Publications & Documents

In Japan, agriculture has been treated differently from other parts of the national economy. However, policy needs to evolve with new agricultural structures and the global trend towards more integrated value chains, enabling innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture, and imposing a greater environmental responsibility on producers. Modern agriculture is a technology- and data-intensive industry, and Japan is well-positioned to introduce its competitive technology and skills to agriculture through building more collaborative agricultural innovation system.

Online platforms support so many of our daily activities that we have become dependent on them in our personal and professional lives, to buy and sell goods and services, find information, entertainment, news, transportation, accommodation, jobs and employees, and apps on line, keep in touch with each other, and for many other purposes. Online platforms are a frequent topic of discussion across many policy areas (labour and employment, taxation, competition, innovation, privacy and consumer protection) yet can be more complex than they appear on the surface and are not always well understood.This report contains detailed profiles of twelve of the world’s leading platform companies and derives insights from those profiles about what platforms actually do, how they do it, and why they succeed financially. The report also offers a catalogue of the main impacts that platforms have had, as well as an array of typologies that could be used to categorise them for policy-making purposes. This is a fact-based and non-prescriptive report, meant to provide a broad introduction and an evidence base that sets the stage for further work.

Ce guide fournit des conseils pratiques, techniques et faciles d’utilisation concernant la mesure et la réduction des coûts de conformité de la réglementation dans les pays de l’OCDE. Ce guide recouvre tous les aspects clés de l’évaluation des coûts de conformité, en incluant des conseils étape par étape afin de réaliser des analyses détaillées. Les gouvernements des pays membres de l’OCDE seront en mesure d’utiliser ce guide comme base pour le développement d’orientations spécifiques aux pays, façonnant et adaptant les contenus pour soutenir au mieux leurs exigences individuelles en matière de politiques publiques. Ce guide a été publié dans le cadre des travaux de l’OCDE en matière de politique de la réglementation.

As behavioural insights (BI) become more widely used, countries are looking to expand the application of the methodology to new frontiers of policy making. This report tests behaviourally informed solutions to complex policy problems in the fields of competition, consumer protection, energy consumption and safety through a variety of theoretical and experimental approaches. The results give policy makers new ideas for tackling policy problems related to individual behaviour, as well as for changing the behaviour of organisations.

Latvia, a member of the European Union since 2004, is a small, dynamic and open economy that has successfully transitioned from central planning to a market economy. The reforms undertaken have driven progress, although from generally low levels and at a slower pace in agriculture than for the economy as a whole. This report examines the conditions under which farms and businesses in the food and agriculture sector in Latvia undertake innovation to become more productive and environmentally sustainable. It identifies opportunities as well as challenges that need to be addressed. These include economy wide skills shortage, emigration and population decline and urban concentration of population and services. At the sectoral level, these include the use of agricultural payments to support a large number of non-commercial farms and the high level of unpaid farm labour. To meet these challenges, agricultural innovation can be harnessed to improve the sector’s productivity, as well as the sustainability and efficiency of the food system. This report provides a series of recommendations that should allow agricultural policies to contribute to a well-functioning innovation system that can meet the challenges that lie ahead.

This report discusses challenges and opportunities in assessing the impacts of science-industry knowledge exchange on innovation. The report provides new evidence on joint industry-science patenting activity and academic start-ups, as well as on the impact of geographical proximity between research institutions and industry on local innovation. The report explores the complex set of knowledge-transfer channels, such as collaborative research, co-patenting, academic spinoffs, and their relative importance across science fields and industry sectors. It also experiments with using labour force survey data to assess the contributions of graduates in social sciences to different industries.Different policy mixes are used in OECD countries to stimulate science-industry knowledge transfer. This report presents a taxonomy of 21 policy instruments, which include grants for collaborative university-industry research and financial support to university spin-offs, and discusses their possible positive and negative interactions. Based on a number of country case studies, the report also sheds light on new policy approaches to support spin-off creation. The report also explores recent trends on the governance of public research of high relevance to science-industry knowledge transfer using newly developed policy indicators for 35 OECD countries.

This report discusses how the digital transformation – digital technologies, data and software, AI-based analytics and other advances – is changing innovation processes and outcomes. It highlights the general trends across the economy and factors behind sector-specific dynamics, including increasing use of data as a key input for innovation, the expanding possibilities for experimentation offered by virtual simulation, 3D printing and other digital technologies, and the growing focus on services innovation enabled by digital technologies.In view of such changes, this report evaluates how innovation policies should adapt to foster innovation and inclusive development in the digital age, and identifies priority areas for policy action. It also explores novel innovation policy approaches implemented by countries to foster digital technology adoption and collaborative innovation.

Natural resources, and the materials derived from them, represent the physical basis for the economic system. Recent decades have witnessed an unprecedented growth in demand for these resources, which has triggered interest from policy makers in transitioning to a more resource efficient and circular economy. This report presents a typology of five circular business models that could support the transition to a more resource efficient and circular economy: circular supply, resource recovery, product life extension, sharing, and product service system models. It reviews the current market penetration and assesses the potential scalability of each business model. Environmental potential is also discussed, as well as risks and unintended consequences that could result from a more widespread adoption of these business models. The report provides a broad set of policy approaches that could help alleviate some of the barriers that currently hinder the widespread adoption of circular business models.