Governing the Metropolitan City of Venice

Meeting focusing on challenges on gender sensitive policies and gender budgeting in MENA region. Delegates will also discuss the progress to date on legal reforms in advancing gender equality and promoting women’s political participation in the region.

This conference provided a multi-disciplinary forum to discuss issues of regulatory reform involving both government and non-government actors.

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.

Blog article by Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director of Transparency International, written for the OECD Integrity Forum 2015.

This online resource will guide you in implementing the OECD Principles on Effective Public Investment Across Levels of Government. In addition to better familiarising yourself with the 12 Principles, the Toolkit lets you compare indicators and best practices in use in numerous countries, regions and municipalities.

Despite progress in the past decade, financial markets in Colombia remain relatively small and shallow. In particular the banking system suffers high intermediation costs, which limit constrains access to finance by households and firms.

The Colombian corporate tax system is highly complex and distortive. The effective tax burden on businesses is very high due to the combined effect of the corporate income tax, the corporate surtax introduced in 2012 (CREE), the net wealth tax on business assets and the value added tax (VAT) on fixed assets.

The OECD and Ukraine today signed an Action Plan for strengthening co-operation to help tackle corruption, improve public governance and the rule of law, boost investment and foster a dynamic business environment.

Colombia has engaged in a sustained process of fiscal decentralisation over the past decades. Evidence is presented that the current framework is conducive to fiscal sustainability, especially after the reforms in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Blog: Anecdotal evidence suggests there are loads of grumpy old men and women around. A new, evidence-based report from the OECD offers some clues as to why this should be.

As the OECD celebrates its 10th Rural Conference this edition will look at the next steps for the OECD Rural Policy Programme and consider the direction for future work.

Report comparing Hungary on key indicators of government activities with its neighbouring countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Slovak Republic and Slovenia) as well as the OECD average.

Colombia needs a comprehensive tax reform that boosts revenues and shifts the tax burden to support more inclusive and green growth. Tax loopholes and exemptions that reduce the tax base and favour mainly the rich should be reduced significantly.

This paper contributes to the scarce literature on the macroeconomic effects of property taxes, in particular on the relationships between property taxes, house prices and the wider economy.

OECD Insights Blog on the benefits to governments that pursue open government data initiatives.

The OECD’s Annual Meeting at Ministerial Level reinforced member governments’ support across a broad range of key OECD work.

Newsletter for OECD Regional Development Policy giving an overview of projects from January-June 2015.

Launch of the OECD programme for regulatory improvement in the Municipality of Torreon, Mexico.

Better access to and use of public sector information (PSI), including open government data, are inter-related parts of the shift towards knowledge-based economies, and drivers of innovation, growth and employment. PSI can be used directly to generate products and services, and it contributes in a wide variety of ways to improving efficiency and productivity across the economy (including within the public sector).

The Municipality of San Luis Potosi scores an 87% progress in implementing the OECD Guide to Improve the Quality of State and Municipal Regulations.

This paper examines the various issues in defining and measuring debt, and explores other data which could be useful, both within and beyond the general government debt concept, to better track and analyse fiscal risks and sustainability issues.

Governments should set prudent debt targets to ensure that public finances serve to promote economic growth and stability, according to new OECD research.

The objective of this paper is to calculate endogenous government debt limits given the markets assessment of the probability to default.

The objective of this paper is to define long-run prudent debt targets for OECD countries and country-specific fiscal rules. To this end, a semi-structural macroeconomic model for OECD countries and primary balance reaction functions are estimated.

The annual meeting of the OECD Schools of Government Network on the theme of Skills for a World Class Civil Service will be held on 6 July 2015, at the OECD in Paris.

Countries need to do more to identify and reduce conflicts of interest and other breaches of integrity to help win back trust in national governments, which surveys suggest remains below pre-crisis levels, according to a new OECD report.

Fiscal constitutions comprise the set of rules and frameworks guiding fiscal policy that are enshrined in a country’s fundamental laws.

Blog post reviewing the recent trends in the use of social media by governments. The article includes a look at the the top 30 government Twitter a/c's and the fastest growing accounts.

This working paper explores avenues to improve public sector efficiency in Latvia, a catching-up and ageing economy where spending needs are large.

Digital security risk should be treated as an economic rather than a technical issue, and should be part of an organisation’s overall risk management and decision-making, according to a new OECD Recommendation to member countries.

Governments find it hard to make financial plans for disasters, and that’s not just because disasters are unpredictable and outsized. It’s because post-disaster demands on governments are also unpredictable, driven by public and political pressure.

The Danish financial sector is big and there is a high degree of inter-connectedness between banks, mortgage institutions and pension funds.

Brazil has made significant progress in building a reputation for sound fiscal policy since it passed the Fiscal Responsibility Law in 2000. In recent years, however, the fiscal situation has become more difficult as public spending and gross debt have risen.

Recent reforms have made pension systems more financially sustainable and pensioners have higher living standards than ever before. But future generations are likely to find their pension entitlements much less generous than today’s and many may face a serious risk of pensioner poverty, according to a new OECD report.

This paper analyses income inequality in Ireland using a new panel dataset based on the administrative tax records of the Revenue Commissioners for Ireland.

TThe economic literature suggests that a revenue-neutral shift of tax revenues from income taxes to property taxes would increase GDP per capita in the medium term. This paper analyses for Ireland the consequences of such a shift in the tax mix.

This Recommendation offers a whole-of-government policy arsenal commonly agreed upon among OECD Members that governments can use to close remaining gender gaps in public life, scale up inclusive approaches to policy making and public service delivery, and monitor continuous progress.

This paper re-estimates the elasticities of government revenue and expenditure items with respect to the output gap for OECD countries. These elasticities are used by the OECD to calculate cyclically adjusted fiscal balances. The study updates the earlier 2005 study using the most recent datasets and tax codes, the coverage being confined in this paper to 35 countries, the 34 OECD member states and Latvia.

Reforms over the past two decades have produced a well-balanced, modern tax system. However, considerable revenues will be needed in the years ahead to expand social spending and infrastructure in order to raise growth and well-being. The challenge is to generate these revenues without penalising growth or exacerbating inequality.

This report analyses the strengths and weaknesses of Ireland’s system of parliamentary engagement in budgeting, and outlines a number of proposals for reform.

Many economically advanced countries are failing to fully enforce regulations on political party funding and campaign donations or are leaving loopholes that can be exploited by powerful private interest groups, according to a new OECD report.

Study outlining how OECD countries are dealing with the challenges of Open Government Data with a special chapter on the policy context of OGD in the United Arab Emirates.

The World Government Summit brings together over 3500 ministers, government officials, experts, representatives from the private sector and civil society to discuss the future of government and public service delivery.

This paper examines the potential contribution of RIA to better incorporating the inclusive growth perspective in regulatory decision-making.

This paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess the efficiency of welfare spending in a sample of OECD countries around 2012, focussing on health care, secondary education and general public services.

Despite having low government spending, Switzerland scores highly in various public policy outcomes, including health, education and transportation. But, as the population grows and ages, efficiency of public spending will have to rise to maintain low tax rates.

OECD countries have agreed to work towards greater gender equality in public life – including in governments, parliaments and judiciaries – with concrete measures to improve women’s access to leadership and decision-making roles and integrate more of a gender perspective into public policies.

Paris, 8 March 2016: Organised on International Women's Day, the OECD hosted a conference to consider policy approaches to closing leadership gender gaps in the public and corporate sectors.