Browse by: "2018"

There is increasing recognition that teachers will play a key role in preparing students for the challenges of the future. We expect teachers to equip students with the skill set and knowledge required for success in an increasingly global, digital, complex, uncertain and volatile world. This will involve teachers and schools forging stronger links with parents and local communities, building a sense of social responsibility and problem solving skills among their students. It also means that teachers need to adopt effective and individualised pedagogies that foster student learning and nurture their social and emotional skills. How can education systems help them engage in continuous innovation and professional development to enhance their own practice?

This report shows how education systems can support teachers to meet these new demands and encourage a paradigm shift on what teaching and learning are about and how they should happen. Education systems need to create the conditions that encourage and enable innovation. They need to promote best practice through policies focused on professionalism, efficacy and effectiveness in order to help build teachers’ capacity for adopting new pedagogies. Due attention should also be paid to teachers’ sense of well-being so that classroom learning environments remain conducive to students’ own well-being and development.

This study examines the potential for the misuse of Free Trade Zones (FTZs) for trade in counterfeit and pirated goods. It presents the evolution of the FTZs and the international legal framework in which they operate, the reasons for establishing such zones and the benefits they offer businesses, and, finally, the role these zones play in fuelling trade in counterfeit and pirated goods. It also analyses the links between the FTZs and trade in counterfeit products, and provides data on these links.

In a globalised world, where goods cross borders many times as intermediate and as final products, trade facilitation is essential to lowering overall trade costs and increasing economic welfare, in particular for developing and emerging economies. Facilitation efforts undertaken by various countries around the world also show that the benefits of such measures clearly compensate the costs and challenges posed by their implementation.

The field of emergency management is broad, complex and dynamic. In the post-Fukushima context, emergency preparedness and response (EPR) in the nuclear sector is more than ever being seen as part of a broader framework. The OECD has recommended that its members “establish and promote a comprehensive, allhazards and transboundary approach to country risk governance to serve as the foundation for enhancing national resilience and responsiveness”. In order to achieve such an all-hazards approach to emergency management, a major step in the process will be to consider experiences from the emergency management of hazards emanating from a variety of sectors.

The NEA Working Party on Nuclear Emergency Matters (WPNEM) joined forces with the OECD Working Group on Chemical Accidents (WGCA), the OECD Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate’s High-Level Risk Forum (HLRF) and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) to collaborate on this report, which demonstrates similarities between emergency planning and preparedness across sectors, and identifies lessons learnt and good practices in diverse areas for the benefit of the international community. A set of expert contributions, enriched with a broad range of national experiences, are presented in the report to take into account expertise gathered from the emergency management of hazards other than those emanating from the nuclear sector in an effort to support and foster an all-hazards approach to EPR.

This report on Korea is the fourth country study published in a series of reports looking into how policies connect people with jobs, following reports on Australia, Slovenia and the United Kingdom. It has a special focus on low-income groups, jobseekers and workers, and policies geared towards closing the considerable gaps these groups are facing around income and employment support. In the past forty years, Korea has gone through a remarkable economic transformation and in the past two decades, the country has also put in place a comprehensive social protection system and a strong activation framework. Nevertheless, features of Korea’s labour market, which include very low job tenure, a high degree of duality and a high level of informality, make it difficult for some measures to reach workers and jobseekers. This report concludes that significant additional action will be needed to make income and employment supports more effective and inclusive.

Petrochemical products are everywhere and are integral to modern societies. They include plastics, fertilisers, packaging, clothing, digital devices, medical equipment, detergents, tires and many others. They are also found in many parts of the modern energy system, including solar panels, wind turbine blades, batteries, thermal insulation for buildings, and electric vehicle parts.

The Future of Petrochemicals takes a close look at the consequences of growing demand for these products, and what we can do to accelerate a clean energy transition for the petrochemical industry.

The media and investigative journalism play a crucial role in bringing allegations of corruption to light and fighting against impunity. International consortiums of investigative journalists are an example of an international cooperation that leads to tangible results in bringing financial and economic crime to the attention of the public and law enforcement authorities. Media reporting is an essential—albeit untapped—source of detection in corruption cases.

This report documents and analyses material collected through country reviews undertaken by the OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions and through responses to the OECD Survey on Investigative Journalism. It explores good practices and challenges in the detection of international corruption cases via media reporting and investigative journalism.

Migration flows are profoundly changing the composition of classrooms. Results from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that in 2015, almost one in four 15-year-old students in OECD countries reported that they were either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. Between 2003 and 2015, the share of students who had either migrated or who had a parent who had migrated across international borders grew by six percentage points, on average across OECD countries.

The Resilience of Students with an Immigrant Background: Factors that Shape Well-being reveals some of the difficulties students with an immigrant background encounter and where they receive the support they need. The report provides an in-depth analysis of the risk and protective factors that can undermine or promote the resilience of immigrant students. It explores the role that education systems, schools and teachers can play in helping these students integrate into their communities, overcome adversity, and build their academic, social, emotional and motivational resilience.

Historically low productivity gains and record high inequality are major challenges for policy makers around the world. Both concerns have been exacerbated by the global financial crisis but took roots well before and reflect fundamental challenges with the way our economies function.

This report proposes a new comprehensive approach to promote better productivity performance and reduce inequalities. It not only gathers the most recent empirical evidence on the main factors behind slowing productivity gains and rising or persisting inequalities but also suggests possible common foundations and linkages between these two trends. It stresses the risk of a vicious cycle setting in, where individuals with fewer skills and poorer access to opportunities are confined to unproductive and often precarious jobs. This reduces aggregate productivity and widens inequality. The report focuses on how to expand the productive assets of an economy by investing in the skills of its people and providing an environment where all firms have a fair chance to succeed, including in lagging regions. It draws preliminary conclusions on the type of policy packages that are needed and on their implications for policy making. It also sets an agenda for future research to deepen empirical evidence and make concrete country-specific policy recommendations.

This report provides an in-depth analysis of major reforms undertaken between 2014 and 2018 to promote micro, small and medium-sized enterprise development in Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority and Tunisia. The report focuses on five strategic areas for SME policy making: SME definitions, statistics and institutions; improving business environments for SMEs and entrepreneurs; fostering access to finance; nurturing start-ups and SME growth; and the development of entrepreneurial human capital.

The report aims to showcase good practices and to point to areas where more efforts are needed. It provides valuable guidance for governments, private sector organisations, multilateral bodies and other stakeholders to intensify their efforts to support SMEs as essential vehicles for jobs and competitiveness. This is particularly relevant in a region striving to boost economic diversification, employment creation and the inclusion of youth and women in the economy.

The report is the result of a process of close collaboration among governments, the OECD, the European Training Foundation and the European Commission.

Rural youth constitute over half of the youth population in developing countries and will continue to increase in the next 35 years. Without rural transformation and green industrialisation happening fast enough to create more wage employment in a sustainable manner, the vast majority of rural youth in developing countries have little choice but to work in poorly paid and unstable jobs or to migrate.

As household dietary pattern is changing, new demands by a rising middle class for diversified and processed foods are creating new job opportunities in food-related manufacturing and services. Agro-food industries are labour-intensive and can create jobs in rural areas as well as ensure food security. Yet the employment landscape along the agro-food value chains is largely underexploited. This study looks at local actions and national policies that can promote agro-food value chains and other rural non-farm activities using a youth employment lens.

Electricity provision touches upon every facet of life in OECD and non-OECD countries alike, and choosing how this electricity is generated – whether from fossil fuels, nuclear energy or renewables – affects not only economic outcomes but individual and social well-being in the broader sense. Research on the overall costs of electricity is an ongoing effort, as only certain costs of electricity provision are perceived directly by producers and consumers. Other costs, such as the health impacts of air pollution, damage from climate change or the effects on the electricity system of small-scale variable production are not reflected in market prices and thus diminish well-being in unaccounted for ways.

Accounting for these social costs in order to establish the full costs of electricity provision is difficult, yet such costs are too important to be disregarded in the context of the energy transitions currently under way in OECD and NEA countries. This report draws on evidence from a large number of studies concerning the social costs of electricity and identifies proven instruments for internalising them so as to improve overall welfare.

The results outlined in the report should lead to new and more comprehensive research on the full costs of electricity, which in turn would allow policy makers and the public to make better informed decisions along the path towards fully sustainable electricity systems.