In OECD countries, networks look like a mesh with multiple paths that can act as each other’s backup. In developing countries, however, communication networks often resemble rivers, with small branches of regional networks delivering their traffic to a central national backbone that ends at one submarine fibre, making cable cuts a greater risk to the functioning of the economy.

The first generation of those born into the internet age is already joining the workforce and yet the internet still manages to disrupt. The phenomenon of fake news is one of the by-products of digital transformation and it is worth taking a look at what is new, and not so new, and how it fits in to the rest of what some are calling the “post-truth world”.

More than 110 countries and jurisdictions have agreed to review two key concepts of the international tax system, responding to a mandate from the G20 Finance Ministers to work on the implications of digitalisation for taxation.

2014 OECD/Euromoney Roundtable on Long-term Investment Policy: The roundtable provided a unique opportunity for participants to discuss the OECD’s work on institutional investors and long-term financing with senior policymakers and regulators, and to facilitate investment by institutional investors, addressing both potential regulatory obstacles and market failures.

Paris, 19-20 November 2015: Bringing together senior executives representing the world’s largest institutional investors, senior policy makers and regulators, debates focused on issues affecting long-term investment, including: asset allocation concepts; regulation; governance; energy and natural resources; and, brownfield and greenfield infrastructure.

The OECD LEED Programme launches this "Call for Initiatives" to extract what local authorities and other actors know works, what the new scenario is demanding and how equipped they are to respond. We are interested in learning from the experiences of EU member countries, the wider OECD area as well as other countries.

The unfolding refugee crisis requires a bold, comprehensive and global response. At the same time, OECD countries should adapt their policies to foster the integration of those who are going to stay. While this implies significant up-front costs, it is also essential to reaping sizeable medium- to long-term social and economic benefits.

Perspectives on Global Development 2017: International Migration in a Shifting World shows that while the share of global migrants originating from developing countries has remained fairly stable at around 80% over the last 20 years, the share of developing country migrants heading to high-income countries has jumped from 36% to 51% of the world total.

Labor Migration in Asia – Safeguarding rights from home to the workplace

When it comes to labour and migration, global governance of almost any kind is missing. When it comes to labour, the International Labour Organization, which is the oldest among the institutions mentioned here, has little power and deals mostly with national labour rules.

The Dominican Republic stands to benefit from integrating migration further into sectoral and national development strategies, says new joint OECD Development Centre – UNIBE report

The OECD and the ESRC Genomics Policy & Research Forum jointly organised a one-day Forum on 12 November 2012 in Paris. The event was both retrospective and forward-looking. The forum concluded that the promise of biotechnology is not set but evolves with fresh scientific knowledge, novel laws and regulations. The future of biotechnology needs to also integrate social and cultural dimensions.

This paper presents comparative data on innovation in selected climate change mitigation and adaptation technologies in the context of Africa. Such analysis informs policy aimed at encouraging international technology transfer and development of domestic innovation capacities.

Mexico is faced with difficult trade-offs as it pursues its economic, social and environmental goals. Like other emerging economies Mexico is balancing the need to protect its natural resources with the need to address high levels of income inequality and poverty.

In his speech to OECD Ambassadors, the President of Iceland discussed how Iceland could offer lessons on the nature of a clean energy economy; and presented some insights from Iceland's recent challenges in dealing with the financial crisis.

Competitiveness and carbon leakage issues have been some of the main concerns in the implementation and discussions of climate policies. This paper examines the macroeconomic and sectoral competitiveness and carbon leakage impacts associated with a range of stylised mitigation policy scenarios.

The Netherlands is a global pioneer in water management with a long history of containing flood risks and reclaiming land from the sea. Yet it will need to adapt its water governance policies to meet the looming challenges of shifting demographics, regional development and climate change, according to an OECD report.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is increasingly recognised worldwide as an efficient waste management policy to help improve recycling and reduce landfilling of products and materials. This Forum took place on 17-19 June 2014, in Tokyo, Japan, to identify key challenges and opportunities for further developing EPR policies.

This study uses a unique dataset of investment flows to analyse the role of two categories of public interventions (finance and policies) in mobilising flows of private climate finance worldwide and in the more specific context of flows to and in developing countries. The objectives are threefold. Find out more.

Challenging free trade orthodoxy is a heavy lift in our political culture; anything that has been in place for that long takes on an air of inevitability. But, critical as these shifts are, they are not enough to lower emissions in time. To do that, we will need to confront a logic even more entrenched than free trade–the logic of indiscriminate economic growth.

The current Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal highlights the difficult reality of making the transition to a low-carbon economy. It also highlights the growing need for governments to make smart policies, based on actual costs.

Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits have agreed new rules on official support for coal-fired power plants, including restrictions on official export credits for the least efficient coal-fired power plants, the OECD announced today.

Urgent research is needed to assess the possible risks to human health and ecosystems from the ever-increasing amounts of engineered nanomaterials going into household waste and ending up in the environment, according to a new OECD report.

This report provides a review of recent firm-level and plant-level surveys containing questions on environmental policies, innovation practices or performance which are relevant for environmental policy analysis and assessment. We specifically focus on the core element that relates environmental policies to environmental and economic performance, namely the adoption of innovative practices and environmental innovations by firms.

This paper provides an in-depth review of experiences and insights from mainstreaming biodiversity and development in South Africa. More specifically, it describes how biodiversity considerations have been mainstreamed in five key sectors/areas, namely: land use planning, mining, water, infrastructure, and the agricultural sector.

The OECD will convene its 6th Workshop on Regional trade agreements and the environment on 10 June 2016, at the OECD Headquarters. The focus of the workshop will be on chapters of regional trade agreement (RTAs) that are concerned mainly with issues other than the environment, such as market access, investment, or government procurement, TBT, regulatory coherence or dispute settlement.

Developing countries are disproportionately affected by the rising trend of losses from climate-related extreme events. This paper uses case studies of Colombia and Senegal to examine how countries are using financial protection as part of their approaches to managing climate risks; it also identifies emerging priorities for development co-operation providers in supporting financial protection against climate risks.

Climate change is a clear and undeniable challenge that requires a global response. The Paris Agreement represents the careful crafting of a collective effort of over 190 countries to meet this challenge.

This paper presents updated results for the cost of ambient air pollution in 41 countries: the 6 major emerging economies known as the BRIICS – Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa – and the 35 OECD member countries.

On 10 December in Katowice, the 9th annual High-Level Breakfast on Institutional Investors and the Low-carbon Transition, co-hosted by the OECD and the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), highlighted significant progress in mobilising green institutional investment, as well as important remaining challenges.

Tourism has boomed in Indonesia in recent years and is already one of the main sources of foreign-currency earnings.

This paper assesses the effect of environmental regulations on plant survival and emissions using data on the extent of vintage differentiation of regulations (VDR5) regarding air pollution emission limit values for existing and new coal-fired power plants. Focussing on NOx and SOx emissions, the paper applies survival analysis techniques on a sample of generating units across 31 OECD and non-member countries between 1962 and 2012.

Policy instruments can be applied to improve the sustainability of plastics, including regulations, market-based instruments, information and voluntary tools. The report reviews the use of these instruments, provides good practice examples, such as product taxes and charges, eco-design standards, extended producer responsibility and environmental product labels, as well as discussing opportunities for their future applications.

This paper provides a concrete example of how policy analysts can use empirical programme evaluation studies to perform ex-post assessments of environmentally related tax policies. A number of studies credibly identify causal effects of environmentally related tax policies, but do not necessarily provide all the information needed to fully inform the policy-making process.

The UN Climate Action Summit on 23 September marks a potential inflection point ahead of the start of the implementation of the Paris Agreement in 2020. This event will gather and encourage Heads of State and Government to deliver concrete actions to address climate change. Our planet is witnessing dramatic changes in its life-support ecosystems, demanding accelerated action and co-operation among interlinking policy areas...

National development banks (NDBs) and development finance institutions are poised to play a role in bridging the investment gap for climate-compatible infrastructure in developing countries. This paper highlights the role of NDBs drawing from case studies of the Brazilian Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social and the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

Mexico is faced with difficult trade-offs as it pursues its economic, social and environmental goals. Like other emerging economies Mexico is balancing the need to protect its natural resources with the need to address high levels of income inequality and poverty.

In his speech to OECD Ambassadors, the President of Iceland discussed how Iceland could offer lessons on the nature of a clean energy economy; and presented some insights from Iceland's recent challenges in dealing with the financial crisis.

Long-term projections suggest that without policy changes, the continuation of business-as-usual economic growth and development will have serious impacts on natural resources and the ecosystem services on which human well-being depends.

To benefit fully from cross-border trade in electricity, interconnected countries need to establish a non-discriminatory trading regime based on co-operation and co-ordination, says this study of trade in renewables-based electric power in Europe.

Old ways of thinking won’t bring developed countries back to economic life. Weighed down by the legacy of the crisis, they also face deep challenges like a faltering labour supply and slowing innovation. And growth itself won’t be enough–it must also be stable, inclusive and green. The need for structural reforms has never been greater, but they will require difficult trade-offs.

OECD Secretary-General, Mr. Angel Gurría, gives his views in this blog from the World Economic Forum in Davos on the huge risk that carbon dioxide emissions pose to the economy and the environment.

The policy forum officially launches the conceptual framework to the public and offers an opportunity for participants to discuss the key issues for emerging Asia: housing, buildings and energy, land use and transport, water and waste management, green goods and services.

Challenging free trade orthodoxy is a heavy lift in our political culture; anything that has been in place for that long takes on an air of inevitability. But, critical as these shifts are, they are not enough to lower emissions in time. To do that, we will need to confront a logic even more entrenched than free trade–the logic of indiscriminate economic growth.

Join the GGKP for a webinar on 1 November from 3:00pm - 4:30pm (Geneva time) to learn more about the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)'s Green Growth Potential Assessment (GGPA) tool which helps countries find ways to turn risks into green growth opportunities, and the ways in which it has been applied to unlock green growth potential in Colombia and Peru.

In today’s hyper-connected world distance is no longer a hindrance and people are using the latest technology to keep in touch with each other round the clock.

This publication examines the role of institutional investors in promoting good corporate governance and reviews Australia, Chile and Germany in more detail.

To help inform the Conference on Managing Hospital Volumes, co-organised by the German Federal Ministry of Health and the OECD, and held on the 11th April 2013 in Berlin, the OECD Secretariat produced a paper to provide an international perspective on Germany’s situation and the current policy debate.

The Secretary-General of the OECD, Mr. Angel Gurría, will be in Munich from 13 to 14 February 2020 to attend the The Munich Cyber Security Conference (MCSC) and The Munich Security Conference (MSC).

This report provides the main findings and recommendations of a case study review of entrepreneurship education and business start-up support in Tunisian universities and universities of applied sciences as part of a series of reviews on Skills and Competences for Entrepreneurship carried out by the LEED Programme of the OECD.