Reports

The Welsh Government has set an ambitious and innovative path for regional development and public investment – one focused on generating growth and increasing productivity, while also reducing territorial disparities and ensuring the well-being of citizens, now and in the future. Yet, it faces significant challenges, accentuated by limited fiscal decentralisation and changes to public investment financing post-Brexit. This OECD Multi-level Governance Studies report provides the Welsh Government and Welsh local authorities with analysis and recommendations on how to achieve regional development and public investment aims. The report offers insight into how the Welsh Government and Welsh local authorities can increase their fiscal and public investment capacity, and strengthen their governance practices. It stresses that the Welsh Government’s ability to coordinate regional development policy and associated public investment is a determining factor in meeting growth and well-being objectives. This report also proposes a variety of mechanisms to strengthen policy and service delivery at the local level. A case study featuring the challenges and benefits of establishing economic regions in Mid and South West Wales sheds a practical light on the various aspects explored throughout the report.

Skills are the key to shaping a better future and central to the capacity of countries and people to thrive in an increasingly interconnected and rapidly changing world. Megatrends such as globalisation, technological advances, and demographic change are reshaping work and society, generating a growing demand for higher levels and new sets of skills. OECD Skills Strategy projects provide a strategic and comprehensive approach to assess countries’ skills challenges and opportunities and help them build more effective skills systems. The OECD works collaboratively with countries to develop policy responses that are tailored to each country’s specific skills needs. The foundation of this approach is the OECD Skills Strategy Framework, which allows for an exploration of what countries can do better to: 1) develop relevant skills over the life course; 2) use skills effectively in work and in society; and 3) strengthen the governance of the skills system. This report, 'OECD Skills Strategy Northern Ireland (United Kingdom): Assessment and Recommendations', identifies opportunities and makes recommendations to reduce skills imbalances, create a culture of lifelong learning, transform workplaces to make better use of skills, and strengthen the governance of skills policies in Northern Ireland.

This report identifies the opportunities that Islamic finance presents for donors. To achieve these, Arab and OECD Development Assistance Committee donors need to mobilise innovative forms of financing and deliver the call to deepen the transformation of development finance systems. DAC members could do so by broadening and deepening exposure to alternative forms of financing, such as Islamic finance. Islamic finance represents USD 2.5 trillion – a share of which could be mobilised for development – and its tenets resonate across the member countries of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation and beyond. Arab donors could harness Islamic finance, as a means to strengthen partnerships with DAC members, whilst increasing the effectiveness of existing aid flows in countries and contexts where they have considerable access. Doing so could create a more equitable and stable development finance order capable of delivering the SDGs and achieve greater impact in partner countries. Both communities would then be able to chart a path for all development actors, notably the private sector, development finance institutions and other bilateral donors. This report provides a set of action points for Arab and DAC donors, highlighting the benefits of engaging in and co-operating through Islamic finance.

This paper estimates agglomeration economies in Great Britain. The analysis employs a definition of urban areas as functional economic units developed by the OECD in collaboration with the European Union to investigate the size and sources of productivity disparities across urban areas. It uses data from the UK Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings and the UK Labour Force Survey between 2000 and 2018 and a two-step estimation procedure that accounts for bias in the extent of agglomeration economies arising from individual sorting. The results suggest that a 10% increase in employment density of a city in Great Britain, would, on average, increase city productivity by 0.9-1 percent. The analysis also shows the estimated elasticity for employment density remains the same before and after the 2007–08 global financial crisis, not showing any clear structural break between city size and productivity relationship.

International regulatory co-operation (IRC) provides an opportunity for countries to consider the impacts of their regulations beyond their borders, to expand the evidence for decision-making, to learn from the experience of their peers and to develop concerted approaches to challenges that transcend borders. This review documents the context of IRC policies and practices in the United Kingdom. It covers both the UK’s unilateral efforts to embed international considerations in domestic rulemaking and its bilateral, regional and multilateral co-operative efforts on regulatory matters. In addition, the review provides a snapshot of IRC in practice in the United Kingdom with four case studies on financial services, nuclear energy, medical and healthcare products and product safety. At a time when IRC is an increasingly essential, yet largely untapped, tool for addressing transboundary policy challenges, this review offers valuable lessons to countries within the OECD and beyond.

The first five years of a child’s life is a period of great opportunity, and risk. The cognitive and social-emotional skills that children develop in these early years have long-lasting impacts on their later outcomes throughout schooling and adulthood. The International Early Learning and Child Well-Being Study was designed to help countries assess their children’s skills and development, to understand how these relate to children’s early learning experiences and well-being. The study provides countries with comparative data on children’s early skills to assist countries to better identify factors that promote or hinder children’s early learning. Three countries participated in this study in 2018: England (United Kingdom), Estonia and the United States. The study directly assessed the emergent literacy and numeracy, self-regulation and social-emotional skills of a representative sample of five-year-old children in registered school and ECEC settings in each participating country. It also collected contextual and assessment information from the children’s parents and teachers. This report sets out the findings from the study as a whole.

The first five years of a child’s life is a period of great opportunity, and risk. The cognitive and social-emotional skills that children develop in these early years have long-lasting impacts on their later outcomes throughout schooling and adulthood. This report sets out the findings from the International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study in England. The study assesses children’s skills across both cognitive and social-emotional development, and how these relate to children’s early learning experiences at home and in early childhood education and care. It is enriched by contextual and assessment information from the children’s parents and educators. It provides comparative data on children’s early skills with children from Estonia and the United States, who also participated in the study, to better identify factors that promote or hinder children’s early learning.

This paper presents and discusses the general findings and key policy messages of the 2019 OECD Open, Useful and Re-usable data (OURdata) Index, and provides a detailed analysis of the results for each pillar and sub-pillar. Additionally, it assesses the main advancements and challenges related to the design and implementation of open government data (OGD) policies in OECD member and partner countries by comparing the results for 2019 with those of the 2017 edition. This policy paper contributes to the OECD work on the digital transformation of the public sector, including digital government and data-driven public sector and open government data.