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Norway has made progress on the path towards green growth over the past decade. The country is a frontrunner in many environmental areas and invests heavily in technological development and innovation to support its green transition. It set many ambitious national environmental targets across all sectors, including for climate mitigation; Norway aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. While not a member of the European Union, Norway has aligned its action with many EU regulations and goals, sometimes more stringently than members. Despite progress in many areas, the country still faces multiple challenges, including sustainable consumption patterns and biodiversity protection. The review provides 30 recommendations to help Norway further improve its environmental performance, with a special focus on sustainable land use and biodiversity management. This is the fourth Environmental Performance Review of Norway. It provides an independent, evidence-based evaluation of the country’s environmental performance over the past decade.

Norway, like a number of other countries, saw steep growth in house prices during the pandemic. This added to past years of strong price increases and has brought renewed concern for housing affordability. Tax advantages to buying homes inflate house prices, contribute to wealth inequality and divert resources from more productive investments. An underdeveloped rental market is an additional consequence of Norway’s pro-homeownership policies. Beyond tax reform and targeted support for low-income households, including renters, lasting improvements in affordability will require measures to enhance the responsiveness of residential construction to increased demand. However, creating room for new housing supply can involve difficult trade‑offs with environmental and other policy objectives.

Trust in public institutions is a cornerstone of the Norwegian administrative and political model. It has also been a crucial element in Norway’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Preserving and strengthening this 'trust capital' will be essential for Norway in addressing future trade-offs and challenges, such as ensuring the sustainability of the welfare model, coping with climate change and maintaining social cohesion. Based on the results of the OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions and using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this study examines the main determinants of trust in Norway’s national government, local government and public administration.

This profile provides a concise and policy-relevant overview of health and the health system in Norway as part of the broader series of the State of Health in the EU country profiles. It provides a short synthesis of: the health status in the country; the determinants of health, focussing on behavioural risk factors; the organisation of the health system; and the effectiveness, accessibility and resilience of the health system. This edition has a special focus on the impact of COVID‑19. This profile is the joint work of the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, in co-operation with the European Commission.

Infrastructure investment has been at the forefront of the political debate for more than two decades. Despite decades of theoretical study and experimentation in practice, 'how to' actually procure infrastructure still lacks a complete and evidence-based guide, relying heavily on subjective perception and judgement. Procurement strategy mistakes can substantially increase the cost of infrastructure, delay its delivery, or reduce its quality and value to the public. The OECD has trialled a new evidence- based tool to inform procurement decisions on major projects called Support Tool for Effective Procurement Strategy or STEPS. The tool was applied toon two major road projects in Norway. STEPS can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public procurement of infrastructure and beyond. It should improve the Value for Money propositions of both traditional and privately financed infrastructure projects. It is also an effective tool against bid rigging, the effects of abnormally low bids, and corruption in public procurement. Because the procurement choices of the public sector impact the market structure of the infrastructure supplier market, it could be considered an instrument of implicit market regulation, working against market concentration. STEPS thus supports a range of OECD recommendations and G20 positions on infrastructure governance, private investment in infrastructure, and procurement in general.

Increasing productivity at farm level is a key policy objective across most countries and fundamental to the overall performance of agricultural and food systems. This paper applies dynamic statistical methods to farm level data in order to identify the determinants of farm performance over time, in terms of productivity and measures of local sustainability. The analysis sheds light on the effects of policies on productivity, and the links between productivity and sustainability outcomes. It draws on key findings from seven case studies: crop farms in Australia, France, Italy and the United Kingdom (England and Wales); and dairy farms in the Czech Republic, Denmark and Norway, with different sample periods, from the most recent three decades to the last five years. A key finding is that policy changes increasing the degree of decoupling of payments have a positive impact on productivity. Furthermore, with the right incentives, productivity growth can be more locally sustainable insofar as farms can produce more output with less inputs that harm the environment. The detailed background work on the seven samples of crops and dairy farms in the above countries is available in OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Paper N°165.

This paper provides detailed farm level data evidence on the dynamics of farm performance from case studies covering crop farms in Australia, France, Italy and the United Kingdom (England and Wales), and dairy farms in the Czech Republic, Denmark and Norway, with different recent sample periods of five to thirty years. An increase in productivity over time is common to all countries and most crop farm classes, but productivity dynamics vary significantly. In Australia, strong productivity growth among the most productive crop farms has led to an increase in the gap between the highest and lowest performing farms; whereas in France, Italy and the United Kingdom, productivity growth was weak among the most productive crop farms and the lowest performing farms closed the productivity gap. Productivity also increased among dairy farms, with an increasing gap between the most and the least productive farm classes in the three sample countries. The impact of policy changes on performance dynamics is analysed for decoupled payments in France and England, and dairy payments in the Czech Republic. The main findings across countries and policy implications are discussed in OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Paper N°164.