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OECD countries deliver publicly-funded employment services through different institutional arrangements. While in most OECD countries the majority of such services are delivered by public employment services, in two in five OECD and EU countries (or regions) they are partly or fully contracted out to external providers, including for-profit and not-for-profit entities. Contracting out employment services to outside providers offers many potential benefits: an increased flexibility to scale capacity in line with changes in unemployment, the possibility of offering services more cost-effectively, the option to better tailor services through the use of specialised service providers and the possibility to offer jobseekers choice of providers. However, achieving these benefits will depend on the actual design and monitoring of the contracting arrangements that are put in place. Focusing on the job brokerage, counselling and case-management employment services typically provided by public agencies, this paper reviews the experiences of OECD countries that have contracted out employment services through outcome-based payment schemes. It highlights the need to carefully consider questions related to the design and implementation of this form of contracting: fostering competition amongst potential providers, setting appropriate minimum service requirements and prices for different client groups, and ensuring the accountability of providers through monitoring and evaluations. These issues are discussed based on country examples, which are also detailed in factsheets contained in the online annex of the paper.

How can governments support the private sector’s contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? This book investigates the contribution of firms to the SDGs, particularly through their core business, taking into account inter-sectoral linkages and global value chains, using novel techniques and data sources. Despite the fact that the private sector has the potential to contribute to a wide range of SDGs, and that many firms find it economically viable to develop sustainable products and services, firms still face significant hurdles in their sustainability transition. Based on this new evidence, this book provides some recommendations on the design of industrial policies to enhance the contribution of businesses to the SDGs.

The longer run consequences of the pandemic will partly hinge on its impact on high productivity firms, and the ongoing process of labour reallocation from low to high productivity firms. While Schumpeter (1939) proposed that recessions can accelerate this process, the nature of the COVID-19 shock coupled with a policy response that prioritised preservation (over reallocation) raises questions about whether job reallocation remained productivity-enhancing. Using novel, near-real-time data for Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, this paper shows that while labour turnover fell in response to the pandemic, job reallocation remained connected to firm productivity – that is, high productivity firms were more likely to expand and low productivity firms were more likely to contract. The pandemic coincided with a temporary strengthening of the reallocation-productivity link in Australia – but a weakening in New Zealand – which appears related to the design of job retention schemes. Finally, firms that intensively used Apps to manage their business were more resilient, even after controlling for productivity. Thus, while policy partly suppressed creative destruction, the nature of the shock – i.e. one where being online and able to operate remotely were key – favoured high productivity and tech-savvy firms, resulting in a reallocation of labour to such firms. The use of timely, novel data to investigate the allocative effects of the pandemic marks a significant advance, given that the seminal paper on productivity-enhancing reallocation during the Great Recession arrived some six years after Lehman Brothers collapsed.

Natural hazard-induced disasters (NHID), such as floods, droughts, severe storms, and animal pests and diseases have significant, widespread and long-lasting impacts on agricultural sectors around the world. With climate change set to amplify many of these impacts, a 'business-as-usual' approach to disaster risk management in agriculture cannot continue if we are to meet the challenges of agricultural productivity and sustainability growth, and sustainable development. Drawing from seven case studies – Chile, Italy, Japan, Namibia, New Zealand, Turkey and the United States – this joint OECD-FAO report argues for a new approach to building resilience to NHID in agriculture. It explores the policy measures, governance arrangements, on-farm strategies and other initiatives that countries are using to increase agricultural resilience to NHID, highlighting emerging good practices. It offers concrete recommendations on what more needs to be done to shift from coping with the impacts of disasters, to an ex ante approach that focuses on preventing and mitigating the impacts of disasters, helping the sector be better prepared to respond to disasters, and to adapt and transform in order to be better positioned for future disasters.

New Zealand’s agricultural sector faces the challenge of building long-term resilience to floods, which are projected to increase due to climate change. The New Zealand agricultural sector receives minimal government support and the policy environment focuses on providing an enabling environment for farmers to build their own resilience capacities, while the government has a more direct, but limited, role during disaster response and recovery. Key good practices include an ex ante framework to discipline ex post assistance to agriculture; incentives for industry groups to develop support resources for farmers; and an emphasis on mental wellbeing following a crisis. Nevertheless, further efforts to strengthen resilience could benefit from: (i) improved data collection to support targeted investments in risk prevention and mitigation; (ii) increased public-private collaboration to develop and diffuse effective solutions for adapting to and mitigating the risks of natural hazard-induced disasters on farms, including by leveraging the renewed engagement on extension services; and (iii) greater commitment to ensuring preparedness and response capacities in rural regions.

Under Action 14, countries have committed to implement a minimum standard to strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of the mutual agreement procedure (MAP). The MAP is included in Article 25 of the OECD Model Tax Convention and commits countries to endeavour to resolve disputes related to the interpretation and application of tax treaties. The Action 14 Minimum Standard has been translated into specific terms of reference and a methodology for the peer review and monitoring process. The peer review process is conducted in two stages. Stage 1 assesses countries against the terms of reference of the minimum standard according to an agreed schedule of review. Stage 2 focuses on monitoring the follow-up of any recommendations resulting from jurisdictions' Stage 1 peer review report. This report reflects the outcome of the Stage 2 peer monitoring of the implementation of the Action 14 Minimum Standard of New Zealand, which is accompanied by a document addressing the implementation of best practices.

The bulk of government investment is done at the local level in OECD countries, representing on average 41% of total public investment. Most studies on subnational government debt focus on the regional or state level, and very few studies analyse public investment specifically by local governments. This paper aims at filling this gap, presenting a framework to analyse the key factors, which affect the capacity of local governments to fund and finance public investment, and illustrates the framework with five case studies: Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands and New Zealand.

This paper presents a stocktaking of standalone chapters in trade agreements dedicated to good regulatory practices and international regulatory co-operation. While standalone regulatory policy chapters in trade agreements remain a new development, they signal countries’ increasing interest in elevating the visibility and ambition of regulatory policy, in line with their commitments in the 2012 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Regulatory Policy and Governance and the 2005 APEC-OECD Integrated Checklist on Regulatory Reform. Still, the level of ambition of these chapters varies widely depending on the state of play of regulatory policy in trading partners. By comparing the main substantive and structural features of these chapters, this stocktaking aims to inform the development of similar chapters in future trade agreements.