Reports

Trade in value added (TiVA) indicators are increasingly used to monitor countries’ integration into global supply chains. However, they are published with a significant lag - often two or three years - which reduces their relevance for monitoring recent economic developments. This paper aims to provide more timely insights into the international fragmentation of production by exploring new ways of nowcasting five TiVA indicators for the years 2021 and 2022 covering a panel of 41 economies at the economy-wide level and for 24 industry sectors. The analysis relies on a range of models, including Gradient boosted trees (GBM), and other machine-learning techniques, in a panel setting, uses a wide range of explanatory variables capturing domestic business cycles and global economic developments and corrects for publication lags to produce nowcasts in quasi-real time conditions. Resulting nowcasting algorithms significantly improve compared to the benchmark model and exhibit relatively low prediction errors at a one- and two-year horizon, although model performance varies across countries and sectors.

The Dutch labour market is strong but very tight. The unprecedently fast recovery from the pandemic, fast-changing skill demand, low hours worked, and the segmentation of the labour market contribute to labour shortages, weighing on growth potential and jeopardising the green and digital transitions. To tackle shortages, lifting labour supply is a necessary complement to raising productivity, as labour-saving innovation alone is unlikely to significantly reduce overall labour demand. Lowering the effective tax rate on moving from part-time to full-time employment and streamlining income-dependent benefits while improving access to childcare would both increase labour input and reduce gender inequalities in career prospects, incomes, and social protection. Narrowing regulatory gaps between regular and non-standard forms of employment further would alleviate shortages by facilitating transitions between occupations. Better integrating people with a migrant background and easing medium-skill labour migration in specific occupations would help to fill vacancies, especially those related to the lowcarbon transition. Scaling up the individualised training scheme while ensuring quality and providing stronger incentives for co-financing by employers would boost the supply of skills and promote growth in expanding industries. Rewarding teachers in schools where shortages are significant and facilitating mobility between vocational and academic tracks would improve equality in education and better prepare the future workforce.

L’économie lituanienne, après avoir réussi à sortir de la crise liée au COVID-19, a connu une croissance rapide jusqu’au début de 2022, soutenue par la hausse des exportations et l’intégration rapide dans les chaînes de valeur mondiales. Cependant, du fait de la poursuite de l’agression de l’Ukraine par la Russie et de la généralisation de ses conséquences, les perspectives se sont assombries. La croissance a ralenti et l’inflation est aujourd'hui parmi les plus fortes de la zone euro, poussée par les prix élevés de l’énergie et des produits alimentaires. En matière d’énergie, le pays a rompu toutes ses relations avec la Russie, se tournant à la place vers d'autres pays pour ses importations. Le gouvernement aide les réfugiés ukrainiens arrivés en grand nombre et soutient les ménages et les entreprises qui doivent affronter la crise énergétique. Le chômage structurel et l’inadéquation entre l’offre et la demande de compétences restent élevés, et la pauvreté ne recule que lentement. De nouvelles réformes pourraient contribuer à préserver la résilience économique et à faire face aux incertitudes croissantes. Réduire le champ d’activité des entreprises publiques et en améliorer la gouvernance contribueraient à accroître leur productivité. Lier plus étroitement l’éducation aux besoins du marché du travail permettrait d’améliorer l’emploi et les compétences. Une plus grande adoption des technologies numériques par les entreprises, conjuguée à une modernisation du secteur public et à des compétences solides, contribuera également à stimuler la croissance tendancielle. Atteindre l’objectif climatique de neutralité en gaz à effet de serre en 2050 nécessitera des mesures audacieuses, en matière de fiscalité comme de dépenses. THÉMATIQUE SPÉCIFIQUE : TIRER PROFIT DE LA TRANSFORMATION NUMÉRIQUE

Viet Nam has been quick to recover from the downturns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it faces long-term economic challenges. Boosting labour productivity will be crucial to sustained high economic growth. Attracting further foreign investment and reaping the benefit of advanced technologies will require additional improvements to the business environment through simplifying administrative procedures. Levelling the playing field of competition between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises will also help to maintain Viet Nam’s attraction for international investors. The country is already among the leaders of digitalisation in Southeast Asia, with strong adoption of e-commerce, telemedicine and telework. Further investment in digital skills will be key to maintain this momentum. The authorities have committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and are expanding renewable energy generation capacity. A comprehensive decarbonisation plan would facilitate the transition to greener growth.

The increase in institutional ownership, the shift towards passive portfolio management and the rise of common ownership have transformed OECD countries financial markets in the last decades. The paper investigates the potential consequences of these transformations on firm’s productivity, using granular data on firms financial and ownership structure as well as a variety of econometric methods. The analysis suggests that the rise of institutional investors is overall not a major concern from a productivity standpoint: firms displaying higher institutional ownership tend to have higher productivity levels and growth rates compared to their peers, though the positive relationship tends to vanish when institutional investors’ time horizon is short. Moreover, inter-industry common ownership is related to higher firm-level productivity and this positive relation is stronger for firms operating in intangible-intensive and digital sectors, potentially hinting to an easing of vertical relationships and/or technological spillovers when firms operating in different sectors are owned by the same equity holders. On the contrary, the correlation with intra-industry common ownership appears negative, though not always significantly, potentially due to lower competition.

This new web format for Environment at a Glance Indicators provides real-time interactive on-line access to the latest comparable OECD-country data on the environment from the OECD Core Set of Environmental Indicators – a tool to evaluate environmental performance in countries and to track the course towards sustainable development. The web version allows users to play with the data and graphics, download and share them, and consult and download thematic web-books. These indicators provide key messages on major environmental trends in areas such as climate change, biodiversity, water resources, air quality, circular economy and ocean resources. They are accompanied by a short Environment at a Glance report that presents a digest of the key messages stemming from the indicators.

Le Viet Nam a réalisé des progrès économiques remarquables ces dernières décennies, en maintenant une croissance économique élevée. L'économie s'est également montrée résistante aux chocs, notamment à la pandémie de COVID-19. Les réformes approfondies et continues menées depuis la fin des années 1980 ont été la clé de cette réussite économique. Néanmoins, face aux défis importants qui l'attendent, le Viet Nam doit redoubler d'efforts pour faire avancer les réformes structurelles qui consolideront encore les forces du marché. La population vieillit rapidement et l'augmentation de la productivité est une priorité urgente. Cela nécessitera de nouvelles réformes pour réduire la participation de l'État, en particulier dans les secteurs de réseau tels que les télécommunications, et pour garantir des conditions de concurrence équitables entre toutes les entreprises. Il est également essentiel d'approfondir l'intégration commerciale pour renforcer les chaînes d'approvisionnement dans un paysage économique mondial en pleine mutation. Malgré l'augmentation récente de l'utilisation du numérique, le Viet Nam doit améliorer les compétences des travailleurs en renforçant la formation professionnelle et l'éducation des adultes. L'engagement de parvenir à des émissions nettes nulles d'ici 2050 nécessite des changements radicaux dans le système économique. Pour réduire la dépendance à l'égard des combustibles fossiles, il convient d'arrêter les nouveaux investissements dans le charbon et d'accélérer la mise en œuvre d'un marché du carbone. Comme ces réformes nécessiteront des ressources fiscales supplémentaires, l'assiette fiscale devrait être élargie afin d'augmenter les recettes publiques. CHAPITRES THÉMATIQUES : RÉGLEMENTATION DES MARCHÉS DE PRODUITS ; NUMÉRISATION ; CROISSANCE VERTE

The COVID 19 pandemic has inflicted a series of shocks on the global economy, not least impacting global trade and investment. During the same time, several countries adopted new foreign direct investment (FDI) related policies. This paper presents novel preliminary evidence on the effects of these new FDI policies and COVID-19-related supply-chain disruptions on cross-border investment. It employs, among others, granular data on FDI policies and investment projects undertaken in a wide range of sectors in 175 host economies worldwide by investors from 46 home countries. It finds that a combination of FDI policies and COVID-19-related measures has a statistically significant and economically meaningful negative effect on the probability of a new cross-border greenfield investment project occurring during the sample period. The effect is the strongest in sectors with high R&D intensity.

Governments are increasingly utilising research and innovation (R&I) policy to foster economic and societal change. Yet, the empirical correlation between these policies and socio-technical transformations remains under-explored. The report investigates this relationship by comparing the Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRPs) of Austria, Finland and Sweden, initiated under the NextGenerationEU framework post Covid-19. The report finds significant disparities in the content, process and transformative value of the RRPs among these countries. The differences in the content of the national RRPs, and the ability and willingness to seize the opportunity presented by the RRPs to drive transformation, are explained by existing national policy contexts and frameworks. Surprisingly, the role of R&I policy in the RRPs is less important than expected, despite its emphasised importance in literature and political rhetoric. The report further identifies implications for a transformative innovation policy as well as areas for further research.