Latest Documents

The WTO plays an important role in supporting efforts to achieve international regulatory cooperation (IRC) and to facilitate trade. First, the WTO provides a multilateral framework for trade among its 164 members, with a view to ensuring that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible. Second, the WTO’s Agreements provide important legal disciplines, helping to promote good regulatory practice and IRC at the domestic level as a means of reducing unnecessary barriers to trade.This publication highlights how the WTO’s Agreements on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) and the work of their related Committees promote opportunities for regulatory cooperation among governments and ease trade frictions. It demonstrates how members’ notification of draft measures, harmonisation of measures with international standards, discussion of specific trade concerns and other practices help to facilitate global trade in goods. The study also makes recommendations on how to benefit further from the transparency and cooperation opportunities provided by the TBT and SPS Agreements.

Behavioural insights (BI) are lessons derived from the behavioural and social sciences, including decision making, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, organisational and group behaviour. Public bodies around the world are increasingly using BI to design and implement better public policies based on evidence of the actual behaviour and biases of citizens and businesses. This toolkit provides practitioners and policy makers with a step-by-step process for analysing a policy problem, building strategies, and developing behaviourally informed interventions.

Croatia has made great strides in strengthening its regulatory policy framework. Improving the entire regulatory policy cycle will ensure that regulations are built on a foundation of solid evidence and public participation and are designed to improve the security, health and well-being of citizens at a reasonable cost. This report assesses the country’s regulatory management capacity by taking stock of regulatory policies, institutions and tools, including administrative simplification policies, ex ante and ex post evaluation of regulations, stakeholder engagement practices, multi-level regulatory governance arrangements and tax regimes for small businesses. The review describes trends and recent developments, identifies gaps in relation to good practices and offers policy recommendations based on best international practices to strengthen the government’s capacity to manage regulatory policy.

This report assesses the impact on citizens and businesses of the administrative simplification measures carried out by the Mexican Social Security Institute. Administrative burdens are measured in the time it takes citizens and businesses to complete forms and wait in line to request or deliver information to the government. Using an adaptation of the Standard Cost Model, this report finds that such burdens for users have decreased by at least 25% thanks to the simplification and digitalisation of administrative formalities. It also suggests how the Institute could reduce burdens even further. By promoting the use of online formalities, IMSS could reduce administrative burdens by an additional 11%.

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.