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This report assesses the current state of water transport employment in Europe and links it to water transport governance. Authorities generally consider the skillset required by employees in water transport strategically important. However, evolving governance frameworks might have undermined the possibility of maintaining these skills in Europe. This report assesses incoherence in government policies and provides recommendations for reform to ensure the relevant skills needed in water transport can be maintained.
Water-related risks are intrinsically linked to both climate and nature challenges and can be closely tied to socio-economic challenges, such as poverty, food security, and domestic and international conflicts. There is increasing evidence that water-related risks are financially material across actors in the financial system, and further still, that there may be important implications for financial stability. However, a review of current practices indicates that these risks are not fully captured by current approaches to assessing risk.
This working paper explores how the financial sector understands the concept of financial materiality as a lever for decision making on water-related climate and nature risks. The paper also looks at how regulatory and supervisory guidance considers water in the context of climate and nature risks, and finally how sustainable finance tools and initiatives can support market participants in gaining an improved understanding of water-related risks.
This paper investigates the determinants of money demand (M3) in the euro area. It specifically examines the potential impact of financial and housing wealth on money demand. It tests the hypothesis, whether wealth associated with increases in asset prices is used to finance liquidity holdings in a standard portfolio context. Regressing velocity on interest rates and a wealth variable (a composite of residential property and stocks) within an error-correction framework provides evidence of positive wealth effects from financial and housing assets on money demand in the long run, but no significant impact in the short run. Tests suggests that the long-run and dynamic money demand equations are stable and have not been disrupted by the adoption of the euro on 1 January 1999, while the impact of wealth on money demand may have increased ...
This paper examines some alternative specifications of the aggregate consumption function for eight OECD countries. Wealth effects are potentially important as determinants of consumption and as a transmission channel from monetary influences to real variables. However, measurement difficulties prevent direct incorporation of wealth in empirical work on consumption in many countries. Here, wealth effects are incorporated implicitly into estimated functions in a way that differentiates between indexed and non-indexed assets. Results indicate that, while inflation appears to affect measured consumption ratios in all countries examined, an interaction between inflation and interest rates that would be implied by wealth effects is not always present. The implications of different consumption functions are tested within a macroeconomic model, the OECD INTERLINK system. The response of output and consumption to standard fiscal policy shocks generally becomes smaller when inflation ...
Despite the rising importance and economy-wide effects of online platforms, the paucity of cross-country comparable data still hampers understanding of the structural and policy determinants of their diffusion. This study contributes to the understanding of multi-sided online platforms in three main ways. First, we build a harmonised international dataset of online platforms and their use across 43 OECD and G20 countries, covering the 2013-19 period and nine areas of activity. Second, we describe main trends in the use of platforms in the past years, and third, we investigate the structural and policy determinants of online platforms diffusion across countries and over time.
This paper first identifies Slovenia’s main well-being challenges, namely to boost productivity and increase performance on economic indicators without compromising its low levels of inequalities in wealth and income, and to strive for better human capital outcomes, including health outcomes and adult skills. Second, the paper assesses the welfare impacts of some structural reforms based on the shadow price of employment, which is equal to 3% of household income. The largest welfare impacts stem from: i) a cut in regulation of the energy, transport and communication sectors; ii) an increase in ALMPs; iii) a cut in the average tax wedge on households; iv) a cut in the minimum wage; v) an increase in the number of weeks of maternity leave; vi) a cut in the replacement rate of unemployment benefits.
The present paper presents methodologies to forecast and conduct policy analysis for three well-being indicators with the goal of informing the Italian government’s budget planning process. For each of the three indicators (healthy life expectancy, overweight and obesity, and early school leaving), a model is developed that allows projecting future trends under a status quo scenario and that allows estimating the impact of policy and budget levers on future outcomes. The micro-economic models for being in good health have a moderate explanatory power with an R2 ranging between 0.2 and 0.3. The strongest predictors of good health are by far the prevalence of chronic diseases, followed by low mental health, sport practice and diet. Overall, the combined changes in inputs yield an improvement in the share of people declaring being in good health by 2.7 ppt, from a baseline of 62% among people older than 18. The micro-economic model for being in excess weight has lower explanatory power (R2 between 0.05 and 0.15). As a result, the combined changes in inputs yield a relatively small decrease by 0.5 ppt starting from a baseline of 47.6% of the population. The most important predictors are those associated with a healthy diet. Finally, the cross-region macro-economic model of early school leaving has high explanatory power (R2 above 0.90) and highlights a wide range of ‘push and pull’ factors. The combination of benchmark inputs yields a decrease in the rate of early leavers by 1.8 ppt, starting from a baseline of 13.1%. Overall, these results highlight the large scope for policy intervention to improve well-being outcomes, as well as the multiplicity of policy levers.
Drawing on the OECD Well-being Framework, this paper outlines the state of well-being outcomes in Finland and identifies strengths, weaknesses and trends compared to other OECD countries. Overall, Finland is an established international leader in well-being and sustainability. Six key insights highlight the several challenges for well-being that remain in Finland and should be addressed in a comprehensive, balanced and inclusive way. These insights have been identified by considering economic, social, and environmental outcomes – and inequalities in these – simultaneously, to highlight the type of policy-relevant findings that arise when applying a well-being approach to measuring progress.
The COVID-19 crisis continues to impact education globally. According to UNESCO in mid-April 2020, 194 countries had closed schools nationwide, affecting almost 1.6 billion learners. By August 2020, there were still 105 country-wide closures affecting over a billion learners. Many educators have worked hard to sustain student learning and well-being. The form, intensity and success of those efforts vary across countries/economies, but digital technologies have emerged as a crucial prerequisite for success.
Digital technologies offer the potential to provide new opportunities and alternative approaches for learning. They can shape what people learn, how they learn, where they learn and when they learn and, especially, the type of interactions between teachers and students. However, the COVID-19 crisis arose at a time when most education systems were unprepared to make the most of the potential of digital technologies. This PISA in Focus looks at how prepared schools and students were to be learning remotely.
COP27 will return to Africa for the first time since 2016 to follow up on promises made in Glasgow in 2021 to limit global temperatures to well below 2°C by the end of the century as committed under the Paris Agreement. Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) enable each country to pursue a tailored approach under the Paris Agreement, with countries setting their own mitigation and adaptation targets with the aim of increasing ambition with each subsequent submission. This report analyses the NDCs of 17 countries in West Africa on some of the pressing issues to be discussed at COP27, namely the ambition of targets in NDCs, the financing needs related to NDCs and their implementation. The objective of this report is two-fold: to inform COP participants where the region stands on these matters, and to identify opportunities for the region in updating NDCs.
OECD countries receive a little less than half (97 million in 2000) of the world’s total migrants, of which 3.8 million are from Northern Africa and 1.2 million are from West Africa. West African migration is on the rise, due mainly to an increase in intra-regional mobility (7.5 million). Within the OECD, North America receives the most West African migrants, followed by Europe. This article explores further some current trends in West African migration and outlines some of the issues that could affect this migration in the future, including climate change and demographic concerns in Europe. A European-North African-West African dialogue is proposed to address these future issues and help promote more structured means of cooperation.
Fueled by a burgeoning population, urbanisation and income growth, West African food demand is rapidly transforming, with striking increases in total quantities demanded, growing preference for convenience, diversification of diets towards more perishable products, and an increased concern for product quality. These changes provide great opportunities for the West African food system to increase production, value added, job creation and food security. Yet a number of structural and policy constraints continue to threaten the ability of West Africa to seize these opportunities. This paper analyses the key drivers of change and their implications on the various demands facing the food system. It then looks at how different elements of the food system respond to evolving demands, discusses the constraints to more effective responses, and finally considers some policy implications and key recommendations, particularly in the context of the ECOWAS-led efforts to develop and implement more effective regional agricultural policies.