Browse by: "D"

This paper provides evidence on the effects of digitalisation on the labour market in Slovenia using a unique dataset of Slovenian workers and firms for the years 2016 to 2020. Results show that at the firm level, digitalisation – measured in terms of ICT investment, is associated with positive and statistically significant effects on employment. However, job growth is not evenly distributed: High-skilled workers and younger workers benefit the most from employment gains, whereas there is little to no employment increases for low- and medium-skilled workers and older workers aged 50 or more. Furthermore, employment effects from digitalisation are strongest for private manufacturing firms. In contrast, ICT investment by state-owned firms is not associated with employment gains.

The need to rapidly decarbonise economies raises questions about whether countries’ workforces possess the requisite skills to achieve the net zero transition as well as the capacity to redeploy workers from “brown” to “green” jobs. This paper applies a task-based framework to granular data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and country-specific employment sources to generate new indicators of the green skills structure of labour markets for a large number of OECD countries and non-OECD EU countries. Significant cross-country differences emerge in the underlying supply of green skill and the potential of economies to reallocate brown job workers to green jobs within their broad occupation categories. In a majority of detailed brown occupations, workers have in principle the necessary skills to transition to green jobs, with the exception of those in production occupations, who may require more extensive re-skilling. In contrast, workers from most highly automatable occupations are generally not found to have the sufficient skills to transition to green jobs, suggesting more limited scope for the net-zero transition to reinstate labour displaced by automation.

Fiscal spending policies adopted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have been presented as a unique opportunity to “build back better” and re-ignite the economy while accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy. This paper analyses 1 166 funding measures announced by 51 countries and the European Union in 2020-21 to support development and diffusion of low-carbon technologies. These measures – amounting to USD 1.29 trillion – can make an important contribution to filling the climate investment gap, particularly in emerging technologies such as carbon capture, usage and storage and green hydrogen. A modelling analysis suggests that they could have large impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and bring about significant co-benefits in terms of clean sectors’ output growth and reductions in fossil fuel imports.

This review examines the current literature on the use of digital technologies to support young children with special needs in early childhood education and care (ECEC). It identifies four key areas of focus, which relate to understanding and articulating the purpose and focus for integrating assistive technologies (ATs) in ECEC; activating and integrating expertise in ECEC; developing an engaged community of experience and practice; and promoting and supporting quality AT design. Foundations for further developments are evident across the research literature and the review derives recommendations to provide direction for ECEC policy makers and staff, educational institutions and allied support networks for achieving the promise of AT for children with special needs in ECEC.

This paper looks at the implications for development co-operation of increased spending on global public goods and “bads”. It explores shifts in the narratives and financing priorities of development co-operation providers over recent decades and puts forward key considerations for them on their future role.

New evidence is presented on the evolution of global value chains (GVCs) since the Great Financial Crisis. Drawing on novel OECD inter-country input-output tables in previous year’s prices, it shows there was no general trend towards deglobalisation in the period up to 2020. The fragmentation of production remained at a historically high level in 2019 and close to the level of 2011, confirming a stabilisation of the depth of global economic integration. Different trends are observed across economies: in the European Union, the import intensity of production grew before the COVID-19 pandemic, while China increasingly relied on domestic inputs. To explain these trends, bilateral trade costs are estimated and their cumulative impact along value chains is then calculated; structural changes and higher uncertainty seem to be the main drivers of increasing cumulative trade costs for some GVCs. To preserve the benefits of GVCs, policy makers should seek to increase the ease of trade and reduce uncertainty.

Tax incentives that provide preferential tax treatment to the incomes arising from research and development (R&D) and innovation activities, such as intellectual property regimes, have become widespread in recent years. This paper describes the key design features of tax incentives available in 49 member countries of the Inclusive Framework on BEPS (IF), covering all OECD countries and EU countries. It outlines differences in the design of such incentives that may translate into differences in the tax benefits offered. The information collected and reported in this paper is a first step towards a more systematic comparison of tax support policies for R&D and Innovation.

Decentralised development cooperation (DDC), or partnerships for sustainable development between cities and regions in developed and developing countries, can help drive major global agendas forward. Achieving a sustainable, equitable and resilient future requires action from subnational governments in many key SDGs and emerging areas, such as the response to the global health crisis, support for refugees and implementing net-zero pathways. The Global policy toolkit: Guidance for practitioners shows how DDC can promote mutual benefits and peer-to-peer learning, bring development co-operation closer to people and their daily lives, and deliver technical services and expertise. By providing a repository of good practices and guidance on implementation modalities, the toolkit seeks to promote policy dialogue and mutual learning across DDC actors and to enhance DDC effectiveness, efficiency and impact worldwide.

About 90% of homes in the Netherlands depending on natural gas for heating, the Netherlands has made a commitment to phase out natural gas by 2050. To achieve the goal, the Netherlands has rolled out a natural gas-free pilot programme in 66 neighbourhoods. These neighbourhood pilot projects enabled municipalities to learn what it takes to start energy transition.

Based on a city survey carried out across 26 local governments, key findings from this report call on national and local governments joining up their efforts to take place-based measures.

This paper is the first case study applying the policy framework presented in the OECD report Decarbonising Buildings in Cities and Regions published in March 2022. The present case study provides a deep dive into the Netherlands’ experience to demonstrate the potential of cities and regions to advance the decarbonisation of buildings.

Public procurement accounts for around 12% of global GDP and 63% of expenditures are managed by subnational governments across OECD countries. In Italy, municipalities can impose penalties on contractors for breaches of contract, for example delays in delivery, often leading to contractors suing the municipality in local courts, which can in turn further delay delivery. As such the efficiency of the local judiciary can have a strong bearing on the final delivery of public works. This study assesses the causal effect of those efficiencies on the ultimate delay in the execution of local public contracts. The results show that inefficient courts lead to further delays in the execution of public works that are already long overdue. However, inefficient courts also appear to deter companies to pursue litigation in cases where delays were much lower. Overall, the impact on long-overdue contracts prevails and the aggregate effect is negative: the total delay in the execution of local public contracts in the 25% least efficient courts is more than twice as large as in the 25% most efficient courts.

This document serves both as a conceptual and practical guide for defining and classifying AI, in order to help stakeholders analyse and understand its impact on the workplace. It first discusses how AI can be defined and provides a selection of AI use cases to help stakeholders identify AI and distinguish it from other advanced technologies. The document then provides a framework for classifying AI according to its impact on the workplace, consisting of a set of questions intended to help stakeholders evaluate any AI application from a workplace perspective (either a priori or ex post) and to promote informed discussion so that AI is implemented in a way that empowers and complements workers and improves job quality, and that no one is left behind.

This report takes stock of scientific findings to date regarding the distributional effects of policies discouraging car use in urban areas. These policies include cordon tolls, distance-based charges, fuel taxes, parking measures and public transport subsidies. The report describes the mechanisms responsible for the distributional effects of these policies and offers insights regarding how such policies can be designed to minimise adverse equity outcomes. It also provides recommendations regarding the design and procedural modifications that standard instruments require in order to be more acceptable to the public and to governments. Finally, it identifies a number of issues that warrant further research in the pursuit of greater equity in the outcomes of urban road transport policies.

Open banking allows users to access financial information and services through consent-based data portability. This paper brings together the views of private and public experts from a wide variety of countries to explore opportunities and challenges of open banking for financial regulation, privacy protection, and competition. It discusses the different approaches taken by jurisdictions across the globe, and the importance of regulation and standards. While open banking empowers users in sharing and re-using their data across digital services, online platforms, sectors and borders, uncertainty in the interactions with data protection and privacy regimes remains challenging. This paper informs OECD work to consider how cross-sectoral cooperation between financial, competition and data protection authorities could help further open banking.

This paper explores potential influences on the ability and willingness to save for retirement, in order to uncover how asset-backed pension systems could be more inclusive of diverse populations. This paper illustrates the type of analysis that countries could conduct to better understand what factors may explain lower participation from certain individuals beyond labour market drivers, by looking at the views, attitudes and expectations of individuals across socio-economic characteristics on a sample of adults from the United Kingdom.