Publications & Documents

This paper documents joblessness in OECD countries, provides a detailed diagnosis of structural employment barriers in Belgium, Korea and Norway by applying the OECD Faces of Joblessness methodology to the situation just before the COVID-19 crisis and discusses the policy implications. It shows that individuals experiencing major employment difficulties often face a combination of barriers related to work availability, readiness and incentives. It suggests a number of avenues for enhancing the effectiveness of public support: i) make greater use of statistical profiling tools to adapt programmes to the needs of the jobless and target resources to those at the highest risk of long-term joblessness; ii) better coordinate support provided by employment, health and education services; iii) place a greater emphasis on preventive policies (equal opportunities, life-long learning).

Revenue Statistics in Asian and Pacific Economies is jointly produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration (CTP) and the OECD Development Centre (DEV) with the co-operation of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Pacific Island Tax Administrators Association (PITAA), and the Pacific Community (SPC) and the financial support from the governments of Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This edition includes a special feature on the tax policy and administration responses to COVID-19 in Asian and Pacific Economies. It compiles comparable tax revenue statistics for Australia, Bhutan, People’s Republic of China, Cook Islands, Fiji, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nauru, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Thailand, Tokelau and Vanuatu ; and comparable non-tax revenue statistics for Bhutan, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Nauru, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Thailand, Tokelau and Vanuatu. The model is the OECD Revenue Statistics database which is a fundamental reference, backed by a well-established methodology, for OECD member countries. Extending the OECD methodology to Asian and Pacific economies enables comparisons about tax levels and tax structures on a consistent basis, both among Asian and Pacific economies and with OECD, Latin American and Caribbean and African averages.

This report assesses whether training workers in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Korea is adequate, relevant, and aligned to skills needs. It analyses policy options to expand access to training for SMEs, remove the barriers to training participation/provision, and ensure that training provided by SMEs supports their growth and encourages innovation, particularly in the context of the 4th industrial revolution. Based on this analysis, this report provides actionable policy recommendations as well as good practice examples from OECD countries.

The design of intergovernmental fiscal relations can help to ensure that tax and spending powers are assigned in a way to promote sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Decentralisation can enable sub-central governments to provide better public services for households and firms, while it can also make intergovernmental frameworks more complex, harming equity. The challenges of fiscal federalism are multi-faceted and involve difficult trade-offs. This synthesis paper consolidates much of the OECD’s work on fiscal federalism over the past 15 years, with a particular focus on OECD Economic Surveys. The paper identifies a range of good practices on the design of country policies and institutions related strengthening fiscal capacity delineating responsibilities across evels of government and improving intergovernmental co-ordination.

This review assesses Korea's public health system, highlights areas of strength and weakness, and makes a number of recommendations for improvement. The review examines Korea's public health system architecture, and how well policies are responding to population health challenges, including the growing burden of chronic disease, and resulting pressures on the health system. In particular, the review assesses Korea’s policies to prevent harmful alcohol use, and the risks and opportunities around public health genomics in Korea, which is both a growing field in the health sector, and a booming commercial industry. The review also examines Korea's exposure to public health emergencies, and capacity to respond to emergencies as and when they occur.

The governance of skills systems has always raised a number of challenges for governments. Being at the intersection of education, labour market, industrial and other policy domains, managing skills policies is inherently complex. Addressing these challenges is more than ever crucial as globalisation, technological progress and demographic change are putting daunting pressures on skills systems to ensure that all members of society are equipped with the skills necessary to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Strengthening the Governance of Skills Systems: Lessons from Six OECD Countries provides advice on how to make the governance of skills systems effective. Building on the OECD Skills Strategy 2019, which identified four main challenges of skills systems governance, the report presents examples of how six different countries (Estonia, Germany, Korea, Norway, Portugal and the United States) have responded to one or several of these challenges. It also outlines concrete policy recommendations together with a self-assessment tool which provides guidance to policy makers and stakeholders for designing better skills systems that deliver better skills outcomes.

During past years, Korea figured among the OECD countries with the highest share of population exposed to excessive PM2.5 (atmospheric particulate matter that have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres) concentrations and PM2.5 concentration level in Seoul is about two times higher than the WHO’s guidelines or the levels of other major cities in developed countries. A number of countermeasures have been recently introduced to address such challenges, including a tightening of air quality standards and increasing local inspection and enforcement capacity. This paper reviews these recent reforms, and discusses possible further improvements. This paper complements two case studies on air quality policies in China and Japan, and a third case study on international regulatory co-operation on air quality in North America, Europe and North-East Asia.