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Labour informality remains a critical challenge for Colombia with over 60% of workers in informal jobs with no access to social security benefits, except health. To address the inherent challenges posed by a large informal sector, this paper explores the role that cooperatives can play in driving formalisation in Colombia. It presents the negative impacts of informality on the economy and how the social and solidarity economy, and cooperatives in particular, offer an important model for informal workers to transit towards formalisation (Section 1). It provides facts and figures about the cooperative sector as well as factors contributing to its development and barriers that hinder its expansion (Section 2). It considers the benefits and challenges of the compliance based approach to supervise cooperatives and provides policy orientations to strengthen the sector (Section 3).

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).

In 2017, Colombia launched a novel public policy to stimulate the creative economy, building on the success of previous policy initiatives to support the cultural and creative sectors. The Orange Economy policy is unique for its transversal approach to supporting the creative economy and mainstreaming culture across diverse policy portfolios, beyond cultural policy. The report provides a comparative overview of Colombia’s culture and creative sectors relative to OECD peers and reviews progress in policy implementation. It provides a specific focus on Colombia’s push to foster creative districts as tool for local development across the country, including policy examples based on nine districts across the globe. The report maps the financial ecosystem for the creative economy in Colombia. Recommendations draw on international good practice to suggest ways Colombia can best leverage creative economy opportunities.

Much has changed in the space economy over the past decade, with an ever-growing number of countries and business enterprises involved in space activities. Despite progress made in the quality and availability of data, the international comparability of space economy statistics remains limited. A decade after its first publication, it is therefore time to provide an up-to-date revision of the OECD Handbook on Measuring the Space Economy to reflect the changing landscape of space activities, space technologies and subsequent evolving user needs. This new edition aims to encourage and facilitate data collection among both incumbents and new actors involved in space activities, respond to the needs of the public agencies that still fund the bulk of space programmes, and support industry and private decision-takers who will also benefit from improved statistics on the space economy.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are essential drivers of sustainable economic growth in the Western Balkans and Turkey, where they make up 99% of all firms, generate 65% value added and account for 75% of employment. Nevertheless, SMEs across the region continue to face obstacles such as difficulties accessing financing, low levels of digital uptake, regulatory barriers and relatively low participation in international trade. The situation has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic: SMEs found themselves fighting for survival amidst reduced demand, lockdowns and travel restrictions, and supply chain disruptions.  This report provides an overview of the implementation of the Small Business Act for Europe during the period 2019-22. It is designed to help policy makers design, implement and monitor policies to support the recovery of SMEs from the pandemic, boost their competitiveness based on OECD and EU good practices, and further enhance the region’s economic growth and resilience.  

The latest OECD analysis of demand and supply in the shipbuilding industry finds significant excess capacity in the sector. Reducing this excess capacity will depend on the willingness and ability of yards to reduce existing capacity and to refrain from new capital investments. The report also presents a literature review of factors that influence newbuilding ship prices, developments affecting ship prices, and a description of newbuilding prices of major ship types and ship size categories. This report is part of a regular monitoring exercise from the OECD Council Working Party on shipbuilding (WP6) of the global shipbuilding market.

The past two decades have seen steady growth in global ship deliveries by countries that are not members of the OECD Council Working Party on Shipbuilding (WP6). Non-WP6 economies made up 47.4% of worldwide deliveries in 2021, mostly driven by the rapid growth of Chinese ship completions that reached a share of 41.1% of global completions. This report presents information on shipbuilding market developments in eleven of the largest non-WP6 shipbuilding economies and provides an overview of their support measures to the sector.

The impacts of the war in Ukraine will be felt severely within OECD economies, especially in border regions on the front-line of the humanitarian refugee crisis. The economic impacts, in particular those driven by rising energy prices, will also be spatially differentiated, affecting some regions more than others. Italy is no exception, with gas-intensive industries concentrated in northern regions, and wheat-based food and farming prevailing in southern regions and islands. While, overall, Russia accounted for a minor share of Italian exports, some regions and industries are more vulnerable than others to falls in bilateral trade, including destinations popular with high per-capita expenditure Russian tourists.