Publications & Documents

The communication sector is undergoing high-paced developments driven by the digital transformation of our economies and societies. Technological convergence has led to an evolving competitive landscape and new challenges arise around privacy and security concerns. Communication regulators are increasingly acknowledging the positive and negative effects of communication infrastructures and services on the environment. Moreover, there is a growing need to ensure the resilience of networks, stemming partially from the effects of climate change. In consequence, the key question for OECD policymakers is no longer whether regulatory structures need to change, but rather how. This report explores the critical role communication regulators play in an increasingly connected society. It identifies the challenges stemming from the digital transformation of our societies, the main policy objectives pursued by communication regulators, measures to address current and future challenges, as well as the importance of strengthening the capabilities of communication regulators of the future.

Spectrum is a limited national resource that enables our digital world. Mobile broadband services rely on these invisible airwaves to function, making spectrum indispensable to bridge connectivity divides. It also supports the provision of wireless services across the economy, from education to healthcare to industry, and enables applications such as satellites, GPS and the Internet of Things. Spectrum must be efficiently managed to achieve broader social and economic goals. As such, the stakes of spectrum management decisions are high and the challenges complex. This report discusses the effective stewardship of this essential asset in the context of wireless communication services, presents trends in policy, and discusses future considerations for management. It finds that well-designed and transparent licensing regimes, including auctions, foster investment and innovation, and that flexible frameworks (e.g. sharing or unlicensed spectrum) can promote efficient use.

As data become an important resource for the global economy, it is important to strengthen trust to facilitate data sharing domestically and across borders. Significant momentum for related policies in the G7, and G20, has gone hand in hand with a wide range of – often complementary – national and international initiatives and the development of technological and organisational measures. Advancing a common understanding and dialogue among G7 countries and beyond is crucial to support coordinated and coherent progress in policy and regulatory approaches that leverage the full potential of data for global economic and social prosperity. This report takes stock of key policies and initiatives on cross-border data flows to inform and support G7 countries’ engagement on this policy agenda.

The routing system plays a fundamental role in the operation of the Internet and its security is of critical importance to the digital security of communication networks. However, there are many examples of accidental and intentional routing disruptions and security breaches that disrupt the Internet and impact networks’ digital security. This report analyses available data to quantify the scope and scale of routing incidents occurring on the global Internet, presents some of the available security techniques to limit these incidents and considers their effectiveness. While the routing system transcends national borders, the report offers policy makers a series of concrete actions to improve routing security.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that scale up have long raised policy interest for their extraordinary potential in terms of job creation, innovation, competitiveness and economic growth. Yet, little is known about which firms could effectively become scalers, and what policies could effectively promote SME growth. This report is part of a series aiming to help policy makers unleash scalers’ potential. Building on new evidence from microdata work, it rethinks the nature and scope of scale up policies, suggesting the need for a broader and more cross cutting approach. The report then explores two thematic areas that are relevant for SME scaling up, i.e. SME data governance and their access to ‘scale up’ finance. Based on an international mapping of 369 institutions and 1174 policy initiatives across OECD countries, the analysis shows that SME and entrepreneurship policy is not among the core mandates of many implementing institutions, calling for sound coordination across the board and further mainstreaming of SME growth considerations in both policy areas. Moreover, national policy mixes vary significantly across countries, reflecting different approaches to promoting SME growth and to SME targeting, but also revealing possible policy blind spots.

For the past decade, behavioural science has been influencing public policy by applying principles of psychology, cognitive and social sciences, neuroscience and economics, to put individuals at the forefront of policy goals, and with an accurate rather than imagined understanding of human behaviour. Like any policy-making tool, the use of behavioural insights must be subject to ethical considerations that can arise at any point from scoping to policy scaling. This good practice guide offers practitioners and policy makers step-by-step guidance to prompt deliberations into how to use behavioural science ethically for public policy. It is designed to be a practical resource to promote the responsible use of behavioural science in the public sector.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war have revealed vulnerabilities in Germany’s economic model: undiversified energy supply, an over-reliance on fossil fuels, delayed digitalisation and disruptable supply chains. Digital technologies may significantly disrupt manufacturing industries Germany has dominated for decades, threatening future competitiveness. The green transition also requires significant industrial transformations. Germany can call upon one of the world’s most advanced innovation systems in dealing with these challenges, but a new more agile and experimental approach to STI policy is needed. This Review outlines how to develop such an approach and what STI policies need to focus on: create markets for future innovations, more significant and more risk-tolerant finance for innovation, inter-disciplinary knowledge exchange, improved data infrastructure and capabilities. Given the internationally shared challenges of dealing with transitions, the insights presented in the review will be of interest to policymakers, stakeholders and analysts from Germany and across the OECD.

This report presents new insights on trends in business R&D performance and funding, drawing on the micro-aggregated R&D and tax relief statistics collected for 21 OECD countries as part of the OECD microBeRD project. Micro-aggregated statistics provide an important input for policy analysis, highlighting important variations in business R&D performance and funding across industries and different types of firms that are hard to uncover based on aggregate R&D and tax relief statistics. They shed light on country and industry specific trends in the concentration of R&D activity, business R&D dynamics, the structure of R&D performance among different types of firms and the way that they fund their R&D activities. Such evidence can be relevant in assessing the contribution of different types of firms (e.g. young firms, foreign-controlled affiliates) and individuals (e.g. female R&D staff, doctorate holders) to research and development in the business sector and designing business R&D support policies.

Society’s dependence on space infrastructure is at a critical juncture. Public and private actors worldwide are planning to launch tens of thousands of satellites into Earth’s orbit in the next five years. This will greatly expand and enrich the use of space resources, but it will also result in more crowded orbits and greater risk of damage from satellite collision and space debris. As satellite launches continue to multiply and concerns grow, the long-term sustainability of space-based infrastructure on orbit and beyond is set to emerge as an increasingly important space policy issue of the 21st century. This publication takes stock of the growing socio-economic dependence of our modern societies on space assets, and the general threats to space-based infrastructure from debris in particular. Notably, it provides fresh insights into the value of space-based infrastructure and the potential costs generated by space debris, drawing on new academic research developed especially for the OECD project on the economics of space sustainability.