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The purpose of this paper is to examine the welfare effects of birth-related leave (BRL) in terms of life satisfaction. To do so, we exploit variations in BRL policies to assess their impact on life satisfaction. The paper adds to the existing literature in various ways. First, it uses new data collected by Baldi et al. (2011) and Baldi and Chapple (2010) to describe how life satisfaction moves around the date of the reforms over time and in a number of EU countries covered in the Eurobarometer surveys. Second, the paper analyses the relation between life satisfaction and BRL in Germany and the United Kingdom with long individual panel data collected with the GSOEP and the BHPS survey. The potential endogeneity bias of the treatment effect is addressed by building a quasi-natural experiment using policy changes as the assignment rule. The results from a variety of different methods suggest that BRL polices generally have a significant positive effect on life satisfaction. Women on BRL have higher life satisfaction, controlling for observable and unobservable personal characteristics. This result is robust to alternative specifications.
JEL classification: H53, I16, J38
Keywords: Welfare, subjective well-being, difference-in-difference, birth-related leaves
Today, AI technologies and tools play a key role in every aspect of the COVID-19 crisis response. To help facilitate the use of AI throughout the crisis, policy makers should encourage the sharing of medical, molecular, and scientific datasets and models on collaborative platforms to help AI researchers build effective tools for the medical community, and should ensure that researchers have access to the necessary computing capacity. To realise the full promise of AI to combat COVID-19, policy makers must ensure that AI systems are trustworthy and aligned with the OECD AI Principles.
This article summarises the Israeli experience with utilising behavioural insights in the work of budget officials and aims to assist budget officials in other OECD countries with integrating behavioural economics tools and evidence-based policy-making methods in their work. Behavioural economics has grown in recent years to become increasingly integrated in the work of public institutions, particularly those in the forefront of policy making. In the context of public budgeting, behavioural insights tools had initially focused on improving tax compliance. In this article we widen the scope of budget officials’ perspective, and responsibility, to develop behaviourally informed policies that are primarily citizen-focused. This approach harmonises and aligns the work of ministries of finance with public policy objectives more generally, and provides actionable “know how” based on the experience of the budget department in the Israeli Ministry of Finance.
Digitalisation is having a profound impact on social and economic activity. While often benefiting from a very long history of public investment in R&D, digitalisation has been largely driven by the private sector. However, the combined adoption of new digital technologies, increased reliance upon new data sources, and use of advanced analytic methods hold significant potential to: i) improve the effectiveness and enforcement of public policies; ii) enable innovative policy design and impact evaluation, and; iii) expand citizen and stakeholder engagement in policy making and implementation. These benefits are likely to be greatest in policy domains where outcomes are only observable at significant cost and/or where there is significant heteroregeneity in responses across different agents. In this paper we provide a review of initiatives across a number of fields including: competition, education, environment, innovation, and taxation.
The right for shareholders to vote and participate in corporate decisions is one of the fundamental building blocks of a well-functioning corporate governance framework. Digital technologies offer important opportunities to strengthen corporate governance by facilitating greater shareholder participation. This Going Digital Toolkit note takes stock of recent developments and lessons learned from efforts to allow shareholders to participate in corporate decision making via virtual meetings, including in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The note also highlights the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and its potential to address the main challenges raised by the current corporate voting processes, in particular by facilitating the identification of shareholders by issuers and end-to-end confirmation of their votes. Despite these benefits, however, challenges remain that might discourage or slow down the pace of DLT adoption.
Over the last decade, a large variety of geospatial data sources, such as GPS trajectories, geotagged photos, and social media have become available for research and statistical applications. These new data sources are often generated, voluntarily or non-voluntarily, by private sector organisations and can provide highly granular and timely information to policymakers. Drawing on experiences of several OECD countries, this paper highlights the potential of combining traditional and unconventional data from both public and private sources, and makes the case for facilitating co-operation between data providers and organisations responsible for public policy. In addition, the paper provides a series of best practices on leveraging private data for the public good and identifies opportunities, challenges, and ways forward for public and private sector partnerships on data sharing.
Macroeconomic forecasters typically forecast fewer recessions than the number experienced, which means economic growth tends to be over-predicted on average. Consequently, forecast errors are not normally distributed, making it difficult to convey the uncertainty and risks based on the historical forecast track record. To characterise this risk, recent OECD work constructed fan charts parameterised on historical forecast errors and the probability of a future downturn estimated from a probit model comprising a range of potential macroeconomic and financial early warning indicators. As the probability of a downturn increases the associated fan chart is wider, reflecting increased uncertainty, and more skewed to the downside, reflecting greater downside risks. This paper applies this methodology to New Zealand; although one important difference compared to other OECD economies is that the time span of macroeconomic data without major structural change is significantly shorter. Forecast errors for GDP by the OECD, Reserve Bank of New Zealand and New Zealand Treasury all appear to be non-normally distributed. Fan charts for GDP forecasts from the mid-year 2018 OECD Economic Outlook are symmetric due to the low probability of a downturn. Fan charts estimated for the period preceding the global financial crisis using currently-available data have a downwards skew. However, those estimated using data only available in the lead up to the crisis have many insignificant coefficients, likely due to the structural changes that have occurred in the New Zealand economy since the 1980s.
The Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), used computers as the main assessment deliver platform. This enabled the Programme to collect data not only on whether respondents were able to solve specific tasks, but also on how they approached the problems at hand and how much time they spent on them. This paper draws on this information to characterise individuals’ problem-solving strategies using the longest common subsequence (LCS) method, a sequence-mining technique commonly used in natural language processing and biostatistics. The LCS is used to compare the action sequences followed by PIAAC respondents to a set of “optimal” predefined sequences identified by test developers and subject matter experts. This approach allows studying problem-solving behaviours across multiple assessment items.
More than 1.3 million people die each year in road crashes, with millions more suffering life-altering injuries. The Safe System approach aims to eliminate deadly crashes through a comprehensive, shared-responsibility framework. This report offers guidelines for establishing Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) to assess the effectiveness of Safe System policies in reducing road fatalities and serious injuries. It identifies international best practices for constructing and deploying SPIs, focusing on the case of Korea.
All countries need vaccines but not all can produce them. Vaccine production is highly specialised, subject to comparative advantages, and concentrated in few countries, making trade a vital means to deploying vaccines broadly. Keeping markets open by reducing tariffs, streamlining trade-related processes at and behind the border while ensuring better co-ordination of logistical processes will be key to ensuring timely access to vaccines for all. This note discusses trade and trade policy considerations underpinning access to the final and intermediate goods needed to effectively produce, deliver and administer COVID-19 vaccines. It focuses on the international aspects of the vaccine supply chain, discussing the sourcing, production, distribution and need to expedite international border crossing and transportation (including in the context of the cold supply chain).
In light of the need for detailed and timely internationally comparable trade price indices, this paper describes a multi-tiered methodology to mitigate many of the empirical challenges associated with using customs data, to provide more robust estimates of unit value indices (UVIs) by country and product. UVIs are available for both exports and imports, by reporting country and the CPA 2-digit level of classification. Although the approach cannot capture changes in the quality of products nor compositional changes happening at a lower than HS 6-digit classification, the results indicate that at higher levels of aggregation (SITC 1-digit level), estimated UVIs closely follow price changes obtained from other sources. This is observed both for products with significant and rapid quality changes, such as hi-tech products, and for products with a low rate of quality changes, such as commodities, other primary and low-tech goods. Furthermore, products where little quality change occurs over time show similarity between UVIs and price changes from other sources at lower levels of disaggregation. The methodology is used to produce the Merchandise Trade Price Index and the data is made publically available on .Stat under the International Trade and Balance of Payments heading.
Questo rapporto fornisce un’indagine approfondita sulle caratteristiche delle startup innovative in Trentino, area montuosa e ad alto reddito situata nel Nord-Est d’Italia. È parte di una serie di rapporti tematici elaborati dal Centro OCSE di Trento per lo Sviluppo Locale sul panorama delle startup nelle regioni italiane. Rappresenta un primo tentativo di analisi degli effetti della strategia italiana per le startup innovative a livello regionale, e segue la pubblicazione OCSE del 2018 “La Valutazione dello Startup Act Italiano”, che adottava una prospettiva nazionale. Il Trentino vanta la più alta densità di startup innovative sul totale delle nuove imprese presenti a livello locale rilevata tra le regioni italiane. Tuttavia, la propagazione delle startup a livello territoriale è avvenuta in modo disomogeneo, con una forte concentrazione nelle aree urbane. Inoltre, tra i fondatori delle startup trentine le donne e i giovani sono gruppi meno diffusi rispetto alla media nazionale. Il dinamismo delle startup, in particolare i tassi di crescita e di mortalità, l’adozione delle tecnologie emergenti e la propensione all’utilizzo degli incentivi nazionali sono altri aspetti al centro di questo studio, che si conclude con una serie di raccomandazioni a favore dei decisori politici basate sull’osservazione delle evidenze empiriche.
Este informe de políticas utiliza los anuncios de ofertas de empleos en línea como un indicador parcial del impacto del COVID-19 en la demanda de competencias en cinco países de la OCDE (Australia, Canadá, Estados Unidos, Nueva Zelanda y Reino Unido) entre enero y noviembre de 2020. La pandemia, así como las medidas de contención y mitigación para detener su propagación, tuvieron un gran pero heterogéneo impacto en la demanda de competencias. Para inicios de mayo, el volumen total de ofertas de empleo en línea había caído más de 50% en todos los países analizados con respecto a principios del año, con descensos aún mayores en algunos sectores. Sin embargo, la demanda de competencias específicas en el sector salud y logística aumentó. También hay evidencia de un aumento de las vacantes que implican acuerdos de trabajo remoto. El informe también muestra que la crisis afectó de forma diferente a personas con distintos niveles de cualificaciones educativas y que dicho efecto difiere entre los países analizados.
Questo documento esplora e classifica alcune delle politiche più comuni tra i responsabili politici nazionali, regionali e locali durante o prima della pandemia di COVID-19 per rendere praticabile, promuovere e sfruttare al meglio il telelavoro. Vengono inoltre analizzate alcune misure miranti ad attrarre e trattenere in determinati territori i lavoratori e gli imprenditori che operano a distanza. L’attuale crisi ha comportato, tra gli altri aspetti, una sperimentazione di massa del telelavoro, senza precedenti per dimensioni e portata. La transizione verso un modello di telelavoro diffuso su vasta scala e su base permanente avrebbe profonde implicazioni per la geografia del lavoro a livello locale. Le PMI potrebbero essere meno attrezzate delle grandi imprese per affrontare tale cambiamento. Le politiche pubbliche possono assumere un ruolo cruciale nel trasformare il telelavoro in un'opportunità per tutti, e ridurre il rischio di un potenziale ampliamento delle disparità preesistenti tra persone, territori e aziende.
Todos los países necesitan vacunas, pero no todos pueden producirlas. La producción de vacunas es una actividad altamente especializada, sujeta a las ventajas comparativas, y concentrada en pocos países, por lo que el comercio es un medio indispensable para que las vacunas se distribuyan ampliamente. Para asegurar el acceso oportuno a las vacunas para todos será clave mantener los mercados abiertos reduciendo los aranceles, agilizar los procesos comerciales relacionados antes y después de frontera, al tiempo que se garantiza una mejor coordinación en los procesos logísticos. Este documento aborda el comercio y las consideraciones de política comercial que sostienen el acceso a los insumos finales e intermedios necesarios para producir, entregar y aplicar las vacunas contra la COVID-19. Asimismo, se enfoca en los aspectos internacionales de la cadena de suministro de la vacuna, analiza el suministro, producción, distribución y la necesidad de hacer expeditos el cruce de la frontera internacional y la transportación (en el contexto de suministro de la cadena de frío).
Princípios de IA da OCDEAtualmente, as tecnologias e ferramentas de inteligência artificial (IA) desempenham um papel fundamental em todos os aspectos da resposta à crise da COVID-19. Afim de facilitar o uso da IA, os formuladores de políticas devem incentivar o compartilhamento de conjuntos de dados e modelos médicos, moleculares e científicos em plataformas colaborativas para ajudar pesquisadores de IA a criar ferramentas eficazes para a comunidade médica e também garantir que pesquisadores tenham acesso à capacidade de computação necessária. Ao mesmo tempo, os formuladores de políticas devem garantir que os sistemas de IA sejam confiáveis e alinhados com os .
Este relatório tem por objetivo apoiar a tomada de decisões educacionais para desenvolver e implementar respostas efetivas de educação para a Pandemia da COVID-19. O relatório explica por que as necessárias medidas de isolamento social causarão uma disrupção na educação escolar por vários meses, na maioria dos países do mundo. Na ausência de uma estratégia intencional e eficaz para proteger as oportunidades para aprender durante este período, esta interrupção causará graves perdas de aprendizado para os alunos.
O relatório propõe que os líderes dos sistemas e organizações educacionais desenvolvam planos para a continuidade da educação por meio de modalidades alternativas, durante o período de isolamento social necessário. Também oferece um quadro de áreas a serem cobertas por tais planos.
Com base em uma rápida avaliação das necessidades educacionais e respostas que surgiram em noventa e oito países, o relatório identifica as necessidades cruciais que devam ser abordadas nesses planos, assim como as áreas passíveis de enfrentar maiores problemas de implementação. Examina também as respostas educativas de vários países à crise. Com base em uma análise dos dados da mais recente aplicação do PISA, o relatório também descreve os desafios enfrentados por vários sistemas educacionais para depender da educação online como uma modalidade alternativa.
El objetivo de este informe es reforzar la toma de decisiones en el área de la educación, para así desarrollar y poner en marcha respuestas educativas eficaces a la pandemia de COVID-19. En él se explica por qué las medidas de aislamiento social necesarias interrumpirán durante varios meses la educación presencial en la mayoría de los países del mundo. De no establecerse una estrategia deliberada y eficaz para proteger las oportunidades de aprendizaje durante dicho periodo, la interrupción mencionada provocará graves pérdidas para los estudiantes en términos de aprendizaje.