Publications

This paper examines the experiences of self-employed online freelancers working on digital labour platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on interviews with freelancers and platform managers and experts in Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. Their experiences during COVID-19 reveal issues of asymmetric power vis-à-vis platforms. Notably, they reported lack of transparency and certainty in their contracts with platforms, lack of power in negotiating with clients, and limited ability to engage with clients on other platforms. In addition, they often experienced difficulties in accessing government temporary supports for businesses during the pandemic. The paper puts forward policy recommendations to address these issues.

Members of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS have published more information concerning the Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) than ever before, including MAP guidance, MAP Statistics, MAP profiles and Peer Review reports, all pursuant to the BEPS Action 14 Minimum Standard. However, this information is available in different places, so taxpayers and other competent authorities must seek out this information for each jurisdiction separately. Accordingly, the FTA MAP Forum has decided to summarise and consolidate published information concerning MAP for all member jurisdictions of the Inclusive Framework on BEPS in a single publication containing Consolidated Information on Mutual Agreement Procedures for 2023. This report provides stakeholders with an overview of each jurisdiction’s MAP policy and practices in a clear and simple manner. For each jurisdiction, the Consolidated Information on Mutual Agreement Procedures contains: recent developments relevant to MAP, a brief overview of the MAP provisions contained in its tax treaties, the contact details and organisation of the competent authority, links to published information on MAP, and an overview of the jurisdiction’s MAP statistics for the previous year.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is one of the largest and most ambitious research infrastructure ever to be built. South Africa will be hosting one of its two main sites. The decision to host such an ambitious project for a middle-income country required careful consideration of the potential benefits and the associated risks for the socio-economic development of the country and the region more broadly. This working paper describes how the potential impact of SKA for South Africa was envisaged from the start of the project, how this was integrated in the project development, what policy initiatives and interventions were taken to maximize impact and the lessons learned, from South Africa’s science policy perspective, during the early phases of the development of the SKA.

With many countries struggling to boost the attractiveness of the teaching profession, it is important to understand the sources of teacher stress better. This brief explores data on lower secondary teachers from TALIS 2018 to investigate whether stressors vary according to students’ socio-economic background. In addition, it looks at which stressors are more likely to be associated with teachers’ job satisfaction and plans to continue in the role.

At a time when global trade is under pressure and countries increasingly turn to regional integration to support their development, this Spotlight is a timely read for policy makers and business leaders in Africa and beyond. It shows how harnessing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) can support industrialisation in Egypt, and more widely in Africa, by tapping the full potential of regional supply chains, including renewable energies, pharmaceuticals, logistics and creative industries. This report builds on and enriches the Production Transformation Policy Review of Egypt: Embracing Change, Achieving Prosperity.

The report explores how the built environment (i.e. housing, transport, infrastructure and urban design/land use) interacts with people’s lives and affects their well-being and its sustainability. It primarily draws on the OECD’s Well-being Framework to highlight the many inter-relationships between the built environment and both material and non-material aspects of people’s life, focusing on some key well-being dimensions (e.g. health, safety and social connections). It defines the built environment through a well-being lens and outlines implications for its measurement, leveraging literature, current practice and official data. It then describes the state of the built environment and its components in OECD countries and their inter-relationships with well-being and sustainability. Policy examples of an integrated well-being policy approach in the built environment context are also highlighted. This report is intended to 'scope' relevant data and existing research in order to lay ground for further work on this issue.

This report outlines a new methodology and provides a first exploratory analysis of technologies and applications that are at the core of recent advances in AI. Using AI-related keywords and technology classes, the study identifies AI-related patents protected in the United States in 2000-18. Among those, 'core' AI patents are selected based on their counts of AI-related forward citations. The analysis finds that, compared to other (AI and non-AI) patents, they are more original and general, and tend to be broader in technological scope. Technologies related to general AI, robotics, computer/image vision and recognition/detection are consistently listed among core AI patents, with autonomous driving and deep learning having recently become more prominent. Finally, core AI patents tend to spur innovation across AI-related domains, although some technologies – likely AI applications, such as autonomous driving or robotics – appear to increasingly contribute to developments in their own field.

The green transformation of the economy is expected to lead to a sharp reduction in employment in carbon-intensive industries. For designing policies to support displaced workers, it is crucial to better understand the cost of job loss, whether there are specific effects of being displaced from a carbon-intensive sector and which workers are most at risk. By using German administrative labour market data and focusing on mass layoff events, we estimate the cost of involuntary job displacement for workers in high carbon-intensity sectors and compare it with the displacement costs for workers in low carbon-intensity sectors. We find that displaced workers from high carbon-intensity sectors have, on average, higher earnings losses and face stronger difficulties in finding a new job and recovering their earnings. Our results indicate that this is mainly due to human capital specificity, the regional clustering of carbon-intensive activities and higher wage premia in carbon-intensive firms. Workers displaced in high carbon-intensity sectors are older, face higher local labour market concentration and have fewer outside options for finding jobs with similar skill requirements. They have a higher probability to switch occupations and sectors, move to occupations that are more different in terms of skill requirements compared to the pre-displacement job, and are more likely to change workplace districts after displacement. Women, older workers and those with vocational degrees as well as workers in East Germany, experience particularly high costs in case they are displaced from high carbon-intensity sectors.

Establishing appropriate institutional architecture is important to integrate power systems across borders and facilitate electricity trading, as even if the necessary infrastructure is in place, it does not automatically follow that it is being used to exchange power effectively. The co-ordination of all stakeholders – governments, utilities1 and regulators – is required within jurisdictions, as is the creation of regional entities to support and oversee the integration process. This report therefore examines stakeholder roles at different stages of crossborder integration to enable multilateral power trade. As energy regulators are our main audience, we focus on their roles and responsibilities after briefly addressing those of governments and utilities.

This paper examines the nature and evolution of data localisation measures and their impact on business activity. It highlights that data localisation measures are growing and increasingly restrictive. By early 2023, 100 such measures were in place across 40 countries, with more than two-thirds combining local storage requirements with flow prohibition, the most restrictive form of data localisation. Insights gained from businesses operating in the e-payments, cloud computing, and air travel sectors suggest that data localisation can have unintended consequences. It not only increases operating costs, with implications for downstream users, but can also lead to increased vulnerabilities to fraud and cybersecurity risks, and reduced resilience to unexpected shocks. While international regulatory efforts have largely taken place through regional trade agreements (RTAs), this paper calls for continued monitoring of the regulatory environment with a view to informing efforts to agree on global rules that take into account legitimate public policy objectives while avoiding excessive fragmentation, especially through discussion at the WTO under the Joint Initiative on e-commerce.