Publications & Documents

This study provides an in-depth assessment of Spain’s innovation system and the current state of knowledge transfer and collaboration. It identifies five priority areas for reform and long-term investment that should provide the basis of a new Roadmap. These include granting greater operational autonomy to universities and public research organisations in return for accountability on outcomes, putting in place a better integrated system of incentives that takes both individuals and organisations into account, and ensuring sustained investment in core capabilities to connect science and business. To put these reforms in motion and sustain them over time, a new type of covenant between science and society is needed in Spain today. This should be based on a ‘new deal’ between actors in the science and innovation system and society at large, committing to place the pursuit of concrete social benefits in return for more stable and predictable support.

Italy’s start-up visa aims to make the national start-up ecosystem more easily accessible to foreign talent, rich with knowledge and skills, and more integrated into global markets. Government reports show that the programme has not yet achieved a critical scale. The analysis of similar initiatives in Chile, France, Ireland and Portugal identifies five gateways for attracting more foreign entrepreneurs, such as an effective policy outreach, smooth inter-institutional co-operation across the migratory process, and the provision of sound support services for a 'soft landing' of entrepreneurs upon arrival. These takeaways may also inform new talent attraction policies targeting remote workers, an expanding group in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Technological developments are one of the major forces behind the need for retraining, but they can also be part of the solution. In particular, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to increase training participation, including among currently underrepresented groups, by lowering some of the barriers to training that people experience and by increasing motivation to train. Moreover, certain AI solutions for training may improve the alignment of training to labour market needs, and reduce bias and discrimination in the workplace. In order to realise the benefits of AI for training and ensure that it yields benefits for all, it will be necessary to address potential drawbacks in terms of changing skills requirements, inequalities in access to data, technology and infrastructure and important ethical issues. Finally, even when these drawbacks can be addressed, the introduction and expansion of AI tools for training is constrained by the supply of AI skills in the workforce and the availability of scientific evidence regarding the benefits of AI tools for training and whether they are cost-effective.

The slowdown in market demand for oil is putting increasing pressure on Kuwait's current economic and social model. This model is based on the distribution of petroleum export proceeds to Kuwaiti citizens, with relatively limited long-term investment in knowledge production and the upgrading of the national innovation capacity. The transition towards a knowledge-based society – where value creation, the resolution of societal challenges and the well-being of society at large will be based on the production, diffusion and implementation of knowledge – is becoming an imperative. This is recognised within the national development strategy which formulates the objective of attaining 'Smart Kuwait' by 2035. Such a transition is challenging and can only be achieved through the build-up of appropriate governance of the STI system with adequate institutions such as a Ministry and a professional agency with a mandate for research and innovation. This set-up should help raise awareness and reduce barriers to innovation, reinforce the scientific research base, develop the support for business innovation, foster knowledge diffusion and co‑creation between science and industry, build up the human capital needed, and establish the role of science, technology and innovation in tackling Kuwait's societal challenges.

Relying on linked employer-employee datasets from 10 countries, this paper documents that the skills and the diversity of the workforce and of managers – the human side of businesses – account on average for about one third of the labour productivity gap between firms at the productivity 'frontier' (the top 10% within each detailed industry) and medium performers at the 40-60 percentile of the productivity distribution. The composition of skills, especially the share of high skills, varies the most along the productivity distribution, but low and medium skilled employees make up a substantial share of the workforce even at the frontier. High skills show positive but decreasing productivity returns. Moreover, the skill mix of top firms varies markedly across countries, pointing to the role of different strategies pursued by firms in different policy environments. We also find that managerial skills play a particularly important role, also through complementarities with worker skills. Gender and cultural diversity among managers – and to a lesser extent, among workers – is positively related to firm productivity as well. We discuss public policies that can facilitate the catch-up of firms below the frontier through skills and diversity. These cover a wide range of areas, exerting their influence through three main channels: the supply, upgrading and the matching across firms (the SUM) of skills and other human factors.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are major breakthrough technologies that are transforming the economy and society. The OECD’s Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Skills (AIFS) project is developing a programme to assess the capabilities of AI and robotics, and their impact on education and work. This volume reports on the first step of the project: identifying which capabilities to assess and which tests to use in the assessment. It builds on an online expert workshop that explored this question from the perspectives of both psychology and computer science. The volume consists of expert contributions that review skills taxonomies and tests in different domains of psychology, and efforts in computer science to assess AI and robotics. It provides extensive discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, and outlines directions for the project. The report can therefore be a resource for the research community of multiple fields and policy makers who wish to obtain deeper insight into the complexity of machine capabilities.

Efforts that primarily focus on incremental change in systems that are unsustainable by design are one of the main barriers to scaling up climate action. This report applies the OECD well-being lens process to the transport sector. It builds on the report Accelerating Climate Action and encourages countries to focus climate action on delivering systems that - by design - improve well-being while requiring less energy and materials, and thus producing less emissions. The report identifies three dynamics at the source of car dependency and high emissions: induced demand, urban sprawl and the erosion of active and shared transport modes. The report also provides policy recommendations to reverse such dynamics and reduce emissions while improving well-being, from radical street redesign, to spatial planning aimed at increasing proximity, and policies to mainstream shared mobility. Analysis also shows why the effectiveness and public acceptability of carbon pricing and policies incentivising vehicle electrification can significantly increase after policy reprioritisation towards systems redesign.

L’un des principaux obstacles à une action climatique plus ambitieuse est que les initiatives visent essentiellement à apporter des modifications mineures à des systèmes qui sont fondamentalement non durables. Le rapport précité applique l’approche de l’OCDE axée sur le bien-être au secteur des transports. Il s’appuie sur le rapport « Accélérer l’action pour le climat » et encourage les pays à centrer leur action en faveur du climat sur la mise en place de systèmes qui – par nature – améliorent le bien-être tout en nécessitant moins d’énergie et de matières, et donc produisent moins d’émissions. Le rapport met en évidence trois phénomènes à l’origine de la dépendance à la voiture et du niveau élevé des émissions : le trafic induit, l’étalement urbain ainsi que l’érosion des solutions de mobilité active et partagée. Il formule en outre des recommandations à l’intention des pouvoirs publics pour mettre fin à cette dynamique et réduire les émissions tout en améliorant le bien-être : la réorganisation radicale des rues, l’aménagement de l’espace axé sur la création de proximité, ou des mesures visant à généraliser la mobilité partagée. L’analyse montre également pourquoi l’efficacité et l’acceptabilité par la société de la tarification du carbone ainsi que les politiques incitant à l’électrification des voitures peuvent sensiblement se développer une fois que les pouvoirs publics accordent la priorité à la refonte des systèmes.