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The International Energy Agency (IEA) regularly conducts in-depth peer reviews of the energy policies of its member and association countries. This process supports energy policy development and encourages the exchange of international best practices and experiences.
This first in-depth review of India’s energy policies examines the country’s achievements in developing its energy sector as well as the challenges it faces in ensuring a sustainable energy future. With an impressive track record of expanding access to electricity and clean cooking for its citizens and swiftly deploying renewable energy technologies, India offers an inspiring example for many countries around the world.
This report provides insights into the rise of India in global energy markets. It analyses the full breadth of the country’s energy sector and presents recommendations for strengthening energy policies in various areas. These include advancing energy market reforms, notably in power and gas markets; integrating higher shares of variable renewables; addressing air and water quality; and reducing vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.
Countries need to urgently scale-up and upgrade their adult learning systems to help people adapt to the future world of work. Today, only two in five adults across the EU and OECD participate in education and training in any given year, according to the OECD Survey of Adults Skills. Participation is even lower among disadvantaged adults, such as those with low skill levels or in jobs at high risk of automation. For adult learning systems to be future-ready, governments must increase their efforts to engage more adults in continuous learning throughout their lives.
While much has been written about the need for progress, it is less clear how adult learning participation can be increased in practice. Many good ideas struggle to translate into real change on the ground, as they get stuck in the reality of policy implementation. This report aims to understand the factors that make adult learning reforms succeed. It identifies lessons from six countries that have significantly increased participation over the past decades: Austria, Estonia, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands and Singapore. To shed light on how these countries achieved this objective, this study looks at the details of reform design, implementation and evaluation.
Cities are places of opportunity. They provide not just jobs but a whole range of public, cultural, social and consumption amenities. Transport is what connects people to these opportunities and cities provide access with varying degrees of success – especially when it comes to modes of transport that favour a green transition. This report argues that building sustainable transport networks for accessible cities requires a holistic planning approach, a sound institutional framework, reliable sources of funding, strong governmental capacity, and should build on community engagement. Urban accessibility requires coherent allocation of responsibilities across levels of government to support strategic planning. The report proposes concrete actions that cities can take to adapt their institutional framework, to improve transport planning and ensure they have access to sustainable sources of funding to implement their plans.
Policy evaluation is a critical element of good governance, as it promotes public accountability and contributes to citizens’ trust in government. Evaluation helps ensure that decisions are rooted in trustworthy evidence and deliver desired outcomes. Drawing on the first significant cross-country survey of policy evaluation practices covering 42 countries, this report offers a systemic analysis of the institutionalisation, quality and use of evaluation across countries and looks at how these three dimensions interrelate. The report also covers cross-cutting aspects related to regulatory assessment and performance budgeting. The analysis illustrates the role and functions of key institutions within the executive, such as centres of government and ministries of finance. It also underlines the role of supreme audit institutions.
The OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises have provided an internationally agreed benchmark to help governments assess and improve the way they exercise their ownership functions since 2005. This report documents changes in state ownership and SOE governance in both OECD and partner economies and assesses the extent to which the Guidelines have served as a “roadmap for reform” in individual countries since 2015, following the most recent update of the Guidelines. Drawing on practices in up to 31 jurisdictions, it covers organising the state enterprise ownership function; safeguarding a level playing field between SOEs and private businesses; equitable treatment of shareholders and other investors; stakeholder relations and responsible business; transparency and disclosure practices; and professionalising boards of directors. The report supports policy makers by facilitating greater awareness and more effective implementation of the Guidelines.
Regulations are indispensable for the proper functioning of society and markets. Technical regulations, referred to as NOMs in Mexico, set specific safety and quality requirements for products across sectors. Implementing Technical Regulations in Mexico provides the first assessment of the challenges facing regulatory delivery of technical regulations carried out under the aegis of the OECD Regulatory Policy Committee. This report analyses the delivery of Mexican NOMs, focusing on policies and practices around conformity assessment and regulatory inspections. Based on an analysis of NOMs’ framework and implementation policies and practices, the review identifies key areas for improvement and provides recommendations for Mexico to develop a whole-of-government and systemic approach to regulatory delivery of technical regulations.
Carbon pricing is a valuable instrument in the policy toolkit to promote clean energy transitions. By internalising the societal cost of greenhouse gas emissions, carbon pricing can stimulate investments in low-carbon technological innovations, foster multilateral co-operation and create synergies between energy and climate policies. Emissions trading systems offer one possible design for carbon pricing schemes. Where emissions are capped, trading systems create certainty about the allowed emissions trajectory, while allowing carbon prices to fluctuate. Emissions trading systems create incentives to reduce emissions where these are most cost-effective. Sub-national, national and supranational jurisdictions have shown increasing interest in emissions trading systems as a policy instrument to achieve climate change mitigation goals. By analysing international experiences, this report draws lessons for designing and implementing effective, efficient emissions trading systems. The report covers structures, policies and objectives across the energy sector, elaborating key lessons and questions especially for jurisdictions interested in developing new emissions trading systems. This report identifies key energy-related challenges drawn from “real world” experiences, opening the doors for a deeper examination of technical issues and lesson-sharing.
How’s Life? charts whether life is getting better for people in 37 OECD countries and 4 partner countries. This fifth edition presents the latest evidence from an updated set of over 80 indicators, covering current well-being outcomes, inequalities, and resources for future well-being. Since 2010, people’s well-being has improved in many respects, but progress has been slow or deteriorated in others, including how people connect with each other and their government. Large gaps by gender, age and education persist across most well-being outcomes. Generally, OECD countries that do better on average also feature greater equality between population groups and fewer people living in deprivation. Many OECD countries with poorer well-being in 2010 have since experienced the greatest gains. However, advances in current well-being have not always been matched by improvements in the resources that sustain well-being over time, with warning signs emerging across natural, human, economic and social capital. Beyond an overall analysis of well-being trends since 2010, this report explores in detail the 15 dimensions of the OECD Better Life Initiative, including health, subjective well-being, social connections, natural capital, and more, and looks at each country’s performance in dedicated country profiles.
The sale of publicly-owned oil, gas and minerals can have a significant impact on the development trajectory of resource-rich developing and emerging economies due to the large volume of commodities sold and the amount of money involved. Therefore, getting the buyer selection process right is a crucial step to prevent potential public revenue losses that can arise through sub-optimal allocation and corruption.
This Guidance is intended to strengthen state-owned enterprises (SOEs)’ capacity to market commodities and optimise the value of resources sold. It explains how SOEs can set up transparent and competitive buyer selection procedures that reduce discretion, close opportunities for favouritism and corruption, ultimately leading to increased revenues for improved development outcomes. Based on the review of existing selection and procurement processes, the Guidance provides recommendations for countering key corruption challenges at each step of the buyer selection process, and identifies examples of best practices. This Guidance complements the work of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) on recommended disclosures of buyer selection procedures by SOEs.
Housing is key to inclusive growth. It is the biggest spending item of household budgets, the main driver of wealth accumulation and biggest source of debt for most households. Housing and the neighbourhood in which people live also have important implications for individual health, employment and educational outcomes – effects that can begin in childhood and can last a lifetime. Nevertheless, the housing market may also present a barrier to inclusive growth for some groups, such as low-income households, children, youth, seniors and the homeless.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted even more abruptly just how important housing issues are to people, and prompted governments to introduce a range of emergency housing supports. However, the pandemic has also underscored the need for governments to develop more structural responses to address persistent housing challenges.
This report assesses the key underlying pre-COVID-19 housing policy issues and proposes a series of recommendations to support more inclusive housing outcomes. These include measures to address some of the structural barriers to inclusive growth in the housing market, as well as measures to address the specific housing challenges facing vulnerable groups.
Health at a Glance: Latin America and the Caribbean 2020 presents key indicators on health and health systems in 33 Latin America and the Caribbean countries. This first Health at a Glance publication to cover the Latin America and the Caribbean region was prepared jointly by OECD and the World Bank. Analysis is based on the latest comparable data across almost 100 indicators including equity, health status, determinants of health, health care resources and utilisation, health expenditure and financing, and quality of care. The editorial discusses the main challenges for the region brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as managing the outbreak as well as mobilising adequate resources and using them efficiently to ensure an effective response to the epidemic. An initial chapter summarises the comparative performance of countries before the crisis, followed by a special chapter about addressing wasteful health spending that is either ineffective or does not lead to improvement in health outcomes so that to direct saved resources where they are urgently needed.
The 2020 edition of Health at a Glance: Europe focuses on the impact of the COVID‑19 crisis. Chapter 1 provides an initial assessment of the resilience of European health systems to the COVID-19 pandemic and their ability to contain and respond to the worst pandemic in the past century. Chapter 2 reviews the huge health and welfare burden of air pollution as another major public health issue in European countries, and highlights the need for sustained efforts to reduce air pollution to mitigate its impact on health and mortality. The five other chapters provide an overview of key indicators of health and health systems across the 27 EU member states, 5 EU candidate countries, 3 European Free Trade Association countries and the United Kingdom. Health at a Glance: Europe is the first step in the State of Health in the EU cycle.
This sixth edition of Health at a Glance Asia/Pacific presents a set of key indicators of health status, the determinants of health, health care resources and utilisation, health care expenditure and financing and quality of care across 27 Asia-Pacific countries and territories. It also provides a series of dashboards to compare performance across countries and territories, and a thematic analysis on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on Asia/Pacific health systems. Drawing on a wide range of data sources, it builds on the format used in previous editions of Health at a Glance, and gives readers a better understanding of the factors that affect the health of populations and the performance of health systems in these countries and territories. Each of the indicators is presented in a user-friendly format, consisting of charts illustrating variations across countries and territories and over time, brief descriptive analyses highlighting the major findings conveyed by the data, and a methodological box on the definition of the indicators and any limitations in data comparability. An annex provides additional information on the demographic and economic context in which health systems operate.
BEPS Action 5 is one of the four minimum standards which all members of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS have committed to implement. One part of the Action 5 minimum standard is the transparency framework for compulsory spontaneous exchange of information on certain tax rulings which, in the absence of transparency, could give rise to BEPS concerns. Over 130 jurisdictions have joined the Inclusive Framework and take part in the peer review to assess their compliance with the transparency framework.
Specific terms of reference and a methodology have been agreed for the peer reviews to assess a jurisdiction’s implementation of the minimum standard. The review of the transparency framework assesses jurisdictions against the terms of reference which focus on five key elements: i) information gathering process, ii) exchange of information, iii) confidentiality of the information received; iv) statistics on the exchanges on rulings; and v) transparency on certain aspects of intellectual property regimes. The reviews of confidentiality of the information received defer to the work of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes and the outcomes of that work are not published. Recommendations are issued where improvements are needed to meet the minimum standard.
This report reflects the outcome of the annual peer review of the implementation of the Action 5 minimum standard and covers 124 jurisdictions. It assesses implementation for the 1 January - 31 December 2019 period.
The Guiding Principles for Durable Extractive Contracts (the Guiding Principles) provide guidance on how resource projects can be developed to reflect the balance of risks and rewards that underpins durable contracts, while taking into account community interests and concerns since the very beginning. The Guiding Principles offer a blueprint for the content and negotiation of durable extractive contracts that can reduce the drivers of renegotiation and can provide adaptive and flexible provisions that, for example, can automatically adjust to prevailing market conditions. They also aim to assist host governments and investors in explaining the content of the contract to the public, thereby helping to overcome tensions between stakeholders. The Guiding Principles set out eight principles and supporting commentary that host governments and investors, as well as negotiation support providers and legal practitioners, can use as a common reference for future negotiations of enduring, sustainable and mutually beneficial extractive contracts.
This document provides guidance on using efficacy and crop safety data generated in other countries and regions (as well as from other sources) and evaluations conducted by other regulatory authorities. The document does not provide guidance on the generation of data itself or related scientific principles of data assessment or extrapolation but rather discusses broad principles that may be considered and possibly assist with minor use registrations.
This Guidance Document provides guidance and practical advice for applicants on the requirements for flammability testing of biocides and agricultural pesticides/plant protection products in various OECD jurisdictions. Though many of the available methods are common they can differ in small but important ways. Thus a summary of parameters can help an applicant ensure their data set is viable in all OECD countries, thereby saving resources for both the applicant and the receiving government.
This document provides guidance for the methods to address dissolution rate and dispersion stability for nanomaterials with focus on environmental aqueous media. The definition of nanomaterials as having one dimension between 1 and 100 nm is generally accepted. The guidance provided here is relevant for solids in the nanoscale as well as their aggregates and agglomerates and it focuses on their fate and behaviour in aqueous media. In particular it presents the influence of various experimental conditions on the performance and outcomes of the discussed methods. In addition, this GD addresses modifications or additions to the methods and aims to give support for the interpretation of the test results.
Building green is not only imperative to achieve global climate and development commitments in this “decade for delivery”, but will also be critical to sustain socio-economic development during the COVID-19 recovery. Private investment in particular is needed to bridge the infrastructure investment gap, given institutional investors’ large pools of long-term capital. After several years of efforts to upscale institutional investment in infrastructure, where does the level of investment stand today? This report provides a first-of-its-kind empirical assessment of investment in infrastructure by institutional investors domiciled in OECD and G20 countries, presenting a snapshot from February 2020. Based on a new detailed view of investment channels, financial instruments, sectoral allocations, regional preferences and trends, the report provides guidance on policy levers and priorities to scale-up institutional investment in green infrastructure.
Government at a Glance: Western Balkans presents information on public governance in the Western Balkan region – covering Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia, and compares it to OECD and OECD-EU countries. This first regional edition features 40 indicators on public finance, public employment, centre of government, budgeting practices and procedures, human resources management, public procurement, digital government, core government results and serving citizens. Governance indicators provide important benchmarks on public administration systems, practices and performance. Indicators are presented in a user-friendly format using charts, with brief descriptive analyses of the major findings, and a methodological section on the definition of the indicator and any limitations in data comparability.