale diffusion of teleworking. Various communities around the world are experimenting with innovative solutions. In Italy, the Autonomous Province of Trento has plans to design a comprehensive plan for teleworking as a way to foster local economic and social development. Opportunities and challenges for a smooth transition to an ever more hybrid work environment are explored in view of a number of societal objectives, including an improvement in living standards, territorial cohesion and competitiveness. The paper identifies six policy areas for recommendations, reflecting the conditions needed to achieve these objectives.
Regional inequality is low in Sweden compared to most other OECD countries, but has been rising over the past decades, fuelling discontent in parts of the country, whose inhabitants feel left behind. The younger population is increasingly concentrated in the largest cities, which also enjoy the highest productivity growth. Demographic trends exacerbate the difficulty in providing equal public services across the country. Healthy public finances are allowing the government to increase its support to municipalities and regions to adjust to demographic developments and local operating conditions. Beyond this effort, keeping regional inequality in check will require upgrading the sub-national government fiscal framework, enhancing public service efficiency, especially through digitalisation, and promoting regional convergence further, especially by strengthening the role of universities in regional knowledge and innovation networks.