SMEs are important engines of innovation, growth, job creation and social cohesion. However, they can only reach their full potential if they obtain the finance necessary to start, sustain and grow their business. These voluntary principles provide broad guidelines on how to enhance access by SMEs to finance to help increase the contribution of SMEs to resilient and inclusive growth.

Singapore, 25 April 2016: This roundtable focused on key themes related to G20 work, in particular the views of the private sector on current work developed by the OECD for the G20 Presidency toward promoting more diversified and innovative infrastructure financing.

This review of Colombia by the by the OECD Committee on Financial Markets examines Colombia’s position with respect to core principles related to financial systems.

This review of Latvia by the by the OECD Committee on Financial Markets examines Latvia’s position with respect to core principles related to financial systems.

Jakarta, 1-2 June 2016: This seminar addressed the importance of financial literacy and financial education for empowering micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).

This review of Latvia by the OECD Working Party of Governmental Experts on Insurance examines Latvia’s position with respect to core principles related to insurance systems.

This study explores the effectiveness of the incentive mechanisms embedded within the UK’s Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) for banks’ to expand their supply of lending to medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

This collection compiles the contributions of senior policy experts, academics, and economic practitioners on developments in the financial integration and financial regulation of cross-border capital flows since the 2008 global financial crisis at the OECD High-Level Seminar “Open and Orderly Capital Movements” held in October 2016.

‌07/09/2017 - Flooding is one of the most common, wide-reaching and destructive natural perils, affecting on average about 250 million people around the world each year. OECD work on the financial management of flood risk has identified a number of ways that policy makers can improve the way they manage the financial implications of floods.

This review of Lithuania by the OECD Committee on Financial Markets examines Lithuania’s position with respect to core principles related to financial systems.

This report examines the approaches adopted in 23 OECD and EU countries for evaluating the performance and cost-effectiveness of publicly supported credit guarantee programmes for SMEs.

11 December 2017, OECD Paris - The 8th annual OECD high-level breakfast event brings together leading investors and senior government officials for informal, focused dialogue, to examine key developments and identify solutions to enable achievement of NDCs and the two-degree commitment.

A new OECD report, the 2018 Business and Finance Outlook, highlights a number of major risks having the potential to disrupt global economic growth. It notes that the gradual normalisation of monetary policy in an environment of growing debt will be a major test of whether the Basel III regulatory reforms have achieved their goal of ensuring safety and soundness in the financial system.

Cross-border capital flows are an integral component of international finance, but require a balanced framework for removing unnecessary barriers to the movement of capital while providing governments flexibility to cope with instances of economic or financial instability, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria said today.

This report provides, for the Flemish community of Belgium, an independent analysis of major issues facing the educational evaluation and assessment framework, current policy initiatives, and possible future approaches.

The main goal of the Strategy is to strengthen OECD’s contributions to “higher and more inclusive growth in the widest array of countries”, making full use of the OECD evidence-based approaches to improve policy making and economic reform for developing and developed countries.

This publication looks at regional innovation in Wallonia, Belgium, by examining the political context, governance issues and the role of innovation in the economy, along with regional innovation strategies to promote growth.

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. It also includes a set of country pages featuring, among other things, new data on skills supply and demand at the level of smaller OECD regions (TL3).

This annual publication presents detailed country notes and internationally comparable tax data for all OECD countries from 1965 onwards.

The tax-to-GDP ratio in Belgium increased by 0.3 percentage points from 44.5% in 2017 to 44.8% in 2018. The corresponding figure for the OECD average was a slight increase of 0.1 percentage point from 34.2% to 34.3% over the same period.

Indonesia's tax-to-GDP ratio was 11.5% in 2017, below the OECD average (34.2%) by 22.7 percentage points, and also below the LAC and Africa (21)* averages (22.8% and 18.2%, respectively).

The Great East Japan Earthquake took a heavy toll of human lives and inflicted a massive economic damage, estimated at 3½ per cent of GDP. This event requires considerable time and a nation-wide effort of reconstruction. This is the first component of Prime Minister Noda’s “Strategies to Revitalise Japan”, which we very much welcome and support, said OECD Secretary-General.

Korea, which has had the highest growth rate of greenhouse gas emissions in the OECD area since 1990, adopted an ambitious Green Growth Strategy in 2009.

The tertiary education system in Canada performs well in fostering a skilled workforce with generally good labour market outcomes and is internationally recognised for its research contributions.

Micro, small and medium-sized firms (MSMEs) are a key source of employment and economic growth in Indonesia. They contributed to the country’s economic resilience during the 2008-09 financial crisis.

The correlation between a firm’s size and its productivity level varies considerably across OECD countries, suggesting that some countries are more successful at channelling resources to high productivity firms than others.

The Secretary-General presents the OECD’s views on “new approaches to economic development” at the 4th Annual Global Perspectives Conference, one of the most important gatherings of Civil Society Organisations.

This paper uses household level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) over the period 1991 to 2008 to analyse the driving factors of movements in the German household savings rate.

The global economy is expected to make a hesitant and uneven recovery over the coming two years. Decisive policy action is needed to ensure that stalemate over fiscal policy in the United States and continuing euro area instability do not plunge the world back into recession, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook.

In this paper we examine whether past labour market reforms aiming at reducing the rate of unemployment have raised its long-run volatility.

Structural reforms offer governments a powerful tool to boost economic growth, create jobs and bring about a strong and balanced economic recovery, according to the OECD’s latest Going for Growth report.

OECD’s PISA publications highlight the impact of economic, social and cultural status (ESCS) on students’ results within countries. The focus here is to investigate whether ESCS measures could contribute to differences in aggregate educational outcomes between countries.

The main features of China’s current sub-national finance arrangements date back to the 1994 tax reform. China has a multi-level government structure that shares national tax revenues through a system of tax sharing and transfers, and divides spending assignments and responsibilities.

Instead of resorting to trade measures such as export restrictions, Chile manages its minerals sector through a combination of balanced taxation, stable investment measures, good management of tax revenue, exchange rate policy and initiatives aimed at producing a multiplier effect of economy-wide development, according to this study.

This paper provides both descriptive and empirical evidence about the main youth labour market problems in Spain. Using the experiences of other EU economies as a benchmark, we document the performance of Spain as regards a wide set of youth labour market dimensions.

Recent OECD research has utilised harmonised cross-country firm level data to explore the contribution of public policies to cross-country differences in productivity, innovation and resource allocation.

In this paper we assess the determinants of secondary school outcomes in South Africa. We use Bayesian Averaging Model techniques to account for uncertainty in the set of underlying factors that are chosen among a very large pool of explanatory variables in order to minimize the risk of omitted variable bias.

Several studies have reported a large negative effect of national borders on the volume of trade. We provide new estimates of the border effect for continental Europe using road rather than great circle – or "as-crows-fly" – distance.

This paper analyses convergence in per capita gross regional product of Russia’s regions during the period 1995-2010, when regional data are available.

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 paper reviews the empirical evidence on the link between environmental policy stringency and productivity growth, and the various channels through which such effects can take place.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría strongly supports President François Hollande’s recently announced measures to revitalise the French economy and set it on a path towards stronger growth.

This paper provides an assessment of how households’ income has fared compared with GDP. While the prime focus is on incomes around the median, attention is paid also to the bottom of the income distribution.

Industrial specialization has important implications for economic performance; therefore, understanding its determinants is of key policy relevance.

This study reviews the existing literature on the link between economic policies and economic stability at the firm and household level. Based on firm-level and household-level data for a wide range of OECD countries, it also provides preliminary results on sources and patterns of microeconomic volatility.

Korea needs to move away from its current economic model and implement a range of reforms to develop a creative economy that can sustain long-term growth, according to the latest OECD Economic Survey of Korea. The strategy should be accompanied by new measures to reduce income inequality and poverty, particularly among the elderly, the OECD said.

This paper exploits longitudinal data on firm performance and patenting activity for 23 OECD countries over the period 2003-2010 to explore the extent to which changes in the patent stock are associated with flows of capital and labour to patenting firms.

This paper quantifies the importance of different determinants of trade at the industry level using a sample of 54 OECD and non-OECD economies. The empirical methodology extends the approach of previous empirical studies to explicitly quantify the impact that trading partners’ factor endowments and policies have on bilateral trade, and to analyse the effect of tariffs on the volume and composition of trade.

Economists have traditionally been very cautious when studying the interaction between employment and health because of the two-way causal relationship between these two variables: health status influences the probability of being employed and, at the same time, working affects the health status.

Entrepreneurship is an important driver of economic growth, job creation and competitiveness. However, the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) sector has been severely affected by the crisis, with access to bank finance being particularly difficult.