Greece’s recovery from deep economic depression is finally gaining traction, according to the OECD. Economic growth has started to pick up led by a rise in exports while labour market reforms have improved competitiveness and are helping to create jobs.

Since the early 2000s, the investment rate has declined, driven by the decrease in business investment.

Poland’s productivity has grown strongly over the past two decades. However, the public and private capital stock is weak, and investment remains focused on the adoption of existing technologies, which weighs on future productivity gains and innovation.

Income inequality has increased in most OECD countries over the past two decades. This has come about both because incomes before taxes and transfers have become more unequally distributed, and because the extent of redistribution through taxes and transfers has fallen.

Turkey’s business sector exhibits one of the highest investment rates among OECD countries.

Aggregate investment has declined markedly over the crisis and has yet to recover. Reviving domestic and foreign investment is crucial to supporting the economic recovery, deepen Greece’s integration into global value chains and raising living standards.

This report provides a detailed diagnosis of the youth labour market and education system in Brazil. It takes an international comparative perspective, offering policy options to help improve school-to-work transitions. It also provides an opportunity for other countries to learn from the innovative measures that Brazil has taken to strengthen the skills of youth and their employment outcomes.

Brazil is emerging from its long recession and is headed for solid growth in 2018 and 2019 as recent structural reforms start to bear fruit. Sustaining this recovery, unleashing Brazil’s full economic potential and spreading the benefits fairly will require additional efforts to rein in public spending, increase trade and investment, and further focus social spending on those most in need, according to a new OECD report.

The OECD Working Group on Bribery is to send a high-level mission to Brasilia as soon as possible in November, to meet with senior officials, to reinforce the message that law enforcement capacity to investigate and prosecute foreign bribery should be preserved in order to ensure that Brazil remains able and committed to meeting its obligations under the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.

Intergovernmental fiscal frameworks usually reflect fundamental societal choices and history and are not foremost geared towards achieving economic policy objectives. Yet, like most institutional arrangements, fiscal relations affect the behaviour of firms, households and governments and thereby economic activity.

Mexico regularly faces a wide range of natural hazards, including earthquakes, tropical storms and floods. Over the years, the National Civil Protection System has improved its institutional and operational preparedness to manage these disruptive events. But more can be done to avoid future losses and at the same time support sustainable economic development.

Well-functioning judicial systems play a crucial role in determining economic performance – notably by guaranteeing the security of property rights and the enforcement of contracts – but not all countries’ judiciaries operate at the same level of efficiency.

The global economic crisis has had a profound impact on people’s well-being, reaching far beyond the loss of jobs and income, and affecting citizens’ satisfaction with their lives and their trust in governments, according to a new OECD report.

Recommendation of the OECD Council on Effective Public Investment Across Levels of Government

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.

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

Middle Eastern and North African countries should press ahead with further economic and structural reforms to boost flagging trade and investment, restore public trust and create jobs for the region’s young population, the OECD told ministers from the region today.

The scale of the transition to a green, low-emissions and climate-resilient economy is enormous – it is the biggest structural adjustment ever proposed in the field of international governance. The OECD Centre will catalyse and support the transition to a green, low-emissions and climate-resilient global economy through the development of effective policies, institutions and instruments for green finance and investment.

This paper seeks to identify the conditions under which raising public investment can sustainably lift growth without deteriorating public finances.

Public investment benefits current as well as future generations.

An estimated baseline convergence model capturing the long-term effect of human capital and physical investment on potential output for a panel of OECD countries is augmented with public investment and its components.

This paper assesses how international tax planning affects real business investment by multinationals. Earlier studies have shown that corporate taxes reduce business investment. This paper shows that tax planning multinationals are less sensitive to corporate taxes than other firms in their investment decisions.

This paper assesses the redistribution of foreign direct investments (FDI) and tax revenues among countries due to multinationals’ response to international differences in corporate tax systems.

Business taxation in India is characterised by high effective tax rates, a narrow tax base, and an uncertain tax environment for potential investors.

Governments have responded differently to new demands on them since the global crisis, with many raising spending on social services, some trimming public sector employment and most stabilising day-to-day running costs at a lower level.

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

18 November 2013 - Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Week 2013 opened in Bangkok today with a regional conference on responsible business practices jointly organised by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission of Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

This paper provides a framework for analysing ownership engagement by institutional investors. It argues that the general term “institutional investor” in itself doesn’t say very much about the quality or degree of ownership engagement. It is therefore an evasive “shorthand” for policy discussions about ownership engagement.

This conference focused on recent reforms undertaken by the government to improve the investment climate in Myanmar, and the ways that the international community can help ensure that renewed investor interest contributes to sustainable and inclusive development. It featured a discussion of the detailed finding of the recently released OECD Investment Policy Review of Myanmar.

Recommendation of the OECD Council on Effective Public Investment Across Levels of Government

This article provides a framework for analysing the character and degree of ownership engagement by institutional investors. There are large differences in ownership engagement between different categories of institutional investors. There are also differences in ownership engagement within the same category of institutional investors such as hedge funds, investment funds, etc.

This survey was presented at the Informal ministerial meeting on responsible business conduct held in Paris on 26 June 2014.

Investment treaties are often thought to be silent on investors’ responsibilities to host societies and on their contributions to sustainable development. This paper establishes a factual and statistical basis for understanding the relationship between investment treaty law and governments’ ability to advance the sustainable development agenda and promote responsible business conduct.

This paper examines shareholder claims for reflective loss under investment treaties in light of comparative analysis of advanced systems of corporate law; considers the impact of allowing shareholder claims for reflective loss on key characteristics of the business corporation; and explores possible responses by different categories of investors to the availability of shareholder claims for reflective loss under investment treaties.

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

This brochure explains the major changes introduced in the OECD’s 4th Benchmark Definition of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), which saw widespread implementation in 2014, and assesses the impact on FDI statistics.

OECD Corporate Governance Working Paper No.17. This report examines the influence of institutional shareholders and their activities towards good corporate governance, the historical changes to practices within shareholder meetings and the role that institutional shareholders have played in the improvement of corporate governance within Japanese listed companies.

The recent surge in competition between state and private firms in global markets calls for a reflection on how to minimise any potentially distortionary effects on international trade and investment created by state enterprises while at the same time restraining any undue protectionist policy responses directed at them.

Conventional wisdom holds that countries with lower taxes attract higher levels of foreign direct investment (FDI). At first glance, this intuitive assumption seems to be supported by the evidence but is this true?. Pierre Poret, Deputy Director of the OECD Financial and Enterprise Affairs Directorate takes a closer look.

Corporate climate change disclosure is crucial for providing decision-makers with information that will enable them to integrate climate considerations into their analyses. This side event to the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties will focus on ways to strengthen corporate climate disclosure frameworks, and to scale up the use of corporate climate change-related information.

Paris, 26 April 2016: OECD Deputy Secretary-General Douglas Frantz and Adrian Cristobal, Secretary, Department of Trade and Industry, Philippines, OECD Deputy Secretary-General Douglas Frantz and Adrian Cristobal, Secretary, Department of Trade and Industry, Philippines, will present reform successes and remaining challenges as well as strategies for promoting and supporting the recommendations in the report.

21/05/2016 - It is seven years since the global crisis and despite easy monetary policy, financial regulatory reform, and G20 resolutions favouring structural measures, the world economy is not making a lot of progress. Adrian Blundell-Wignall gives a preview of what’s in the 2016 edition of the OECD Business and Finance Outlook.

Investment treaties are intended to offer foreign investors protection for their investments from host government conduct in violation of the treaty. This report examines how many investment treaties, as interpreted, have generated rules that can disrupt fundamental principles of corporate governance and corporate finance.

13 July 2016 - Following endorsement of the G20 Guiding Principles for Global Investment Policymaking by G20 Trade Ministers in Shanghai on 10 July 2016, Ana Novik, Head of the OECD Investment Division, highlights the importance of follow-through on this important stepping stone to greater policy coherence.

The Policy Framework for Investment (PFI) is a non-prescriptive tool for improving investment policy for development. It helps governments to design and implement policy reforms to create a truly attractive, robust and competitive environment for domestic and foreign investment.

Corruption undermines economic and social progress and steals the future of young generations. Parties to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention are required to criminalise bribery of foreign public officials but does this make a difference on the ground? This paper estimates a dynamic foreign direct investment (FDI) gravity model to explore the impact of corruption in general and the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention in particular.

27/03/2017 - Ukraine has become the 47th country to adhere to the OECD Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. The Declaration commits Ukraine to provide an open and transparent environment for international investment and to encourage the positive contribution foreign investment can make to economic and social progress.

Promoting responsible business conduct in the financial sector is vital to building a sustainable global economy. This paper will help institutional investors implement the due diligence recommendations of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in order to prevent or address adverse impacts related to human and labour rights, the environment, and corruption in their investment portfolios.

More and more governments are introducing or enhancing screening mechanisms for inbound investment projects to identify and address perceived threats to national security, particularly investments by state-owned enterprises. What can be done to allow home and host societies to reap the benefits of international investment while addressing the security concerns that inhibit certain investments proposed by SOEs today?