Publications

This report reviews the quality of health care in Italy, seeks to highlight best practices, and provides a series of targeted assessments and recommendations for further improvements to quality of care. Italy’s indicators of health system outcomes, quality and efficiency are uniformly impressive. Life expectancy is the fifth highest in the OECD. Avoidable admission rates are amongst the very best in the OECD, and case-fatality after stroke or heart attack are also well below OECD averages. These figures, however, mask profound regional differences. Five times as many children in Sicily are admitted to hospital with an asthma attack than in Tuscany, for example. Despite this, quality improvement and service redesign have taken a back-seat as the fiscal crisis has hit. Fiscal consolidation has become an over-riding priority, even as health needs rapidly evolve. Italy must urgently prioritise quality of its health care services alongside fiscal sustainability. Regional differences must be lessened, in part by giving central authorities a greater role in supporting regional monitoring of local performance. Proactive, coordinated care for people with complex needs must be delivered by a strengthened primary care sector. Fundamental to each of these steps will be ensuring that the knowledge and skills of the health care workforce are best matched to needs.

This report presents the findings and recommendations from analysis conducted by the OECD as part of the OECD-Hungary Strategic Partnership for Public Administration Reform. Through this initiative, the OECD has supported the government of Hungary in putting in place some of the key building blocks of a 'strategic state'. The report’s recommendations can be expected to contribute to strengthening the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and integrity of the public administration and contribute to supporting sustainable and inclusive growth and development in Hungary.

Building on an initial assessment of constraints to development in Myanmar (Volume 1), this second volume provides analysis and policy recommendations in three key areas: structural transformation, education and skills, and financing development. It finds that Myanmar faces a crucial few years to shape growth towards a higher, more sustainable and equitable trajectory. To succeed, it will require a transformation of the economy from an agrarian base reliant on small-scale agriculture at present towards a broad range of modern activities. Building up the right skills in the workforce will be essential to support this structural transformation. Myanmar’s transformation will also depend upon how effectively the country can mobilise and allocate the financial resources needed to support its development, which could amount to as much as an additional 5-10% of GDP on average over the next two decades.

Cette publication contient des statistiques sur les pêcheries dans les pays de l'OCDE (à l'exception de l'Autriche, d'Israël et de la Slovénie) et dans quelques économies non-membres (Argentine, Colombie, Lettonie, Taipei chinois, Thaïlande) de 2006 à 2013. Les données fournies concernent la capacité de la flotte de pêche, l'emploi dans les pêcheries, les débarquements de poisson, la production aquacole, la pêche récréative, les transferts financiers publics, et les importations et exportations de poisson.

In parallel to a sweeping structural reform agenda, Mexico announced in 2013 a new approach to housing and urban policy. Calling for a more explicit qualitative focus on housing and the urban environment, the policy shift is a welcome development. Mexico urbanised more rapidly than most OECD countries in the past half-century, in part as a result of the expansion of housing finance led by INFONAVIT and facilitated by policies aiming to expand access to formal housing. Yet the quantitative push for formal housing came with quantitative costs: inefficient development patterns resulting in a hollowing out of city centres and the third-highest rate of urban sprawl in the OECD; increasing motorisation rates; a significant share of vacant housing, with one-seventh of the housing stock uninhabited in 2010; housing developments with inadequate access to public transport and basic urban services; and social segregation. How can the Mexican authorities 'get cities right' and develop more competitive, sustainable and inclusive cities? How can they improve the capacity of the relevant institutions and foster greater collaboration among them? How can INFONAVIT ensure that its lending activities generate more sustainable urban outcomes as it also fulfils its pension mandate and help Mexicans save more for retirement?

The peer review process can lead to changes in the interpretation of the slides and the reported results, and potentially the outcome and conclusions of the study. The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to pathologists, test facility management, study directors and quality assurance personnel on how the peer review of histopathology should be planned, managed, documented and reported in order to meet GLP expectations and requirements. This document is a complement to the guidance provided in section 3.6.3.7 of OECD Guidance Document 116 (series on testing and assessment), whose focus is on how histopathology peer review should be conducted.

Ecosystem accounting is a relatively new and emerging field dealing with integrating complex biophysical data, tracking changes in ecosystems and linking those changes to economic and other human activity. Considering the increasing demand for statistics on ecosystems within analytical and policy frameworks on environmental sustainability, human well-being and economic growth and development, there has been an increasing urgency to advance this emerging field of statistics.
Although considerable experience exists in related areas of statistics such as land cover and land use statistics, the integration of these and other information into an ecosystem accounting framework is new. Also, there is considerable existing expertise in the ecosystem sciences and economics fields that is relevant, and again it is the focussing of these different areas of expertise on the proposed ecosystem accounting approach that is new.
SEEA-Experimental Ecosystem Accounting provides a synthesis of the current knowledge in this area and provides a starting point for the development of ecosystem accounting at national and sub-national levels. It represents an important step forward on ecosystem accounting, providing a common set of terms, concepts, accounting principles and classifications; an integrated accounting structure of ecosystem services and ecosystem condition in both physical and monetary terms; and the recognition of spatial areas as forming the basic focus for measurement. 

High-speed trains can compete successfully with road, air and conventional rail services on densely trafficked routes where willingness to pay is sufficient at the relatively elevated fare levels needed to cover costs. High-speed rail investments can also relieve congestion on the conventional rail network, and the capacity for high-speed rail to provide fast city centre to city centre services creates new possibilities for day-return business trips and short-stay leisure trips.The long cost recovery periods for high-speed lines imply government involvement in the financing of most investments. The high costs mean that governments can be exposed to accumulation of large debts, particularly if demand develops more slowly than expected. Where high-speed rail investments are designed to promote regional integration rather than meet commercial demand, significant subsidy from central and regional governments will be needed for the construction of infrastructure and possibly also for train operations.This report examines the key factors that drive the costs of high-speed rail investment and reviews the economic benefits delivered by high-speed rail services on the basis of experience in countries that have developed large high-speed rail networks.

L’expérience de l’usager, en termes de fiabilité, de confort et surtout de commodité d’usage est un aspect essentiel pour déterminer la demande de services de transports publics, tout au moins là où un choix d’alternatives existe. Le succès pour le moins des politiques pour attirer les usagers urbains de la voiture particulière vers les transports publics repose dans une large mesure sur la commodité d’usage de ces derniers. Les méthodes actuelles d’évaluation dans le domaine des transports tendent cependant à se focaliser sur la vitesse et le prix des services, sous-évaluant ou négligeant la commodité d’usage. Ceci fausse les décisions en matière d’investissements et de planification.Ce rapport vise à faciliter une prise en compte plus systématique de la commodité d’usage dans la planification et la pratique des politiques de transport. Il analyse les définitions opérationnelles de la commodité d’usage et rassemble des informations sur la disposition à payer à cet égard et sur l’utilisation d’indicateurs pour apprécier et améliorer la commodité d’usage des transports publics. 

« Les femmes et l’entreprise 2014 » dresse un tableau des progrès accomplis dans le cadre du Forum des Femmes Entrepreneurs OCDE-MENA depuis la parution du premier rapport « Les femmes et l’entreprise » en 2012. En 2012, cinq domaines d'actions ont été identifiés comme priorités à mettre en œuvre par les gouvernements, les parties prenantes internationales, les organisations financières et de soutien aux entreprises, ainsi que par les agences statistiques. En deux ans, le Forum des Femmes Entrepreneurs a développé des contributions  dans trois de ces domaines d'action prioritaires. Les contributions du Forum des Femmes Entrepreneurs sont à la mesure de sa reconnaissance croissante en tant que hub encourageant des améliorations concrètes du climat des affaires pour les femmes entrepreneurs dans la région MENA.Plus que jamais, l’entrepreneuriat féminin constitue un volet essentiel des politiques de création d’emplois mises en place par les gouvernements de la région afin d’améliorer le bien-être d’une main-d’œuvre croissante et restaurer la confiance dans l’économie. Les perspectives économiques des pays de la région MENA ayant traversé une transition politique se sont améliorées, mais le chômage reste en hausse, l'inflation continue d’augmenter et les finances publiques de se détériorer. Dans ces pays, les incertitudes politiques s’ajoutent à des difficultés structurelles. Dans les pays du Conseil de coopération du Golfe (CCG), les défis restent encore liés à la diversification de leurs économies.