Browse by: "2021"
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This paper explores the interaction between the governmental policies adopted to face the COVID-19 emergency and competition policy. It was prepared as background for a discussion on the role of competition policy in promoting economic recovery held in December 2020.
This paper explores the interaction between competition law and policy and sustainability. It was prepared as background for a discussion on the topic held in December 2020.
This paper explores the use of market studies with the specific objective of addressing emerging competition issues. It was prepared as background for the discussion "Using Market Studies to Tackle Emerging Competition Issues" held at the 2020 OECD Global Forum on Competition.
This paper provides an overview of how digital advertising markets work, to look at the state of competition in these markets, and to identify what responses various jurisdictions are considering to address competition concerns in these markets. It was prepared as background for a discussion on the topic held in June 2021.
This paper considers the benefits of extending the timeframe used to evaluate potential competition and reviews the tools that are available to assess it. It was prepared as background for a discussion on the topic held in June 2021.
Economic analysis is central to effective merger review. This paper was prepared as background for a discussion on Economic Analysis in Merger Investigations held at the 2020 OECD Global Forum on Competition.
This paper describes the role that data portability and interoperability measures can play in promoting competition both within and among digital platforms. It was prepared as background for a discussion on the topic held in June 2021.
The OECD Career Readiness project makes use of quantitative evidence to investigate how career-related aspects of teenage lives are associated with better adult employment outcomes. Review of multiple national longitudinal datasets confirms 11 indicators of better outcomes linked to the ways in which teenagers while in secondary education explore, experience and think about their potential futures in work. The aim of this policy brief is to explore the policy implications of international indicators of career readiness confirmed in the research, to share evidence from OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 on the extent to which young people are meeting the indicators and examples of practice that align with the empirical findings. It concludes with insights from the research for guidance policy (including 14 questions for schools) and, acknowledging the limitations of the new evidence, provides guidance on how the evidence base can be further strengthened.
This paper brings up key findings from a discussion on "Competition Economics of Digital Ecosystems" held at the OECD in December 2020. It also summarises the discussion in detail.
This note explores how investment promotion agencies (IPAs) handle and adopt policy advocacy in OECD countries. It presents the main trends across IPAs, provides an overview of how IPA characteristics influence policy advocacy priorities and highlights some key challenges and ways to address them.
The effort to ensure that Africa’s new, 21st-century oil producers avoid the resource curse has involved the promotion of a remarkably similar set of institutional reforms, often termed the Norwegian Model. This model involves separating out the policy, commercial and regulatory functions of oil governance, and is based on the successful experience of Norway. This paper tracks the adoption and implementation of these oil governance reforms in five of Africa’s new producers – Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, the United Republic of Tanzania and Uganda – and asks how this process has shaped the capabilities of each country to govern oil effectively. It particularly focuses on how relations between international actors and ideas and domestic political settlements shape how bureaucratic pockets of effectiveness (PoEs) emerge and/or are maintained as key nodes of oil governance capability. As such our analysis will be of interest to those within the international development community interested in natural resource governance, good governance, the political economy of aid, the role of institutions in delivering development, as well as observers of the five countries covered in the study.
Digital transformation has become a prevalent part of our lives, changing the way we consume, produce and trade, and this trend has only accelerated since the COVID-19 crisis. Still, digital transformation remains largely hidden in official trade statistics. From a statistical perspective, a fundamental rethink is required in the way that core national accounts are constructed if meaningful measures of digital trade are to be developed. This Going Digital Toolkit note highlights the main features of the OECD-IMF-WTO conceptual framework defining digital trade, as well as practical guidance to overcome some of the measurement challenges. It also catalogues various country initiatives to estimate digital trade.
The aim of the OECD Career Readiness project is to identify patterns of teenage attitudes and activities that are associated with better transitions into employment by analysing multiple national longitudinal datasets. This paper looks for further evidence of the link between teenage activities, experiences and career-related thinking and adult career outcomes by analysing 10 new datasets from eight countries. Overall, the results of this paper find further evidence that secondary school students who explore, experience and think about their futures in work frequently encounter lower levels of unemployment, receive higher wages and are happier in their careers as adults. The findings of this paper are analysed together with the evidence from the two previous working papers of the Career Readiness project, concluding that there is international evidence to support 11 out of the 14 potential indicators that were explored as indicators of career readiness.
Understanding consumption-based emissions from Agriculture, Forestry and Land-use (AFOLU) activities is important in developing climate policy for the sector. This paper proposes a new methodology to construct indicators – CBAFOLU indicators ‒ to provide estimates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions arising from AFOLU activities (including fisheries) in the global supply chain of finished products. The CBAFOLU indicators identify the countries where emissions are generated and the countries where the goods that “embody” these emissions are eventually consumed. CBAFOLU indicators are provided for bilateral flows of emissions for 65 countries over 2005-15. The indicators also break down emissions by types of GHG: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and CO2 emissions from land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF). Given their preliminary nature, the CBAFOLU indicators should be seen as a first building block in a series of steps to explore the allocation of AFOLU activities across countries through the lens of sustainability; priorities for further work to refine the indicators are also proposed.
Carbon leakage arises when emission reductions in countries applying a carbon tax are offset, partially or completely, by emission increases in countries that do not apply the tax or any other greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies. Analysis using the MAGNET computable general equilibrium model indicates that a carbon tax always lowers global GHG emissions from agriculture, even when it is applied in a small group of countries, provided that producers facing the tax can make use of GHG abatement technologies. This suggests that mitigation policies should be considered in conjunction with investments in research and development on abatement practices and technologies. When a small number of countries adopt a carbon tax, about half of the direct reduction in emissions in adopting counties is offset by higher emissions in non-adopting countries; the rate of carbon leakage declines as the group of countries implementing a carbon tax expands. Higher tax rates stimulate larger global emissions reductions, but also induce higher rates of emissions leakage, thus limiting the mitigation benefits from setting higher tax rates in contexts where few countries adopt the policy.
The risks of carbon leakage associated with climate policies in the agricultural sector remains under-researched. Studies to date suggest that carbon pricing policies implemented by a single country, or small group of countries, reduce global emissions but also affect the international competitiveness of these countries’ agricultural sectors and induce carbon leakage. While carbon leakage can be prevented with trade-related measures that adjust emissions prices at the border, such measures applied in developed countries could potentially lead to significant welfare losses for developing countries that heavily rely on agricultural exports. That said, important caveats apply to the reviewed studies: i) from an environmental perspective, estimations of carbon leakage rates alone do not offer a comprehensive assessment of how optimally agricultural activities are allocated across countries; ii) most of the studies estimate the effects of additional environmental policies, such as carbon taxes, and ignore the effects of existing policies, including market distorting and potentially environmentally harmful support for agricultural production.
Reporting and review requirements under the Paris Agreement include provisions under Article 13 relating to the implementation and achievement of Parties’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Draft texts relating to Article 6.2 relating to Parties’ use of cooperative approaches also include provisions on reporting and review. This document identifies and analyses issues related to the interplay of relevant reporting and review requirements under both Article 13 and Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, as it is important to improve complementarity and ensure consistency between the two sets of reporting and review provisions, as well as to meet the already-agreed principles governing transparency. Regarding reporting, the document highlights options for improving the clarity of the provisions concerning the timing, content, and frequency of the three required types of information under Article 6.2 guidance (i.e., the initial report, annual information, and regular information). Regarding Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs), this document highlights several issues relating to timing and vintages that would need to be addressed to facilitate ITMO reporting and review implementation. Regarding review provisions, this document finds that draft A6.2 guidance could usefully provide further detail on some substantive aspects of the Article 6 review process, such as, e.g., clarifying roles of the Party, the TER team, and the secretariat in the review process.
This paper analyses net-zero emissions targets adopted in law, proposed in legislation, or reflected in policy documents in 51 countries and the EU to better understand their characteristics, similarities and differences. It examines countries’ experiences with translating net-zero targets into near-term plans and analyses four case studies to show how countries develop and implement different pathways to net-zero. This paper also explores the potential role and associated risks, both for individual countries and globally, of using international carbon markets to help achieve countries’ net-zero targets. The paper concludes that countries are adopting diverse approaches to their net-zero targets and many details are currently unclear, including the balance between emission reductions, removals and the use of international carbon markets in reaching countries’ net-zero targets, and how this may change over the next few decades. The paper concludes that greater clarity on the scope, coverage and detail, in particular how countries plan to meet their net-zero commitments, is important to improve understanding of countries’ net-zero targets, how they interact with each other, and their overall implications for achieving the global temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.