Economy

The Czech economy is very carbon-intensive and has among the highest greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP in the OECD. Getting on the path towards net zero will require rapid emission reductions over the coming decades. Coal still makes up close to one third of the energy supply and the government has pledged to phase it out by 2033, which will require a swift expansion in the use of renewable energy sources as well as increased energy efficiency. This can be achieved by adopting a comprehensive policy package that includes widely applied carbon pricing, incentives to raise energy efficiency, spending on renewable energy and cutting red tape hindering green investments. Compensating policies and adjustment support will be essential to mitigate the socio-economic impacts of climate policies and to increase public support. Active labour market policies including higher spending on re-training for the unemployed is key to facilitate the green transition.

This paper presents a simulation framework developed to assess the impact of ageing on the financial sustainability of the Czech pension system. It accompanies the publication OECD Reviews of Pension Systems: Czech Republic. The framework has two components: a macroeconomic model to project long-term GDP and a cohort model to simulate the evolution of pensions. The macroeconomic model takes into account the evolution of the labour force and productivity. The cohort model simulates the career of a representative sample of the working-age population and their path in retirement. It replicates and projects the main features of the labour market, in particular, participation, wage and unemployment. It captures non-linear features of the pension system and distributional effects. The model estimates and simulates the main demographic variables of the pension system, in particular, the number of old-age pensioners and disability pensioners. It allows to simulate different policy options to close the financing gap of the pension system. Pension spending is projected to increase to 11.9% of GDP in 2060 from 8.2% in 2018, leading to increasing deficits of the pension system. Among the different options to close the financing gap, further increasing the retirement age after 2030 in line with life expectancy gains appears to be the most efficient policy measure to boost growth and reduce the financing needs. However, additional measures would be needed to close the financing gap of the pension system.

There is considerable regional variation in incomes and poverty in the Czech Republic and gaps have grown over time. With the highest number of municipalities per head in the OECD, subnational government is very fragmented and the resulting lack of capacity at the local level reduces the quality of public services and impedes the uptake of effective development projects. This paper discusses various policy options to address the challenges faced by Czech subnational governments and proposes reforms to enhance their effectiveness. Mergers of municipalities would be an obvious way towards greater integration, but this may be politically difficult. Mandating inter-municipal co-operation over a legally defined set of public services can be an alternative way of improving efficiency and the quality of service delivery. Tweaking the tax sharing system to disincentivise small size of municipalities and to make subnational governments more autonomous could be steps towards higher efficiency. Improving and consolidating the delivery of education and health services at the local level is also needed in the context of demographic change.

The COVID-19 crisis has had a profound impact on SME access to finance. In particular, the sudden drop in revenues created acute liquidity shortages, threatening the survival of many viable businesses. The report documents an increase in demand for bank lending in the first half of 2020, and a steady supply of credit thanks to government interventions. On the other hand, other sources of finance declined, in particular early-stage equity. This paper, a special edition of Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs, focuses on the impacts of COVID-19 on SME access to finance, along with government policy responses. It reveals that the pre-crisis financing environment was broadly favourable for SMEs and entrepreneurs, who benefited from low interest rates, loose credit standards and an increasingly diverse offer of financing instruments. It documents the unprecedented scope and scale of the policy responses undertaken by governments world-wide, and details their key characteristics, and outlines the principal issues and policy challenges for the next phases of the pandemic, such as the over-indebtedness of SMEs and the need to continue to foster a diverse range of financing instruments for SMEs.

The design of intergovernmental fiscal relations can help to ensure that tax and spending powers are assigned in a way to promote sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Decentralisation can enable sub-central governments to provide better public services for households and firms, while it can also make intergovernmental frameworks more complex, harming equity. The challenges of fiscal federalism are multi-faceted and involve difficult trade-offs. This synthesis paper consolidates much of the OECD’s work on fiscal federalism over the past 15 years, with a particular focus on OECD Economic Surveys. The paper identifies a range of good practices on the design of country policies and institutions related strengthening fiscal capacity delineating responsibilities across evels of government and improving intergovernmental co-ordination.

The effective use of school resources is a policy priority across OECD countries. The OECD Reviews of School Resources explore how resources can be governed, distributed, utilised and managed to improve the quality, equity and efficiency of school education.The series considers four types of resources: financial resources, such as public funding of individual schools; human resources, such as teachers, school leaders and education administrators; physical resources, such as location, buildings and equipment; and other resources, such as learning time.This series offers timely policy advice to both governments and the education community. It includes both country reports and thematic studies.