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Natural hazard-induced disasters (NHID), such as floods, droughts, severe storms, and animal pests and diseases have significant, widespread and long-lasting impacts on agricultural sectors around the world. With climate change set to amplify many of these impacts, a 'business-as-usual' approach to disaster risk management in agriculture cannot continue if we are to meet the challenges of agricultural productivity and sustainability growth, and sustainable development. Drawing from seven case studies – Chile, Italy, Japan, Namibia, New Zealand, Turkey and the United States – this joint OECD-FAO report argues for a new approach to building resilience to NHID in agriculture. It explores the policy measures, governance arrangements, on-farm strategies and other initiatives that countries are using to increase agricultural resilience to NHID, highlighting emerging good practices. It offers concrete recommendations on what more needs to be done to shift from coping with the impacts of disasters, to an ex ante approach that focuses on preventing and mitigating the impacts of disasters, helping the sector be better prepared to respond to disasters, and to adapt and transform in order to be better positioned for future disasters.

New Zealand’s agricultural sector faces the challenge of building long-term resilience to floods, which are projected to increase due to climate change. The New Zealand agricultural sector receives minimal government support and the policy environment focuses on providing an enabling environment for farmers to build their own resilience capacities, while the government has a more direct, but limited, role during disaster response and recovery. Key good practices include an ex ante framework to discipline ex post assistance to agriculture; incentives for industry groups to develop support resources for farmers; and an emphasis on mental wellbeing following a crisis. Nevertheless, further efforts to strengthen resilience could benefit from: (i) improved data collection to support targeted investments in risk prevention and mitigation; (ii) increased public-private collaboration to develop and diffuse effective solutions for adapting to and mitigating the risks of natural hazard-induced disasters on farms, including by leveraging the renewed engagement on extension services; and (iii) greater commitment to ensuring preparedness and response capacities in rural regions.

Under Action 14, countries have committed to implement a minimum standard to strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of the mutual agreement procedure (MAP). The MAP is included in Article 25 of the OECD Model Tax Convention and commits countries to endeavour to resolve disputes related to the interpretation and application of tax treaties. The Action 14 Minimum Standard has been translated into specific terms of reference and a methodology for the peer review and monitoring process. The peer review process is conducted in two stages. Stage 1 assesses countries against the terms of reference of the minimum standard according to an agreed schedule of review. Stage 2 focuses on monitoring the follow-up of any recommendations resulting from jurisdictions' Stage 1 peer review report. This report reflects the outcome of the Stage 2 peer monitoring of the implementation of the Action 14 Minimum Standard of New Zealand, which is accompanied by a document addressing the implementation of best practices.

This policy brief uses online job vacancy postings as a partial indicator of the impact of COVID-19 on skills demand in five OECD countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) between January and November 2020. The pandemic, as well as containment and mitigation measures designed to halt its spread, had a large but heterogeneous impact on the demand for skills. By early May, the total volume of online job vacancies had fallen by over 50% in all the countries analysed with respect to the beginning of the year, with even larger declines in some sectors. However, the demand for specific skills in the healthcare sector and in logistics increased. There is also evidence of an increase in vacancies involving remote-working arrangements. The brief also shows that the crisis affected differently individuals with different levels of educational qualifications and that such effect differed across the countries analysed.

The bulk of government investment is done at the local level in OECD countries, representing on average 41% of total public investment. Most studies on subnational government debt focus on the regional or state level, and very few studies analyse public investment specifically by local governments. This paper aims at filling this gap, presenting a framework to analyse the key factors, which affect the capacity of local governments to fund and finance public investment, and illustrates the framework with five case studies: Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands and New Zealand.

This paper presents a stocktaking of standalone chapters in trade agreements dedicated to good regulatory practices and international regulatory co-operation. While standalone regulatory policy chapters in trade agreements remain a new development, they signal countries’ increasing interest in elevating the visibility and ambition of regulatory policy, in line with their commitments in the 2012 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Regulatory Policy and Governance and the 2005 APEC-OECD Integrated Checklist on Regulatory Reform. Still, the level of ambition of these chapters varies widely depending on the state of play of regulatory policy in trading partners. By comparing the main substantive and structural features of these chapters, this stocktaking aims to inform the development of similar chapters in future trade agreements.

The COVID-19 crisis has had a profound impact on SME access to finance. In particular, the sudden drop in revenues created acute liquidity shortages, threatening the survival of many viable businesses. The report documents an increase in demand for bank lending in the first half of 2020, and a steady supply of credit thanks to government interventions. On the other hand, other sources of finance declined, in particular early-stage equity. This paper, a special edition of Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs, focuses on the impacts of COVID-19 on SME access to finance, along with government policy responses. It reveals that the pre-crisis financing environment was broadly favourable for SMEs and entrepreneurs, who benefited from low interest rates, loose credit standards and an increasingly diverse offer of financing instruments. It documents the unprecedented scope and scale of the policy responses undertaken by governments world-wide, and details their key characteristics, and outlines the principal issues and policy challenges for the next phases of the pandemic, such as the over-indebtedness of SMEs and the need to continue to foster a diverse range of financing instruments for SMEs.

This policy brief was developed by the Secretariat of the OECD Network of Economic Regulators (NER) and is based on examples of practice submitted by members of the NER. It reviews emergency measures taken by economic regulators during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure continuity of services in network sectors, as well as to adjust regulatory practices and adapt governance arrangements. It identifies long-term questions and implications of the crisis with regard to market structure, infrastructure investment and the role of regulators.

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.