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Barriers to trade come in a variety of forms. This paper examines one such barrier, export restrictions, and how it impacts trade and global supply in selected strategic metals and minerals. The metals and minerals examined in the paper are of particular interest for a number of reasons: they are generally geographically concentrated in a few countries, many are used in the production of high-technology goods in strategic sectors and there are few substitutes for these raw materials given the present state of technology. For all these reasons, importing countries are dependent on a reliable supply of these raw materials. Export restrictions may be applied for a number of reasons: protection of the environment, preservation of natural resources, protection of downstream industries, or as a response to a number of different market imperfections. This paper examines the motivations for using export restrictions and finds varying impacts on trade and global supply. In one case, the export restrictions put into place did not fulfill their objective of environmental protection. In another, the presence of export restrictions in one country put pressure on other exporters to apply restrictions suggesting the potential for competitive policy practices in restricting exports. In a third case study, export restrictions were seen to impact investment decisions by potential suppliers worldwide by introducing an added element of risk in the industry. The impact of export restrictions on strategic metals and minerals are exacerbated in many cases because producing countries have a quasi-monopoly on supply. Since these metals and minerals are essential in the production of some high-technology products and are not easily replaceable in the medium term, industry participants in some importing countries are concerned about future access at sustainable prices.
Demand for non-renewable natural resources is forecast to rise steadily over the coming decades. Underlying trends of long-term rising demand and falling supply of mineral resources will inevitably increase pressure on prices and intensify competition for scarce resources. This can create a substantial opportunity for development for minerals-rich countries. However, as suggested by the “resource curse” debate, broad-based economic development based on the extractive industries is far from assured. History suggests that not all countries, in particular many of those outside the OECD area, have benefitted economy-wide from their mineral resources: good governance and good policies are essential to benefit from their huge potential growth.

Some countries have successfully regulated their mining sectors without resorting to highly distortive policies such as export restrictions. One such country is Botswana. This paper examines some of the policies in place in Botswana that have contributed to the governance and management of its substantial minerals sector. Lessons are drawn for minerals-rich countries keen to manage their raw materials sectors for increased economy-wide growth.

Recent years have witnessed an ever-increasing resort to export restrictions in the markets for raw materials, causing heightened uncertainty about supply availability together with friction among trading partners. Poor transparency can amplify and compound the effects of restrictive trade policies. This paper explores the issue of transparency with respect to the use of export restrictions, especially focusing on the question of what information governments applying them make publicly available. After explaining how transparency is operationalised in the conduct of trade policy and what its benefits are for trading firms, investors and other stakeholders, in importing countries inasmuch as in the economies applying export restrictions, the paper reviews applicable rules and commitments elaborated in GATT/WTO, regional trade agreements and other sources of rules. The review shows an evolutive, cumulative path towards greater transparency in trade policy over time and distills best-practice principles and tools specifically aiming at the provision of information. The last section of the paper applies a checklist of information elements consistent with these best practices to the study of actual national information policies. This is done by examining the content of public information on export restrictions in the minerals sector that is made available on the governmental websites of 33 countries that make use of such measures. The exercise suggests where national information policies appear to have gaps and could be improved. It also provides illustrations of country approaches for delivering such information in a comprehensive and efficient manner.
This paper studies export processing zones (EPZs) which have become increasingly popular as a policy tool for development and export-oriented growth, and can be found in 130 countries around the world. The report consists of four parts. Part I provides a broad overview on the current use of EPZs, including the evolution of EPZ policy, their objectives and how these are achieved, and the incentives commonly offered. It presents case studies from China, India and Russia illustrating new trends and policies. Part II then provides a review of the economic costs and benefits of EPZs with particular focus on their trade and employment implications. Part III presents an analysis of how common EPZ policies relate to trade rules. It reviews the relationship between EPZs and the WTO Agreements such as the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM), followed by a discussion of how EPZs are commonly treated in RTAs. Part IV concludes. EPZs are a sub-optimal policy from an economic point of view since it benefits the few and distorts resource allocation, but may be useful as a stepping stone to trade liberalisation on a national basis. Governments should consider all available policy options, and conduct a thorough cost/benefit analysis before implementation.
French

This paper discusses major policy issues related to commodity dependence and export diversification in low-income countries. Contrary to some widely-held view, it argues that natural resources are not necessarily a “curse” — that they do not condemn low-income countries to underdevelopment but can provide rather a basis for sustained export-led growth. Natural resource-based sectors have potential for export diversification. The OECD “mirror” trade data suggest that many different routes to diversification exist, including resource-based manufacturing and processing of primary products. However, these opportunities are not being exploited in many low-income countries. This is because export diversification is typically a slow process, and this process needs to be sustained by an appropriate and coherent strategy, characterised by a combination of vision, co-ordination and management of conflicting interests. Moreover, the analysis of trade support services in two African countries ...

Corruption at the border distorts resource allocation, undermines the level playing field for businesses, hampers the attractiveness of affected markets, and may result in significant revenue losses for developing countries. Trade facilitation policies could potentially reduce the incentives and the opportunities for corruption. This paper explores potential determinants of border-related corruption and trade facilitation policies most likely to address it. Countries with higher integrity at the border are found to also have more efficient border processes. Measures that appear to particularly support integrity at the border include transparency and predictability, streamlining of formalities – through simplification of documents, more automation of processes at different levels of complexity, or improved procedures along the border transaction chain – and coordinated border management.

This paper presents the first empirical analysis of the macroeconomic relationship between environmentally related taxes and inequality in income sources. The analysis also investigates whether this relationship differs between countries which have implemented environmental tax reforms (ETRs) and ones which have not. Following earlier empirical literature, income inequality is measured by the disposable-income-based Gini coefficient. The analysis is based on a panel of all 34 OECD countries spanning the period from 1995 to 2011. Information about the implementation of ETRS in the examined period is collected through a review of relevant academic and policy literature. Empirical results from econometric models reveal that, on average, there is no statistically significant relationship between the overall share of environmentally related tax revenues in GDP and inequality in income sources. However, the relationship varies with the taxed activity under consideration and the existence of an explicit mechanism to redistribute environmentally related tax revenues. In countries where such mechanisms are absent, energy tax revenues (% of GDP) are shown to have a positive, although modest, relationship with income inequality. In contrast, in countries where energy tax revenues are, at least partially, used to reduce tax burden on income and labour, there is a negative relationship between energy taxes and inequality in income sources. On the contrary, no significant relationship is identified between motor vehicle and other transport tax revenues and income inequality, while revenues from other environmentally related taxes, such as waste and air pollution taxes, are negatively associated with income inequality, regardless of the existence of an explicit revenue recycling mechanism.
  • 04 May 2021
  • Ioannis Tikoudis, Luis Martinez, Katherine Farrow, Clara García Bouyssou, Olga Petrik, Walid Oueslati
  • Pages: 52
  • in OECD Environment Working Papers

Policy action to avoid the impending societal costs of climate change is particularly warranted in transport sector, which is responsible for 30% of greenhouse gas emissions in OECD countries. To design appropriate interventions in this sector, policy makers should account for the recent emergence of shared mobility services in urban areas and their potential advantages in terms of emissions mitigation. This study estimates the impact that the widespread uptake of shared mobility services could have on the carbon footprint of urban transport. To this end, it simulates the share of each transport mode and aggregate emissions from passenger transport in 247 cities across 29 OECD countries between 2015 and 2050. The analysis indicates that they have the potential to eliminate, on average, 6.3% of urban passenger transport emissions by the end of this period.

In recent years, the call for transparency in pharmaceutical pricing has gained momentum among policymakers and stakeholders. Following a resolution of the 72nd World Health Assembly and the establishment of the Oslo Medicines Initiative, there has been a concerted push for greater transparency in pricing practices. However, the exact scope of transparency measures remains unclear. Key questions persist regarding which prices and for which medicines should be disclosed, the conditions under which countries are willing to share this information, and the barriers hindering such efforts. To clarify these issues and advance the policy debate, the OECD examined the feasibility of sharing medicine price information across countries. A country survey was conducted to explore the willingness, expectations, and motives of governments and payers for sharing information on medicine prices. This report presents the key findings derived from the survey and concludes with an assessment of the feasibility of sharing net medicine price information among OECD countries.

Ensuring affordable access to novel medicines has been identified as a policy priority among OECD and EU countries, yet systematic monitoring of the various dimensions of access is lacking. Previous efforts to measure access have focused primarily on one or at most two of these dimensions, such as availability and affordability, but a more holistic picture is needed. The OECD undertook a pilot study in EU Member States that aimed to determine the utility and feasibility of routine, cross-national monitoring of access to medicines across multiple dimensions. The work included a desk review to define the dimensions of access and associated indicators, followed by an OECD survey to explore the feasibility of collecting and analysing the relevant data for a convenience sample of 15 recently authorised product/indication pairs. This working paper presents key learnings from the desk review and country survey to which 21 EU Member States responded, with a focus on exploring the utility and feasibility of the processes of monitoring and measurement.

For some time, governments, stakeholders and civil society have been voicing the need for greater transparency in pharmaceutical pricing. The 2018 OECD report Pharmaceutical Innovation and Access to Medicines suggested that increased price transparency could promote public accountability, while potentially delivering efficiencies to health systems by including economic considerations in coverage, treatment decisions and budget allocation. Despite this, precisely what should be made more transparent, and how greater transparency would affect the functioning of markets, have been poorly characterised. To help frame the policy debate, the OECD undertook an exploration of the potential consequences of greater price transparency on market dynamics. The work included a roundtable and a series of semi-structured interviews, with participation by 19 experts in pharmaceutical pricing, economics of pharmaceutical markets, competition, and law. With an extensive review of the current practice and relevant literature as a preface, this report presents the key findings from those consultations.

Two of the most important health risk factors for children and young adults are obesity and alcohol use. These risk factors are known to affect health and wellbeing, but may also have an impact on educational outcomes. The objective of this study was to assess a potential causal relationship between obesity or alcohol use, and educational outcomes, in Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Longitudinal data from cohort studies was used to establish temporal precedence. To ensure the absence of alternative explanations, regression models were adjusted for known confounders; instrumental variables were used to address endogeneity caused by reverse causality and potential unobserved confounders; and fixed effects analyses were used to correct for unobserved time-invariant confounders. The results suggest that the presence of obesity during childhood, as well as alcohol consumption during childhood, can have a negative impact on educational performance and future educational attainment.

An epidemic of obesity has been developing in virtually all OECD countries over the last 30 years. Existing evidence provides a strong suggestion that such an epidemic has affected certain social groups more than others. In particular, a better education appears to be associated with a lower likelihood of obesity, especially among women. This paper sheds light on the nature and the strength of the correlation between education and obesity. Analyses of health survey data from Australia, Canada, England, and Korea were undertaken with the aim of exploring this relationship. Social gradients in obesity were assessed across the entire education spectrum, overall and in different population sub-groups. Furthermore, investigations testing for mediation effects and for the causal nature of the links observed were undertaken to better understand the underlying mechanisms of the relationship between education and obesity.

  1. Two of the most important questions facing health policy makers in OECD countries are:
    1. whether the increasing sums of money devoted to health care are yielding commensurate value in terms of improvements in health status; and
    2. whether different ways of financing and delivering health care -and, hence, health care reformsmake a difference to health.
  2. This paper explores the effect of variations in the volume of health care and in certain characteristics of health systems on mortality across 21 OECD countries over the past 25 years, after controlling for certain other determinants of health status. It builds on previous research on the determinants of health outcomes in OECD countries (Or, 2000). In contrast to the earlier work, it concentrates on a non-monetary measure of health care supply – number of doctors – to avoid a number of measurement issues. It also uses a range of summary measures of mortality to assess the performance of health care systems and incorporates a ...
Building on the OECD’s Better Life Initiative and new work using geospatial analysis, this paper investigates how reported life satisfaction relates to some of the urban structure indicators. To this end, it merges OECD household survey data with urban structure data from OECD’s Metropolitan Database, which includes a number of city-level indicators such as population and road density, as well as localised measures of land-use. The merged data permit analysis for five countries: France, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. The findings from this analysis provide some evidence of a trade-off between home size and distance to the city centre, although the statistical power of this effect is relatively weak. Interestingly, regression analysis suggests that overall city-level compactness has a clear negative relationship with life satisfaction, regardless of whether individuals live in the urban core or in peri-urban areas. Land-use fragmentation is also found to have a negative relationship with individuals’ life satisfaction. These general patterns are for the most part robust to various statistical tests. They also hold when econometric analysis is conducted at the country level. Residents of cities with greater levels of centralisation – i.e. a greater share of the population living in the city centre – exhibit measurably lower levels of life satisfaction. A naïve interpretation of this result would suggest that anti-sprawl policies do not in fact improve overall welfare. This study does not support this conclusion. It does, however, give cause for consideration before accepting ‘win-win’ arguments for ‘smart growth,’ often brought forward to support increasingly concentrated, high-density development. The evidence presented here suggests that such policies are not without their welfare trade-offs, and that there will be winners and losers from their implementation. While high-density policies can clearly make a positive contribution to reducing local and global environmental externalities, many of these benefits are deferred and may largely accrue to future generations. A key general lesson from this study is that compensation of the losers may improve the equity effects of these policies, as well as prove more expeditious from a political economy perspective. One of the simplest approaches to compensation would be to balance pecuniary incentives for smart growth, such as higher development taxes or fees, with compensatory policies, such as subsidies or tax or fee offsets in other domains. The main policy conclusion from this study is that smart growth policies should include distributional analysis and recommendations for addressing concerns about inequalities flowing from the scoping and implementation of policies.
This report takes an initial look at methodologies to measure and estimate the monetary value of personal data. Personal data is creating economic and social value at an increasing pace, but measuring and estimating the value being generated is difficult. This is because not only a huge amount of data is being generated, but personal data is used in many different situations for numerous purposes. Studying the value of personal data begins with comparing methodologies for assigning the monetary values attached to it.
Governments in all OECD countries are facing the challenge of governing increasingly complex education systems. There is a growing need for governance structures that can handle this complexity and which can provide actors with the knowledge they need to make decisions. This working paper asks the question: How do governance and knowledge mutually constitute and impact on each other in complex education systems? It provides an answer through a state of the art literature review and original theoretical argumentation. It breaks new ground by combining different schools of academic and policy thinking which traditionally look at various aspects of the relationship between governance and knowledge separately. Research in public management, political science and public policy, sociology, institutional economics, and organisational management (particularly the knowledge transfer literature) is augmented with work from education and other social sciences, including healthcare, law, and social justice. This working paper argues that just as knowledge is crucial for governance, governance is indispensible for knowledge creation and dissemination. It proposes an analytical framework that combines models of governance with modes of learning and types of knowledge, and provides preliminary empirical examples to support this framework. In the context of diverse social, economic and political environments of OECD countries, the interaction between these two focal points – models of governance and types of knowledge – has become increasingly relevant to researchers, policy makers, and education stakeholders more generally.

This paper explores and classifies some of the most common policy options adopted by national, regional and local policy makers in the context of or prior to the COVID-19 pandemic to enable, encourage and make the most of teleworking. It also considers efforts to foster the attraction and retention of remote workers and entrepreneurs in particular places. The current crisis represents, among other things, a mass experiment in teleworking, unprecedented in size and scope. A shift towards large-scale, long-lasting teleworking would have profound implications for the geography of local employment. However, SMEs may be less equipped than larger firms to face this change. Public policy can play an important role in turning teleworking into an opportunity for all, to minimise the potential of widening pre-existing disparities between people, places and firms.

Italian

Mitigating climate change requires aligning real economy investments with climate objectives. This pilot study measures the climate consistency of investments in transport infrastructure and vehicles in Latvia between 2008 and 2018, estimated at EUR 1.5 billion per year on average. To do so, three complementary mitigation-related reference points are used. Applying the criteria defined by the European Union Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities results in 4.2% of investments assessed as making a substantial contribution to climate change mitigation. Comparing actual greenhouse gas trajectories for each transport mode to a 2°C scenario from the International Energy Agency’s for the European Union and to projections from Latvia’s 5th National Communication to the UNFCCC, indicates 32% climate-consistent and up to 9% climate-inconsistent investments. The majority of investments volumes could at this stage not be characterised due to limitations relating to the granularity or coverage of the reference points. Comparing current trends to 2030 and 2050 decarbonisation targets nevertheless highlights future investment and financing challenges, especially for road transport. The methodology piloted in this study can be replicated and scaled up across countries and sectors, using different or complementary reference points specifically aligned to the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.

This paper presents results from a first pilot study to measure the consistency of real economy investments with climate change mitigation objectives. The analysis focuses on investments in infrastructure and equipment in the manufacturing industries in Norway between 2010 and 2017, estimated at USD 2.5 billion per year on average. The consistency or inconsistency of these investments is then measured at subsector level based on two readily available reference points: the European Union Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities, and a 2°C scenario for the Nordic region from the International Energy Agency. The analysis further identifies sources of financing in these subsectors and discusses future investment and financing challenges, in light of more ambitious forward-looking decarbonisation targets and needs. Finally, the study draws methodological conclusions and calls for further pilot studies in order to improve and scale up such analysis at international level, including in terms of using different or complementary reference points specifically aligned to the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.

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