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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.
Estonia is currently finalising its new Education Strategy 2035, a horizon that goes beyond strict education performance and encompasses the knowledge, skills and attitudes for people to thrive in the 21st century. To achieve the ambitious goals set in the strategy, Estonia requested support from the European Commission, under the Structural Reform Support Programme, in the area of education monitoring and data-informed decision making.
This Policy Perspective presents the final output of this two-year collaboration between the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research, the European Commission, and the OECD. The overall goal of this project is to support the Estonian Government in strengthening data-informed decision making in education through improvements to its education monitoring system. After reviewing comprehensively the existing data and monitoring processes in Estonia, the OECD has prepared guidelines for education monitoring and a coherent set of indicators to support the achievement of the goals set in the Estonian Education Strategy 2035.
The report will be valuable not only for Estonia, but also to the many countries that are looking to strengthen monitoring practices, select relevant indicators, and promote data-informed decision making at every governance level to steer school improvement.
Sub-national governments have a key role in delivering on national and international biodiversity commitments. Drawing on policy practices from Scotland (UK), France and other signatories to the Edinburgh Declaration, this paper provides an overview and analysis of sub-national strategies, plans and mechanisms to ensure policy coherence and co-ordination. It then examines the policy instruments that subnational governments can leverage to deliver positive biodiversity outcomes. The paper highlights, among other things, the need to: develop clear and measurable biodiversity targets at sub-national level; incorporate biodiversity considerations into sub-national climate action plans and urban, rural and regional development strategies, plans and instruments; and promote nature-based solutions at a sub-national level to harness synergies between climate mitigation, climate adaptation and biodiversity.
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of this century. Due to the urgency of the issue and the pressure on governments to act, the debate on climate change is moving quickly from the political level to focused conversations on policy choices and implementation options. This background paper discusses the role of competition policy and enforcement in supporting and incentivising sustainable and pro-competitive business practices. It analyses the practical approaches that competition authorities may take when assessing cases with an environmental dimension. It was prepared as a background note for a discussion held at the OECD in December 2021 on environmental considerations in competition enforcement.
The OECD Career Readiness project makes use of quantitative evidence to identify how teenage career-related activities and attitudes are linked with better adult employment outcomes. Review of multiple national longitudinal datasets confirms that teenage experiences of the workplace through part-time working and volunteering are routinely associated with better prospects in work during adulthood. While the evidence base is much weaker, it is also likely that students who undertake workplace placements through their schools can have much to gain. This policy brief draws on evidence from longitudinal studies and beyond to explore the following questions:
Why is it important for secondary school students to have first-hand experience of work?
What difference does workplace experience make?
And how can schools and education systems best optimise its benefits?
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.
The digital transformation of critical activities such as the delivery of water, energy, healthcare, telecommunications, and banking services increasingly exposes them to cybersecurity threats, which can affect the health, safety, and security of citizens, the functioning of essential services, or economic and social prosperity more broadly. This Going Digital Toolkit note introduces key concepts, such as critical activities, critical information infrastructure (CII), cybersecurity and digital security risk management, and helps policymakers identify what needs to be protected and what types of measures operators of critical activities should take. It further discusses the institutional framework to develop and supervise policies to enhance the digital security of critical activities, including trust-based partnerships, and provides a selection of policy approaches from a range of jurisdictions in the Annex.
Using household data from 15 countries in Latin America and Africa, this paper explores linkages between informality and education-occupation matching. The paper applies a unified methodology to measuring education-occupation mismatches and informality, consistently with the international labour and statistical standards in this area. The results suggest that in the majority of low- and middle-income developing countries with available data, workers in informal jobs have higher odds of being undereducated as compared to workers in formal jobs. Workers in formal jobs, in contrast, have higher chances of being overeducated. These results are consistent for dependent as well as for independent workers. They also hold for men and for women according to the gender-disaggregated analysis. Moreover, in the majority of countries considered in this paper, the matching-informality nexus is also related to the extent of informality in a given area: in labour markets with higher informality, informal workers in particular have a higher chance of being undereducated. The paper discusses policy implications of these findings.
Communication market structures and their effect on delivering efficient and inclusive connectivity is of key interest to policy makers and regulators. This report discusses emerging competition trends in OECD broadband markets that are shaping market structures, covering both fixed and mobile networks. The increasing complementarity of fixed and wireless networks and the convergence of previously separate markets have led to new forms of communication market competition. While convergence has been acting as a driver for market consolidation, there is also increased scrutiny in merger review. Some OECD countries are discussing options to keep mobile communication markets open to new entrants in the context of merger reviews, while others have experienced a recent wave of entry. The report explores the role of horizontal and vertical mergers in communication markets, presents examples of entry in mobile communication markets, and discusses some of effects of entry and consolidation in OECD markets.
This country policy profile on education in Brazil is part of the Education Policy Outlook series. Building on the first policy profile for Brazil (2015), it offers a concise analysis of where the education system stands today in terms of strengths and challenges, and how this compares to other systems. This profile also analyses the evolution of ongoing and emerging related policy efforts in Brazil, including education responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. It brings together over a decade's worth of policy analysis by the Education Policy Outlook, as well as recent OECD data, relevant thematic and country-specific work and other international and national evidence. The report also benefits from the Education Policy Outlook's ongoing comparative analysis of resilience and responsiveness in education policy. This profile is complemented by its companion report Education Policy Outlook: Brazil - with a focus on international policies (both also available in Portuguese).
This country policy profile on education in Brazil is part of the Education Policy Outlook series. Building on the first policy profile for Brazil (2015), it offers a concise analysis of where the education system stands today and how this compares to other systems. This profile offers relevant international policy examples that may serve as possible inspiration as policy makers work to address Brazil's key challenges and priorities, including in the post-COVID recovery. It brings together over a decade's worth of policy analysis by the Education Policy Outlook, as well as recent OECD data, relevant thematic and country-specific work and other international and national evidence. The report also benefits from the Education Policy Outlook's ongoing comparative analysis of resilience and responsiveness in education policy. This profile is complemented by its companion report Education Policy Outlook: Brazil - with a focus on national and subnational policies (both also available in Portuguese).
This paper provides a brief overview of the pro- and anti-competitive effects of vertical restraints as identified in the literature and case practice and discusses how pro-competitive effects or efficiencies are analysed and assessed within different legal and economic assessment frameworks. Furthermore, it utilises a selection of cases to demonstrate the relevance of different efficiency arguments in enforcement practice. This was prepared as background material for the session "Efficiency Analysis in Vertical Restraints" held at the 2021 virtual Latin American and Caribbean Competition Forum on 20-22 September 2021.
La pandemia de COVID-19 causó trastornos en la educación en todo el mundo. A medida que el primer gran impacto pasa, se emprende la planificación en dos periodos: los retos a corto plazo en el regreso a la escuela y los retos en los próximos 18 a 24 meses, mientras los sistemas construyen la resiliencia y la adaptabilidad para el futuro.
This paper, prepared for the Italy G20 Presidency Culture Working Group, underscores the vital role of cultural and creative sectors in driving job creation, innovation, and social inclusion. Highlighting their significant contributions to the economy and society, from fostering creative skills to enhancing well-being and promoting social cohesion, it emphasizes the need for policymakers to recognize culture as a strategic investment. As governments reassess growth models post-COVID-19, the paper advocates for leveraging the resilience and potential of cultural sectors for a sustainable recovery. By mainstreaming culture into policy agendas and improving data collection, it offers actionable strategies to harness the full potential of these sectors for economic, social, and environmental outcomes.
This paper provides an overview of how to evaluate different blended finance instruments and mechanisms, including equity instruments, debt instruments, first loss capital, guarantees and insurance, development impact bonds, performance-based grants, structured funds and syndicated loans. It is structured along the most important and common questions evaluators seek to answer, including how to measure the mobilisation of additional financial resources, and assessing results. It provides a description of the most appropriate methods and tools for answering these questions, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages, and discusses their application.
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a sudden funding squeeze manifested in major disruptions in international capital flows, the most dramatic of the wave of extreme capital flow episodes since the global financial crisis (GFC). This paper contributes to efforts to better understand this extreme episode in the context of post-GFC structural financial changes. To do so, it presents a new monthly dataset of gross capital flows for 41 countries, better suited to the identification of sudden shocks than quarterly Balance of Payments data. Leveraging on this dataset, the paper first develops a more precise identification of extreme capital flow episodes since the GFC and revisit their drivers, asking whether COVID-19 episode significantly changed recent findings of the weaker role of global factors. The answer is no. Rather, the role of global factors may have further lost explanatory power in the post-GFC period including COVID. On the other hand, pull factors such as pre-COVID vulnerabilities and country-specific and pandemic-specific factors appear key to explaining the identified cross-country heterogeneity.
Digital technologies offer unique opportunities to strengthen health systems. However, the digital infrastructure only provide the tools, which on their own cannot transform the health systems, but need to be put to productive use by health workers. This report discusses how to engage and empower the health workforce to make the most of the digital revolution. While many health workers already use some digital tools and perceive the benefits that they bring to them and to patients, many also question the value digital technologies produce in health care or complain about technology getting in the way of work. Moreover, health workers often report not having sufficient opportunities for the up-skilling required to fully use new technologies or that the legal, financial, and organisational aspects of work – designed in the pre-digital era – do not enable them to reap the full benefits of these new technologies. Health workers and patients also demand appropriate safeguards against possible lack of transparency or threats to data privacy.
As work changes, firm-provided training may become more relevant. However, there is little causal evidence about the effects of training on firms. This paper studies a large training grants programme in Portugal, supported by the European Social Fund, contrasting firms that received the grants and firms that also applied but were unsuccessful. Combining several rich data sets, we compare many potential outcomes of these firms, while following them over several years both before and after the grant decision. Our difference-in-differences models estimate significant positive effects on take up (training hours and expenditure), with limited deadweight; and that such additional training led to increased sales, value added, employment, productivity, and exports (although not profits). These effects tend to be of at least 5% and, in some cases, 10% or more, and are robust in multiple dimensions.
The increased adoption of digital technologies has been transforming the Spanish economy. The COVID-19 crisis is expected to speed up this process. The new digital strategy, ‘Digital Spain 2025’, features a number of ambitious objectives in a timely manner. There is a need to promote digital diffusion across the country by developing communication infrastructure further, while addressing the digital divide across regions and ensuring digital security. Addressing key bottlenecks, such as people’s skills, through education policies at every level, would enable the use of digital technologies and boost productivity growth. This would help in particular laggard firms and low-skilled people, making the benefits of digitalisation shared by all. In parallel, R&D should be enhanced to lift the capacity of firms to adopt and use digital technologies effectively, resulting in improving their business models and products. Finally, business dynamism should be revitalised to encourage risk taking among firms, thus facilitating digital diffusion, while ensuring an efficient allocation of capital.
The report investigates the role of government programmes in strengthening SMEs’ resilience to external shocks, by focusing on SME digitalisation policies implemented in Korea during the COVID-19 outbreak. The report examines how digital tools and services have made SMEs more resilient during the pandemic, as well as the challenges that SMEs face in “going digital”. The analysis is complemented by additional evidence and insights coming from international policy experience.