Reports

Global Value Chains (GVCs) have exploded in the past decade and refer to the international dispersion of design, production, assembly, marketing and distribution of services, activities, and products. Different stages in the production process are increasingly located across different economies, and intermediate inputs like parts and components are produced in one country and then exported to other countries for further production and/or assembly into final products. The functional and spatial fragmentation that has occurred within GVCs has significantly reshaped the global economic landscape, thereby raising some new major policy challenges for OECD countries and emerging countries alike: trade policy, competitiveness, upgrading and innovation and the management of global systemic risk.

The world is becoming increasingly global. This raises important challenges for regulatory processes which still largely emanate from domestic jurisdictions. In order to eliminate unnecessary regulatory divergences and to address the global challenges pertaining to systemic risks, the environment, and human health and safety, governments increasingly seek to better articulate regulations across borders and to ensure greater enforcement of rules. But, surprisingly, the gains that can be achieved through greater co-ordination of rules and their application across jurisdictions remain largely under-analysed.This volume complements the stocktaking report on International Regulatory Co-operation: Rules for a Global World by providing evidence on regulatory co-operation in the area of transboundary water management and through the fast development of transnational private regulation. 

Succeeding with Trade Reforms: The Role of Aid for Trade highlights the potential of aid for trade to boost economic growth and reduce poverty, while discussing the various reasons why it may not be realised. In so doing, this book draws lessons for the design of aid-for-trade projects and programmes and for increasing their effectiveness. Building on this analysis, the book also quantifies the binding constraints to trade in developing countries and the importance of complementary and compatible policies (such as education, governance, business environment and macroeconomic stability) to maximise the impact of trade reforms on trade and economic growth.

The world is becoming increasingly global. This raises important challenges for regulatory processes which still largely emanate from domestic jurisdictions. In order to eliminate unnecessary regulatory divergences and to address the global challenges pertaining to systemic risks, the environment, and human health and safety, governments increasingly seek to better articulate regulations across borders and to ensure greater enforcement of rules. But, surprisingly, the gains that can be achieved through greater co-ordination of rules and their application across jurisdictions remain largely under-analysed.
 
This volume complements the stocktaking report on International Regulatory Co-operation: Rules for a Global World by providing evidence on regulatory co-operation in four sectors: chemical safety, consumer product safety, model tax convention, and competition law enforcement. The four case studies follow the same outline to allow for comparison. 

The world is becoming increasingly global. This raises important challenges for regulatory processes which still largely emanate from domestic jurisdictions.   In order to eliminate unnecessary regulatory divergences and to address global challenges pertaining to systemic risks, the environment, and human health and safety, governments increasingly seek to better articulate regulations across borders and to ensure greater enforcement of rules and their application across jurisdictions.This report gathers in a synthetic manner the knowledge and evidence available to date on the various mechanisms available to governments to promote regulatory co-operation, and their benefits and challenges. The review of evidence confirms the increased internationalisation of regulation, which takes place through a wide variety of mechanisms and multiple actors, and highlights a shift in the nature of IRC from complete 'harmonisation' of regulation to more flexible options - such as mutual recognition agreements. Despite growing regulatory co-operation, however, decision making on IRC is not informed by a clear understanding of benefits costs and success factors of the diverse IRC options.

This Inventory is concerned with direct budgetary transfers and tax expenditures that relate to fossil fuels, regardless of their impact or of the purpose for which the measures were first put in place. It has been undertaken as an exercise in transparency, and to inform the international dialogue on fossil-fuel subsidy reform. For each of the 34 OECD countries covered, the Inventory provides a succinct summary of its energy economy, and of the budgetary and tax-related measures provided at the central-government level (and, in the case of federal countries, for selected sub-national units of government) relating to fossil-fuel production or consumption. The transfers associated with these measures are reported for recent years using the Producer Support Estimate (PSE) and Consumer Support Estimate (CSE) as organising frameworks. These frameworks have already been used extensively by the OECD, most notably in respect of agriculture. The Inventory covers a wide range of measures that provide a benefit or preference for a particular activity or a particular product, either in absolute terms or relative to other activities or products, against a specified baseline. Many measures listed in this inventory are relative preferences within a particular country’s tax system rather than absolute support that can be readily compared across countries, and for that reason no national totals are provided.

Illegal trade in environmentally sensitive goods, such as threatened wildlife, timber, hazardous waste, and ozone-depleting substances, has been a long-standing issue in the international trade and environment agenda.  The nature of such illegal trade makes it difficult to fully understand its extent and impact on the environment.  Developing effective policies to reduce illegal trade requires a clear understanding of what drives this trade and the circumstances under which it thrives.  In this report, evidence-based on customs data and information from licensing schemes is used to document the scale of illegal trade, as well as the economic and environmental impacts of such trade.  National and international policies have an important role to play in regulating  and reducing illegal trade and the report highlights a range of measures that can be taken at both levels.

This report is an overview of the management of risk due to livestock diseases, a potentially catastrophic type of risk that can have strong external effects given its links to the food chain and to human health. Animal disease, primarily in farmed livestock, has long been a policy concern for food safety reasons and the high economic losses it can engender. The globalisation of trade and human movement, and sensitivities to food safety, enhance the relevance and complexity of disease control for terrestrial livestock. Outbreaks – or even rumours of an outbreak – can result in widespread consumer alarm, disruption of trade, and severe effects on incomes, not to mention the human cost of illnesses and deaths arising from animal disease.