Reports

Over the past few years, the global economy has suffered profound shocks that have had a marked impact on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs. While government support protected SMEs from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, new threats have emerged. Rising geopolitical tensions and global financial risks, high inflation, tightening monetary and fiscal policies, labour shortages, high trade barriers and slowing integration into global value chains all contribute to a more challenging business environment for SMEs. Meanwhile, there is an urgent need to accelerate the contribution of SMEs and entrepreneurship to the green and digital transitions and help them navigate a changing international trade and investment landscape. Against this background, the OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Outlook 2023 provides new evidence on recent trends in SME performance, changing business conditions, and policy implications. It reflects on the broad underlying theme of SME integration into a series of networks, including global production and supply-chain networks and the role of women led-businesses in international trade, knowledge and innovation networks, and skill ecosystems, as well as the main policies in place to ensure SMEs can integrate these networks and benefit from the ongoing transformations they go through. The report also contains statistical country profiles that benchmark the 38 OECD across a set of indicators.

Fiscal spending policies adopted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have been presented as a unique opportunity to 'build back better' and re-ignite the economy while accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy. This paper analyses 1 166 funding measures announced by 51 countries and the European Union in 2020-21 to support development and diffusion of low-carbon technologies. These measures – amounting to USD 1.29 trillion – can make an important contribution to filling the climate investment gap, particularly in emerging technologies such as carbon capture, usage and storage and green hydrogen. A modelling analysis suggests that they could have large impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and bring about significant co-benefits in terms of clean sectors’ output growth and reductions in fossil fuel imports.

This report presents an in-depth cross-country analysis of how long-term care workers fare along the different dimensions of job quality. In the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the applause for care workers was a clear expression of the strong recognition of their hard work and exposure to risks in their job. However, as the applause faded after the peak of the crisis, questions have re-emerged about how to improve the working conditions of long-term care workers in a sustainable way. Over the coming decades, the demand for these workers will increase substantially. Several countries are already facing shortages as the large baby-boom generation joins the older population. To go Beyond Applause, a comprehensive policy strategy is needed to tackle poor working conditions and insufficient social recognition of long-term care work, attract workers in the sector and avoid labour shortages reaching unacceptable levels. Such a strategy should cover several dimensions, with different priorities across countries depending on their specific context, including: direct interventions to raise wages and increase staff requirements; increasing public financing and fostering the leading role by governments; supporting collective bargaining and social dialogue; strengthening training; increasing use of new technologies; and, strengthening health prevention policies.

This report presents the policy recommendations resulting from the National Dialogue on Water in Indonesia, which took place between June 2022 and March 2023. Getting water resources management right, underpinned with appropriate financing mechanisms, is a prerequisite for realising Indonesia’s ambitious national economic growth agenda to become one of the top five global economies by 2045. The Dialogue, therefore, centred around two priority areas: 1) financing water infrastructure and 2) non-structural measures for flood disaster risk reduction. The report explores several instruments to enhance the financing of water services in Indonesia, such as the advantages and disadvantages of uniform water tariffs, independent economic regulation, pollution charges and demand management instruments. The report recommends the utilisation of land value capture as an additional source of financing. It also explores how water information systems for disaster response, flood forecasting and early warning can reduce flood disaster risk. The National Dialogue on Water in Indonesia is part of a regional initiative with the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Korea, the Asia Water Council and the OECD.

The Latvian government established the Housing Affordability Fund in mid-2022, a long-term self-sustaining financing model to channel investment into affordable housing. The fund is now being scaled up to ensure lasting impact on the Latvian housing market. This report identifies options for institutional arrangements, funding and financing opportunities, and operational tools to achieve this aim. It draws on the rich and diverse experiences of four peer countries in establishing and operating revolving fund schemes for affordable housing (Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Slovenia), and also reflects findings from engagement with a range of stakeholders in the Latvian housing sector.

Many Lithuanian households struggle to afford good-quality housing. The housing stock is dominated by owner-occupied, multi-apartment buildings that are energy inefficient and face persistent quality gaps. While average household spending on housing is relatively low, house prices have been rising, and many households cannot afford to move to higher quality homes that better suit their needs. Lithuanian policy makers have stepped up support for housing in recent years, but more actions are needed. This report presents the main features of the Lithuanian housing market, highlights housing challenges that have been amplified by the current economic and geopolitical crises, and assesses current policies to address housing affordability and quality gaps. It proposes a series of recommendations to strengthen the supply of and access to affordable housing, and to support Lithuania’s commitment to make housing policy a priority.

This report provides policy recommendations on how to strengthen the economic, social and environmental benefits of foreign direct investment (FDI). It provides an extensive assessment on how FDI contributes to Chile’s economic diversification into sustainable and knowledge-intensive activities (e.g. green hydrogen, information technology), and also assesses the policy and regulatory framework influencing the impact of FDI on sustainable development in Chile.

Colombia has prioritised the use of renewable energy to expand and improve electricity services for its population in zones non-interconnected to the national grid. Recent policies and regulations have supported this ambition with successive measures to strengthen investment conditions for distributed renewable energy, like standalone solar photovoltaic (PV) solutions and hybrid solar PV mini-grids. Still, the distributed renewable energy market in non-interconnected zones is relatively immature, reflected by the high costs for connecting new users. New business and financing models will be critical to bringing down the cost of renewable energy technologies, accessing private equity and debt in larger volumes, and ultimately progressing towards replacing existing inefficient and polluting diesel generation systems. Building on international experiences, this paper discusses approaches to strengthening investment conditions, looking at support mechanisms and de-risking instruments used elsewhere, which can help bridge the financing gap in Colombia.

Strengthening linkages between foreign direct investment (FDI) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is important to boost productivity and innovation across countries and regions in the OECD and beyond. This policy toolkit offers policy advice to national and subnational governments on how to increase knowledge and technology benefits from FDI on domestic SMEs and the local economy. It presents a conceptual framework for understanding the main enabling conditions and diffusion channels of FDI-SME linkages and spillovers, and a set of diagnostic tools to assess the spillover potential. It also provides an assessment tool for policy and institutional frameworks enabling FDI-SME linkages. This toolkit benefits from insights of a pilot mapping of policy initiatives across the 27 EU Member States, which are described in the second part of the report.