Browse by: "2021"
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This paper clarifies the various definitions of additionality currently in use, and explores the relationship between additionality and key evaluation terms, such as impact and causality. It concludes that additionality should be assessed both ex ante and ex post, and that the presence of additionality will depend on institutional structures and on how different public and private interests are addressed. The paper further argues that the relevance of evaluation methods will depend not only on the applied financial and non-financial instruments but also on the types and dimensions of additionality to be evaluated. Several examples of different approaches to assessing additionality are analysed.
The analysis provides a useful foundation for thinking through these issues, and will be of interest to both evaluation and blended finance actors.
This paper is the second in a series of three working papers from the OECD/DAC EvalNet Working Group on Evaluating Blended Finance.
As in many countries, the economies of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) have been negatively affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Their governments responded by addressing the health impacts and providing relief to affected businesses and workers. Many EECCA countries have also implemented measures that will help advance environmental objectives as part of their rescue and recovery plans. Nevertheless, much more needs to be done to ensure that recovery plans accelerate a green transition, thereby building resilience against external shocks. This policy paper analyses measures related to COVID-19 in 11 EECCA countries based on their potential to advance the transition to a greener, climate-resilient and low-carbon economy. Recommendations suggest ways to ensure that governments align efforts to support economic recovery with their objectives on climate change, biodiversity and wider environmental protection.
Как и во многих странах, пандемия COVID-19 отрицательно сказалась на экономике стран Восточной Европы, Кавказа и Центральной Азии, ответные меры правительств которых заключались в смягчении воздействия пандемии на систему здравоохранения и оказании поддержки затронутым пандемией предприятиям и работникам. В рамках ответных мер, большинство стран ВЕКЦА также реализовали меры, которые могут способствовать достижению экологических целей. Тем не менее многое еще остается сделать, чтобы планы восстановления ускорили переход к «зеленой» экономике, тем самым повышая устойчивость к внешним шокам. В настоящем отчете проводится анализ мер, направленных на борьбу с COVID-19, предпринимаемых в 11 странах ВЕКЦА, на основании их потенциала к ускорению перехода к более «зеленой», стойкой к изменению климата и низкоуглеродной экономике. В рекомендациях предлагаются способы обеспечения содействия усилий правительств восстановлению экономики с учетом целей по борьбе с изменением климата, сохранению биологического разнообразия и расширению природоохранной деятельности.
La pandémie de COVID-19 a été lourde de conséquences sur le dynamisme des entreprises. Même si les entrées d’entreprises ont connu un rebond après la chute observée durant les premiers confinements, début 2020, ce redressement varie fortement d'un pays à l'autre, ce qui pourrait avoir des répercussions à long terme sur l’emploi et la croissance de la production. Les mesures prises pour soutenir la trésorerie des entreprises et les modifications temporaires des procédures de faillite ont permis de réduire le nombre de défaillances d’entreprises de plus de 30 % en moyenne par rapport à la période antérieure à la pandémie. Ces mesures ont sans doute protégé des entreprises viables et productives et permis d'échapper aux risques systémiques qu'aurait représenté une vague de faillites, mais elles ont peut-être maintenu en vie des entreprises susceptibles de ne pas être viables (connues sous le nom d’entreprises zombies).
Firm entry has rebounded after the drop experienced during the first COVID-19 lockdowns of early 2020, yet the recovery in entry rates is highly heterogeneous across countries, with possible long-term implications for employment and output growth. Financial support to firms’ liquidity and temporary changes to insolvency procedures have been effective in reducing bankruptcies, on average, by more than 30% relative to the pre-pandemic period. Policy measures may have protected viable and productive firms and avoided the systemic risks posed by a wave of bankruptcies, but at the risk of potentially keeping non-viable (the so-called zombie) firms afloat. Governments should implement a balanced strategy to phase out emergency support policies and pursue a gradual approach focusing on restoring the equity of distressed firms, encouraging timely debt restructuring and improving the efficiency of liquidation procedures, with the aim of fostering resource reallocation.
Circular economy policies and initiatives largely take place domestically, and yet they have important interlinkages with international trade. This report explores how to make circular economy policies and trade policies mutually supportive by mapping out potential misalignments and identifying opportunities to align and strengthen both policy areas. The report highlights the various interlinkages between international trade and circular economy, and examines the interactions between trade and circular economy at the policy level, focussing on the multilateral trade regime and regional trade agreements, as well as specific policies to promote the circular economy, such as extended producer responsibility and product stewardship schemes, taxes and subsidies, green public procurement, environmental labelling schemes, and standards.
Differences in average wages across firms – which account for around one-half of overall wage inequality – are mainly explained by differences in firm wage premia (the part of wages that depends exclusively on characteristics of firms) rather than workforce composition. Using a new cross-country dataset of linked employer-employee data, this paper investigates the role of cross-firm dispersion in productivity in explaining dispersion in firm wage premia, as well as the factors shaping the link between productivity and wages at the firm level. The results suggest that around 15% of cross-firm differences in productivity are passed on to differences in firm wage premia. The degree of pass-through is systematically larger in countries and industries with more limited job mobility, where low-productivity firms can afford to pay lower wage premia relative to high-productivity ones without a substantial fraction of workers quitting their jobs. Stronger product market competition raises pass-through while more centralised bargaining and higher minimum wages constrain firm-level wage setting at any given level of productivity dispersion. From a policy perspective, the results suggest that the key priority should be to promote job mobility, which would reduce wage differences between firms while easing the efficient reallocation of workers across them.
This report presents an analysis of current transport activity in India and reviews key policy instruments set up by Indian institutions to shape transport developments in the coming years. It also investigates future scenarios of transport in India and outlines key aspects that should be considered in the upcoming work on transport decarbonisation. The final section builds on these insights, charting a way forward for a climate change mitigation strategy for the Indian transport sector. In particular, it underlines the importance of taking an approach that is not limited to direct GHG emission reductions but takes into account a lifecycle perspective.
With the pandemic as a backdrop, this note provides a selected, high-level picture of resilience in infrastructure. Dimensions of resilience are explored across the project life-cycle, from planning and designing, to construction, operations, and decommissioning. This builds an understanding of how infrastructure is interconnected and contributes more broadly to resilient communities, particularly in light of the impacts of COVID-19. While not exhaustive, this note focusses on examples and observations in recent months, and looks forward as to how infrastructure can contribute to a sustainable recovery, particularly regarding potential lasting effects from the pandemic and how infrastructure can be innovative, adaptive or regenerative.
This note first provides context by presenting high-level observations on the impact of COVID-19 in infrastructure. Aspects of resilience are briefly described such as physical, operational, financial, and governance, while broader considerations such as shifting demographics or technological change are also explored. This is followed by a section on how COVID-19 could impact infrastructure going forward.
This paper studies how industries’ investment in organisational capital (OC) and workforce skills relate to productivity, building on OECD estimates of OC, output data from the OECD Structural Analysis (STAN) database, and both cognitive and task-based skill indicators from the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The paper finds that at the industry level, workers’ numeracy and endowment of skills related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) correlate positively with productivity, and that the positive correlation of STEM skills with productivity is generally larger for OC workers. The paper also finds evidence that skills dispersion harms industry performance. A gap between the ICT skills of OC and non-OC workers seems to trigger a “lost in translation” type of mechanism, whereby communication and information flows become less fluid and impinge upon the economic performance of sectors, correlating negatively with productivity.
This paper presents the most recent data on the number of migrant doctors in the health workforce in the OECD countries, as well as the impact these regular migration flows have on the countries of origin, including an analysis of the developments since 2000. The objective of this paper is to inform policy dialogue at the national and international levels.
The share of migrant doctors has continued to rise over the last two decades across the OECD countries, with around two-thirds of all foreign-born or foreign-trained doctors originating from within the OECD area and upper-middle-income countries. The lower-middle-income countries account for around 30% and low-income countries for 3-4% of the foreign-born and 4% of the foreign-trained doctors. In countries of origin that are large, migration to (other) OECD countries has a moderate impact, but some of the relatively smaller countries or those with weak health systems experience significant losses of (needed) health professionals.
This paper presents the most recent data on the extent to which migrant nurses contribute to the nursing workforce in the OECD countries as well as the impact these regular migration flows have on the countries of origin, including an analysis of the developments since 2000. The objective of this paper is to provide new data for policy dialogue at the national and international levels. The shares of foreign-born or foreign-trained nurses have continued to rise over the last two decades across the OECD countries, with intra-OECD migration making up a third of the migration volume. Regarding the impact on countries of origin, emigration rates to OECD countries are generally moderate but a few countries experience significant losses of (needed) nurses. However, for a significant share of the foreign-trained nurses, the data sources do not allow the identification of the country of training. Hence, some of the results should be treated as lower-bound estimates.
Career guidance has never been seen as more important but what really makes a difference to the prospects of young people? This paper provides guidance to schools on how school leaders, teachers and guidance professionals can be most confident that they are providing useful support to students. It summarises available research on how schools can be most effective – and shares examples of how countries are helping to prepare young people to become career ready even at the most difficult times. In particular, it focuses on three important teenage attributes which act as indicators for whether they can be expected to do as well as possible in the jobs market. It matters:
- What teenagers think about their futures in work
- How they explore their potential futures at home or at school
- Whether they experience workplaces through part-time working, internships or volunteering.
Young people who think about, explore and experience potential future lives in work are much better placed to make decisions that are right for them and compete for available jobs. The paper summarises the key evidence, sets out principles underpinning more effective career guidance and shows how well students are doing in different countries. Finally, encourages interested policy makers and practitioners to stay in touch with OECD work that will conclude late in 2021 with the development of data-driven tools for practice.
Blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) could help create trust and consensus in areas of the transport sector where they are needed for efficient solutions but currently often lacking. Such challenges concern for instance clearing transactions amongst multiple parties with divergent interests, authenticating provenance, managing assets, and auditability. This report explores how DLTs can address these issues by providing an alternative to centralised record-keeping and third-party audit-based approaches. It offers recommendations for maximising the benefits of DLTs in transport based on several use cases in freight and logistics as well as passenger transport.
Genomic and biobank collaborative platforms hold significant promise for the development of new discoveries and therapies. This paper explores the complex technical, legal and business challenges arising from genomics and biobanks, and brings together ideas and best practices from major national and international platforms, and from a diverse range of experts. The global sharing of biological samples and genomic data has been critical for accelerating our understanding of the biology and spread of COVID-19, and for the development of vaccines and diagnostics. Although some of the policy challenges in the field are well known, they have been reconfigured by the digitalisation of health innovation combined with the increasing complexity and volume of data, the push for global collaboration, and the growing awareness of ethical, legal, and social implications.
This paper takes stock of official statistics on AI use in firms collected through ICT usage surveys. Its aim is to highlight statistically sound data that can be used to guide policymakers and other stakeholders in the complex field of AI. It provides a cross-country comparison of official AI measures in selected OECD countries and international organisations by reviewing the statistical AI definitions developed explicitly for measurement purposes as well as the AI questions in official ICT use surveys. Based on the results of these surveys, the paper provides an international comparison of AI uptake among firms. It also includes a brief overview of smaller-scale non-official measures of AI, which can complement official statistics. In its final part, it makes an initial attempt to match AI policy with the AI measures previously analysed, and highlights possible next steps. This paper is also a contribution to the OECD AI Policy Observatory.
A more resource efficient and circular economy will help to decouple global economic growth from natural resource use, decrease environmental degradation and improve energy efficiency. Existing circular economy policies have been largely focused at the national level. However, trade policies can promote greater resource efficiency and circularity by enabling economies of scale in recycling; by ensuring regulatory coherence between different frameworks for recyclable material; and by helping to address the problem of exports to countries without adequate recycling facilities.
The vast majority of trade in end-of-life material ‒ waste and scrap ‒ is in metallic material. Recycling metallic waste and scrap means less mining of non-renewable resources, and producing the most commonly used metals from recycled material uses 60-97% less energy than producing them from mined material. Moreover, demand for some minor metals and minerals, such as lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements (REE) used in energy storage, wind turbines and other environmental goods is projected to increase sharply as the global economy strives to become more carbon-neutral. Recycling these low-volume minerals will become urgent. Trade in these recovered materials will be particularly important in order to allow economies of scale for recycling operations as technologies evolve.
Digital technologies are transforming the environment in which firms compete online. While this change has delivered wide-reaching benefits for consumers, it has also given rise to potential competition concerns. One such area of concern relates to conglomerate mergers, which occur between firms that are neither product market competitors nor in a supply relationship. This Going Digital Toolkit note describes how merger control, and in particular the review of conglomerate mergers, can be an effective tool for making online markets more competitive.
The majority of listed companies are part of a group linked through ownership and/or other mechanisms to exercise control. The popularity of group structures is based on a number of economic and legal advantages, including facilitating the supply of goods and services, economies of scale, reaching new markets or new activities, sharing the provisions of internal services such as loans and facilitating mergers and acquisitions. This working paper presents a comparative overview of the regulation of groups in company law. It also discusses how different corporate governance codes make recommendations on issues relevant to the boards in company groups.
App-based mobility services have brought large consumer benefits by expanding choice and improving service quality, as well as driving down consumer prices and creating new jobs. At the same time, the rapid growth of these new services has given rise to concerns about a range of actual or potential negative impacts, and poses new challenges for policy makers and regulators. This Going Digital Toolkit note identifies key issues and principles that policy makers should consider when regulating app-based mobility services. It also discusses the key regulatory dynamics affecting the markets for ridesourcing, e-scooters and shared bicycles. The Annex provides case studies of the regulation of these services and identifies key lessons from this experience.