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Cultural and creative sectors are a significant driver of local development both through direct job creation and income generation but also indirectly by spurring innovation across the economy. Beyond their economic impacts, they also have significant social impacts, from supporting health and well-being to promoting social inclusion and local social capital. Flanders (Belgium) has placed cultural and creative sectors as a priority in the region’s economic and social strategy. This paper provides an overview of cultural and creative sectors in Flanders, highlighting trends in employment, business dynamics, entrepreneurship and financing as well as cultural participation. It offers analysis and recommendations to support the region in continuing to build on its local cultural and creative ecosystem.

This report presents research and findings on accountability and risk in AI systems by providing an overview of how risk-management frameworks and the AI system lifecycle can be integrated to promote trustworthy AI. It also explores processes and technical attributes that can facilitate the implementation of values-based principles for trustworthy AI and identifies tools and mechanisms to define, assess, treat, and govern risks at each stage of the AI system lifecycle. This report leverages OECD frameworks – including the OECD AI Principles, the AI system lifecycle, and the OECD framework for classifying AI systems – and recognised risk-management and due-diligence frameworks like the ISO 31000 risk-management framework, the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct, and the US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI risk-management framework.

The economic consequences for firms investing in green innovation, and therefore their incentives to innovate, are not well understood. This paper empirically assesses the economic returns on innovation in cleaner vehicles. The analysis uses data on passenger car market shares and patents for car manufacturers operating in eight countries for the period 2005-2021. The results show that, when vehicle fuel prices increase, firms having previously successfully filed patents related to both electric and hybrid vehicles and fuel efficiency experience an increase in their market share. This increase takes place between 7 and 8 years after the patent stock is accumulated for patents related to electric and hybrid vehicles and between 8 and 15 years for patents related to fuel efficiency. The analysis also finds that in contexts where fuel price salience is high, price increases generate larger and earlier competitiveness returns for firms having previously invested in cleaner technologies.

Widespread supply disruptions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian Federation’s large-scale aggression against Ukraine have raised concerns among policy makers that globalised value chains expose domestic production to shocks from abroad. This paper uses new indicators of global value chain dependencies and exogenous pandemic shocks to econometrically estimate the effects of supply disruptions abroad on domestic output. The results suggest that the adverse effects of supply disruptions are particularly large when concentration of supplying countries and supplying firms is high. Counterfactual simulations of the econometric model suggest that diversification of suppliers would have sizeable benefits in terms of shielding domestic production against country-specific supply shocks, with partial onshoring of production having only small additional benefits. Technological innovation that reduces foreign dependencies, such as the substitution of renewable energies for fossil fuels, can have similar benefits as diversification.

Accurate measurement of shipbuilding capacity is critical to inform market stakeholders of excess capacity issues. This report presents several approaches to improve the estimates of shipbuilding capacity. It shows how the use of average production would allow for smoothening the proxy of capacity in the yard-by-yard production approach. It discusses how firm level indicators, such as productivity, can also be considered. An analysis of productivity developments for a sample of shipbuilding firms shows that their productivity evolves in function of the market situation which, therefore, should be taken into account in the proxies of capacity based on yard production. Finally, the report studies how mergers and acquisitions of shipbuilding firms may impact capacity.

This report analyses the trends in Finnish productivity growth over the 2000s and 2010s. It describes its key features, makes comparisons to a benchmark of 16 OECD countries, and studies the causes of its sudden and prolonged slowdown which began at the end of the 2000s. The analysis focuses on the role of two contemporaneous demand shocks that hit the Finnish economy: the Nokia crisis and the Great Trade Collapse of 2009. Matching detailed firm-based information on structural characteristics of productivity growth with global input-output tables and National Accounts data, the report highlights how the prolonged drop in demand from the domestic computer and electronics sector may have induced a persistent drag on Finnish productivity growth. The report concludes with policy implications to strengthen Finnish resilience to idiosyncratic shocks to key sectors or large firms, while supporting long-term productivity growth and competitiveness.

Government support to producers of rolling stock is raising concerns about possible market distortions and unfair competition. This report aims to quantify both the scale of government support and to identify the various ways in which governments have been supporting local rolling-stock producers at the expense of foreign competitors. Over the period 2016-20, governments provided about USD 5 billion to the sector, much of it in the form of government grants and income tax concessions. While not quantified, discriminatory practices in government procurement and competition enforcement, forced technology transfers, as well as non-market export credits may have also distorted global competition in the rail-supply industry. Similar to earlier OECD studies of government support in the aluminium and semiconductor value chains, this report helps shed light on the magnitude and ways in which governments subsidise the producers of materials and equipment they view as strategic, with a view to informing efforts to revisit global trade rules.

Evaluation is the foundation of evidence-based policy. Yet there is a dearth of reliable impact evaluation in the area of SME and entrepreneurship policy. This publication issues OECD guidance on how governments can promote reliable SME and entrepreneurship policy evaluation. It emphasises practices including using control groups, setting clear policy objectives and targets and accounting for business survival and non-survival. It shows that reliable evaluation of SME and entrepreneurship policy is increasingly accessible given improvements in data and techniques in recent years and illustrates this with examples of 50 reliable evaluations across many SME and entrepreneurship policy areas and 28 OECD countries. Overall, the publication issues a call for more systematic and reliable evaluation of SME and entrepreneurship policies following the guidance offered. The publication also examines the findings of reliable evaluations internationally, including meta evaluations. The evidence is mixed but generally more robust and consistent for policies to improve access to finance than in the provision of training and advisory services. Some policies have positive impacts on key measures whereas others do not. The reasons are explored, including variations in the targeting of policies and in policy delivery approaches.

The paper presents a comprehensive assessment of the strengths and limitations of the intellectual property (IP) system in Poland. It offers policy recommendations to fully exploit the potential of IP to support an innovation-based economy. It finds that the key components of an effective IP strategy in Poland should include the promotion of IP use among economic actors and other stakeholders as well as information campaigns and training programmes to raise awareness and knowledge about the advantages of IP. Recommendations also include reducing barriers to IP use by lowering the costs of and simplifying IP-related procedures, and promoting the valorisation of IP held by universities to enhance technology transfer to the business sector.