High-growth firms (HGFs) – firms able to grow fast over a short period of time – contribute to most new jobs in advanced economies.

Brazil’s economic growth has been supported in recent years by important government investment and social programmes that mobilise resources across the country. These programmes could help Brazil to meet its goals of sustaining economic growth and fostering social development, while reducing regional disparities.

Stockholm Waterfront Congress Centre 23 – 24 May

This working paper assesses national policy and governance mechanisms that can influence green growth in Chinese cities.

Cities can generate growth and jobs while becoming greener – this is the message of the OECD’s new Green Growth in Cities report. Drawing on case studies of Paris, Chicago, Kitakyushu and Stockholm, the report identifies green policies that can respond to urban growth priorities and suggests how to implement and finance them.

This paper discusses the results of the 2011-2012 OECD LEED study of measuring green growth in the Benelux countries (Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg). The study paid particular attention to the challenges of measuring the transition to a low-carbon economy in cross-border areas as they have additional levels of complexity when it comes to measuring and monitoring their low-carbon transition.

How to stimulate growth and support job creation are two critical challenges that countries and localities confront and limited resources require lateral thinking about how actions in one area, such as employment and training, can have simultaneous benefits in others, such as creating new jobs and better supporting labour market inclusion.

This workshop is to discuss the policy relevance of inequalities in the access to services in regions and cities, including the institutional and territorial organization for service delivery.

The creation of innovative new firms and the development of SME innovation are strongly influenced by the extent to which localities offer environments that favour the transfer of knowledge to local business and provide the other resources required for innovative firm development, including skills, finance, advice, and supply chain partners.

As part of the OECD LEED project on university support for entrepreneurship in eastern Germany, undertaken in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Regional Development, this handbook presents highlights of results of a series of case studies and a university survey.

Many areas like Manisa suffer from a local lack of sophisticated demand in terms of expressed SME requirements. This leaves considerable scope for demand and supply side initiatives set within KOSGEB’s framework that will assist in shaping intervention and promoting a coherent approach to SME development.

Ireland’s economy is now showing encouraging signs of recovery from the financial crisis, but more must be done to reinvigorate growth and create the jobs that will get the country back to full health, according to the OECD.

This book focuses on the role of employment and training agencies in contributing to job creation and productivity in Northern Ireland. It explores how Northern Ireland is implementing labour market and skills policy and putting measures in place at the local level to stimulate quality employment, inclusion and growth.

This report provides a framework to understand the changing relationships between urban and rural areas. Specifically, it documents the characteristics of these partnerships and the factors that can hinder as well as enable rural-urban co-operation.

This report examines cross-border collaboration on innovation, building on case studies of cross-border areas that include the following countries: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, United Kingdom and Ireland.

The economic crisis has hit certain regions and cities harder than others in the OECD area, calling for better regional policies across levels of governments to foster an inclusive and sustainable recovery, according to two new OECD reports.

The facts are simple: the bulk of people live in cities and an overwhelming percentage of economic activity originates in cities. So we must find ways to empower cities to set positive trends and lead the way toward stronger, more resilient and inclusive growth.

The metropolitan region of Aix-Marseille in the south of France needs to tackle its fragmentated governance if it is to return to more inclusive and sustainable economic growth, according to a new OECD report.

This LEED project aims to to define key indicators of area-based transition to a low-carbon economy. The objective is to define measurable indicators at regional/local level that can inform over time of transition to low-carbon economic and industrial activities.

The last decade has seen considerable policy attention to the social economy and its contribution to employment, in particular as regards the inclusion and empowerment of vulnerable workers and the provision of appropriate working conditions.

LEED and Cedefop organise the second edition of the Green Skills Forum which will bring together experts in innovation, employability and skills development and lessons from work conducted by the OECD, Cedefop, and other organisations on the implications of the green economy for skills development and training policies.

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.

In partnership with the Swedish Public Employment Service, Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR), Swedish Ministry of Employment and the World Association of Public Employment Services (WAPES), LEED held the 10th Annual Meeting of the Forum on Partnerships and Local Development in Stockholm 23 April – 25 April, on the theme of ‘job creation just ahead: building adaptable labour markets’.

The Netherlands is gradually emerging from a double-dip recession with strengthened public finances and reforms on track to improve the labour and housing markets and the health care and pension systems. These reforms are paying off, says the OECD. Growth is expected to reach 1% this year and 1.3% in 2015.

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.

Statistics Working Paper N. 58 - 2014/3 - This paper presents a set of indicators of income inequality and poverty across and within regions for 28 OECD countries. These indicators were produced through a new household-level data collection based on internationally harmonized income definitions undertaken as part of the OECD project on “Measuring regional and local well-being for policymaking”.

Angel Gurría and Michael R. Bloomberg reaffirmed today their commitment to support international cities’ efforts to lead in the global fight against climate change — and called for national support to make this happen.

Living standards continue to diverge within many economically advanced countries as poorer regions struggle to catch up with richer ones. Half of the 34 OECD countries have seen the income gap between their best-off and worst-off regions widen since the 2008 crisis, according to new OECD research.

The Japan-OECD Policy Forum on Urban Development and Green Growth will address cities’ unique role in creating synergies between environmental and economic objectives to advance green growth. Asian cities in particular are at the centre of this challenge. This event is organised as a commemorative event for the 50th Anniversary of Japan's Accession to the OECD.

Korea has made significant progress towards decentralising the management of employment and training programmes, but can still do more to create stronger links with employers at the local level, according to a new OECD report.

U.S. employers are demanding skilled workforces, but are not always able to find a local supply, says a new OECD study looking at Job Creation and Local Economic Development.

This publication highlights new evidence on policies to support job creation, bringing together the latest research on labour market, entrepreneurship and local economic development policy to help governments support job creation in the recovery.

Mr. Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the OECD, was in Mexico from 6 to 9 January 2015 on an official visit, to present the OECD 2015 Economic Survey of Mexico alongside Mr. Luis Videgaray, Minister of Finance of Mexico.

In parallel to a sweeping structural reform agenda, Mexico announced in 2013 a new approach to housing and urban policy. Calling for a more explicit qualitative focus on housing and the urban environment, the policy shift is a welcome development.

Improving Myanmar's agricultural sector by building up food processing activities and related services could help the transformation of the country's economy, to a more modern one able to produce higher-value goods for export, according to a new OECD report.

Italy has significantly improved the quality of health care in recent decades but needs to tackle the wide disparities that remain between regions, according to a new OECD report.

In the face of shifting global trade patterns, international freight transport volumes will grow more than fourfold (factor 4.3) by 2050. Average transport distance across all modes will increase 12%, according to the latest ITF Transport Outlook.

This report delivers evidence-based and practical recommendations on how to better support employment and economic development in England. It builds on sub-national data analysis and consultations with local stakeholders in Nottingham and North Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands as well as Hull and Scarborough in Yorkshire and the Humber.

Tunisia has made great strides since 2011 towards greater inclusivity and fairness in its political system, based on the rule of law, transparency and good governance.

The OECD event "Risk Governance and Resilient Cities" will examine how risk governance can better manage complex risks and how to improve the resilience of cities to these risks.

Knowledge sharing is critical in fostering urban green growth. Cities in dynamic Asia urgently need to adopt and strengthen green growth models that take into account rapid urbanisation, industrialisation, and motorisation.

New global trend such as jobless growth, a rising youth population and resource scarcity threaten to undo much of the progress of recent decades in securing people’s ability to make a living, according to a new report by the OECD Development Centre launched in Paris today at the OECD Global Forum on Development.

Rapid population growth, ageing infrastructure and new weather risks are straining the ability of cities in OECD countries to provide clean water and to protect against floods and droughts, according to a new OECD report. Cities will need large-scale investment and more effective tariffs and taxes to pay for upgrades to water systems.

This expert seminar aims to get a better understanding of the features, limitations and preliminary findings from the use of SIBs, and to a lesser extent, of DIBs in developing countries from a multidimensional and multi-stakeholder perspective.

This report explores this question on the basis of detailed mobility data including origin, destination and timing of all trips for a mid-sized European city. ITF developed a model to test various alternative transport system configurations that would provide the same level of mobility (locations and timing) as today.

In 2011, TIME Magazine named collaborative consumption (or the sharing economy as it is often called) as one of the top 10 ideas that will change the world. Four years on, this prediction seems to be holding true. The number of companies operating in the sharing economy is rising rapidly in the transport sector alone.

With Africa’s population set to double by 2050, modernising local economies will be vital to make the continent more competitive and to increase people’s living standards, according to the African Economic Outlook 2015, released at the African Development Bank Group’s 50th Annual Meetings.

“What is the city but the people?” asked Shakespeare in Coriolanus. All city planning focuses on people and the quality of life. The big cities in Brazil took shape from the 1950s, when the country’s population amounted to approximately 52 million inhabitants, only 36.2% of whom lived in cities.

Local policymakers have a critical role to play in developing more resilient and inclusive economies. This event will explore topics ranging from empowering communities through local leadership to new approaches to local economic growth and catalysing growth through people by better harnessing skills and increasing productivity.

The work will seek to identify good practices for employer engagement in the areas of both developing and utilising skills, including setting up innovative workplace learning methods, designing effective employer partnerships with the employment and training system as well as financing mechanisms for employer-led training, including how best to reach SMEs.