Latest Documents

Going Digital in Latvia analyses recent developments in Latvia’s digital economy, reviews policies related to digitalisation and make recommendations to increase policy coherence in this area, based on the OECD Going Digital Integrated Policy Framework. The review uses strategic foresight to explore three alternative future scenarios, which could result from the digital transformation of the global economy and society. It also examines the availability and quality of communication networks and services in Latvia as well as related policies and regulations. Further, it reviews trends in digital technology usage among individuals, businesses and the government, and examines policies to foster diffusion. Finally, the review analyses opportunities and challenges raised by digitalisation in key areas, from innovation and skills to digital security and data governance, and evaluates policy responses to these changes in Latvia.

Connectivity is the backbone of the digital transformation, and as such, policies and regulatory measures that foster access to high-quality communication services at competitive prices are key. This review provides a comprehensive examination of Brazil’s communication and broadcasting sectors, highlighting areas for regulatory and policy reform that can help ensure a successful and inclusive digital transformation. It analyses market performance of the communication and broadcasting sectors, as well as underlying policies and regulations. Based on its findings, the report recommends actions in five key areas: improving the policy and regulatory framework; overhauling the taxation, fees and tariff framework; improving market conditions; fostering competition in communication and broadcasting markets; and strengthening national policies and evidence-based policy making. These areas should be addressed simultaneously, in order to ensure a holistic approach to reform.

Going Digital in Brazil analyses recent developments in Brazil’s digital economy, reviews policies related to digitalisation and makes recommendations to increase policy coherence in this area. The report examines the availability and quality of communication networks and services in Brazil, as well as related policies and regulations. It also reviews trends in digital technology usage among individuals, businesses and the government, and examines policies to foster diffusion. It discusses efforts to enhance trust in the digital economy, focusing on digital security, privacy and consumer protection. It also reviews policies to promote digital innovation and examines the policy implications of emerging business models in key sectors. The report reconsiders these policies in relation to their coherence across different domains and provides recommendations to foster synergies across government ministries, levels and institutions, based on the OECD Going Digital Integrated Policy Framework.

Adopting more sustainable ways of managing the ocean is a global priority: protecting its health will bring benefits to all. Developing countries face specific challenges, as many depend heavily on ocean-based industries and are overly exposed to the consequences of ocean degradation. Enhancing their access to science, policy advice and financing would allow them to tap better into the opportunities of a more sustainable ocean economy, including more decent jobs, cleaner energy, improved food security and enhanced resilience, while contributing to the protection of the world’s ocean. This report provides policy makers in developing countries, as well as their development co-operation partners with a wealth of fresh evidence on (i) the latest trends in selected ocean-based industries; (ii) policy instruments, including economic incentives, to promote ocean sustainability in various contexts; (iii) the first review of development finance and development co-operation practices in support of more sustainable ocean economies, including a discussion of how development co-operation can help re-orient private finance towards sustainability.

This report presents new evidence on the impact of R&D tax incentives and direct funding of business R&D, drawing on distributed cross-country and firm-level analyses undertaken as part of the first phase of the OECD microBeRD project (2016-19). This 'distributed' approach facilitates a harmonised analysis of confidential business R&D and tax relief microdata in 20 OECD countries. microBeRD provides new insights into the effectiveness of R&D tax incentives in encouraging business R&D in the OECD area and the heterogeneity of effects both within and across OECD countries, including the underlying impact mechanisms. The report contributes to the debate on the role of R&D tax incentives in the policy mix by providing additional comparative evidence on the effects of alternative business R&D inducement incentives.

The amount and variety of data that companies collect, aggregate and analyse has increased dramatically in recent years. This paper investigates how the economic value of data can be conceptualised and measured from a business perspective. It discusses data monetisation as a strategy for developing new business models or enhancing traditional ones, and proposes a new taxonomy for data that focuses on measuring its business value. The paper also discusses how different data characteristics and types affect economic value, before examining the role of cross-border data flows as a key enabler of our global economy. As part of this discussion, the concept of a 'global data value chain' is presented, based on the idea that digitalisation enables the physical detachment of data collection, analysis, storage and monetisation. The paper concludes with a summary and discussion of the most promising avenues for measuring the economic value of data.

This paper examines the determinants of structural adjustment in Japan and identifies several factors that explain the use of certain employment types. Its findings are based on a novel plant-level dataset that provides considerable detail on the types of employees used by Japanese manufacturers between 2001 and 2014. Analysis of this dataset shows that growth in the diffusion of robotics is linked to fewer non-regular employees, which seems to be partially driven by the positive association between robot adoption and the dismissal of certain types of non-regular workers. It also finds that offshoring from Japan to other countries contributes to the use of both regular and non-regular workers, while higher plant productivity is related to the use of more regular workers. Finally, establishments that experienced job dismissals appear to substitute non-regular workers for regular workers.

This report provides an overview of the policies and procedures for addressing terrorist and violent extremist content (TVEC) across the global top 50 online content sharing services, with a focus on transparency. It finds that only five of the 50 services issue transparency reports specifically about TVEC, and these five services take different approaches in their reports. These services use different definitions of terrorism and violent extremism, report different types of information, use different measurement and estimation methods, and issue reports with varying frequency and on different timetables. The low number of reporting companies and the variation in what, when and how they report make it impossible to get a clear and complete cross-industry perspective on the efficacy of companies’ measures to combat TVEC online and how they may affect human rights. This situation could be improved if more companies issued TVEC transparency reports and included more comparable information.

This paper assesses whether current policy environments are appropriate for the emergence of cloud computing technology. In particular, this research uses firm level data for Germany and the United Kingdom to examine the impact of capital incentive programmes (a common policy present in most OECD countries) on cloud adoption. The design for many of these policies target investments in physical capital while excluding digital services like the cloud. Firms view digital investments and digital services as substitutes, therefore narrowly defined incentive programmes may actually discourage the use of emerging tools like cloud computing, which are found to enable the growth and performance of young entrants. Overall, the results find that while capital incentive policies encourage firm investments in ICT and other forms of capital, they actually reduce the probability of cloud adoption. Policy makers may therefore need to reconsider the design of capital incentive programmes within their jurisdictions.