Publications & Documents

Shenzhen is a stellar case of growth and economic transformation. Since its establishment as one of China’s first four Special Economic Zones in 1980, it has evolved at breakneck speed. Shenzhen transformed from a fishing village to a major world trade hub and is now home to global innovators in electronics. The Production Transformation Policy Review (PTPR) of Shenzhen, China reviews the city’s changing policy approaches, focusing on the shift from an assembly to a manufacturing centre and more recently to an innovation and start-up hub. Through a comprehensive assessment of Shenzhen’s experience, this review offers insights into the range of policies and strategies employed to stimulate industrial upgrading and learning in China. It provides lessons and actionable policy recommendations for the growth of cities and emerging economies in their catching-up journey. The PTPR of Shenzhen, China has been carried out in the framework of the OECD Initiative for Policy Dialogue on Global Value Chains, Production Transformation and Development and has benefitted from government-business dialogues and international peer learning (University of Seoul, Korea; University of Georgetown, USA and Digital India Foundation, India).

Many Latin American countries have experienced improvements in income over recent decades, with several of them now classified as high-income or upper middle-income in terms of conventional metrics. But has this change been mirrored in improvements across the different areas of people’s lives? How’s Life in Latin America? Measuring Well-being for Policy Making addresses this question by presenting comparative evidence for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) with a focus on 11 LAC countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay). Spanning material conditions, quality of life, resources for future well-being, and inequalities, the report presents available evidence on well-being both before and since the onset of the pandemic, based on the OECD Well-being Framework. It also identifies priorities for addressing well-being gaps and describes how well-being frameworks are used in policy within Latin America and elsewhere around the world, providing lessons for governments on what is needed to put people’s well-being at the centre of their action. The report is part of the EU Regional Facility for Development in Transition for Latin America and the Caribbean.

With a share of 36%, youth (aged 12-30) represent more than one-third of the total population in Jordan. Public governance is critical for supporting youth’s transition to full autonomy and providing opportunities for their participation in economic, social and public life. The COVID-19 has hit young people in Jordan hard and has underlined the importance of access to high-quality public services and to opportunities to participate in decision making. This report provides an analysis of the governance arrangements put in place by the Government of Jordan to deliver youth-responsive policy outcomes with a focus on five areas: 1) Jordan’s National Youth Strategy 2019-25, 2) Institutional capacities of the Ministry of Youth, 3) Governance tools to mainstream youth’s considerations in policy making and service delivery, 4) Youth participation and representation in public life and 5) Youth-responsive legal frameworks.

This case study explores whether the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be used as a shared framework by all actors to manage development co‑operation for results in least developed countries, taking Uganda as a case study. The study offers an introduction to Uganda’s progress in mainstreaming the Goals in national policy making, as well as in monitoring the SDG targets and indicators. The report then focuses on the experiences of development co-operation partners in aligning their country-level programmes and frameworks with the SDG framework. It identifies enabling factors, drivers and obstacles that contribute to SDG alignment and monitoring in Uganda. The study concludes with recommendations for both the government and its development partners to increase the collective use of the SDGs as such a framework to improve policy coherence, effectiveness and sustainable impact of all development efforts.

Using household data from 15 countries in Latin America and Africa, this paper explores linkages between informality and education-occupation matching. The paper applies a unified methodology to measuring education-occupation mismatches and informality, consistently with the international labour and statistical standards in this area. The results suggest that in the majority of low- and middle-income developing countries with available data, workers in informal jobs have higher odds of being undereducated as compared to workers in formal jobs. Workers in formal jobs, in contrast, have higher chances of being overeducated. These results are consistent for dependent as well as for independent workers. They also hold for men and for women according to the gender-disaggregated analysis. Moreover, in the majority of countries considered in this paper, the matching-informality nexus is also related to the extent of informality in a given area: in labour markets with higher informality, informal workers in particular have a higher chance of being undereducated. The paper discusses policy implications of these findings.

Lithuania’s rapid economic growth has increased many environmental pressures. The country has declared ambitious medium- and long-term climate change mitigation goals. However, existing policies will not be enough to meet them. Total greenhouse gas emissions have not declined over the last decade, while those from transport have been rising rapidly. Lithuania needs to build on its impressive progress in moving away from landfilling to reduce waste generation and steer towards a circular economy. Water pollution with nutrients from the increased use of fertilisers and insufficiently treated wastewater must also be addressed. These efforts require improved integration of environmental considerations into sectoral policies and a whole-of-government approach to environmental management. Lithuania is implementing a series of positive changes in environment-related taxation. However, the trend of declining public environmental expenditure should be reversed. One priority area is additional investment in public transport and improvements in cycling and walking conditions that would help steer user behaviour towards sustainable transport modes. This is the first OECD Environmental Performance Review of Lithuania. It evaluates progress towards green growth and sustainable development, with a special chapter focusing on sustainable mobility.