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Promoting health and well-being at the workplace is a valuable investment for employees, employers, governments, and society. Healthy employees are less likely to be absent or have reduced productivity. Employers benefit from improved work outputs, and health systems see reduced treatment costs. Digital tools and innovative technologies can enhance the effectiveness of health promotion programs. The market for these tools is growing globally, with employers keen to improve health and productivity. This working paper, through four case studies, underscores how wearables, mobile applications for female health, AI-driven lifestyle management applications, and health insurance engagement platforms can be utilized to promote health at the workplace. These technologies present avenues for enhancing the efficacy, efficiency, and customization of health promotion interventions. Nevertheless, they also pose challenges such as privacy issues, the requirement for digital proficiency, the necessity for conducive organisational practices for healthier work environments, and the assurance of safety and clinical suitability of the proliferating health applications and tools in the market.

This working paper reviews the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on equity and inclusion in education, focusing on learner-centred, teacher-led and other institutional AI tools. It highlights the potential of AI in adapting learning while also addressing challenges such as access issues, inherent biases and the need for comprehensive teacher training. The paper emphasises the importance of balancing the potential benefits of AI with ethical considerations and the risk of exacerbating existing disparities. It highlights the need to address privacy and ethical concerns, enhance cultural responsiveness, manage techno ableism and provide continuing professional learning in AI. Additionally, the paper stresses the importance of maintaining educational integrity amidst growing commercial influence. It encourages research on AI tools’ implications for equity and inclusion to ensure that AI adoption in education supports a more equitable and inclusive learning environment.

Des systèmes de santé résilients supposent des chaînes d’approvisionnement en produits médicaux sûres. Or ces chaînes sont complexes et internationalisées, et font souvent intervenir de nombreux fournisseurs. La pandémie de COVID-19, pendant laquelle ont coïncidé une hausse sans précédent de la demande et des interruptions dans l’offre et les flux commerciaux, a accentué les pénuries existantes et de plus en plus fréquentes de médicaments essentiels, comme les antibiotiques et les anesthésiques, et a provoqué des ruptures de stock concernant certains dispositifs médicaux, comme les masques et les respirateurs. Ce rapport offre un éclairage sur les risques et les vulnérabilités des chaînes d’approvisionnement en médicaments et dispositifs médicaux. Il analyse les mesures que peuvent prendre les pouvoirs publics pour anticiper et atténuer les risques de pénuries de médicaments et de dispositifs médicaux, tant en temps ‘normal’ que dans le contexte de crises graves. Le rapport montre surtout que pour renforcer la résilience à long terme des chaînes d’approvisionnement en produits médicaux, il est indispensable d’agir dans le cadre de démarches collaboratives conciliant les mesures prises par le secteur privé avec celles relevant des gouvernements ou d’instances supranationales.

In the mining sector, government revenue depends on mineral products being priced and measured accurately. This can be especially complex for semi-processed minerals such as lithium, which is primarily used for battery production. The schedule presented in this report applies the mineral pricing framework – as documented in the joint OECD/IGF work Determining the Price of Minerals: A Transfer Pricing Framework – to identify the primary economic factors that influence the price of lithium in applying the Comparable Uncontrolled Price method and ensure that developing countries are able to tax lithium exports appropriately.

The semiconductor value chain is essential for modern economies but is prone to disruptions that pose considerable risks. Policy makers need robust data to help address a wide array of issues such as identifying bottlenecks, monitoring the balance between supply and demand of specific semiconductor types, as well as managing disruptions in the value chain. This paper establishes a common taxonomy for semiconductor types and production facilities to enable harmonised data collection and sharing. The taxonomy divides semiconductor products into four broad categories: “logic”, “memory”, “analog” and “others”, with further sub-categories based on their prevalence and specific functions. Semiconductor production facilities are classified according to the technology they use, the types of semiconductors they can produce, their production capacity, and other key characteristics. This taxonomy will be the basis for a semiconductor production database – it will be revised in the future to keep pace with technological advancements.

New Zealand’s productivity level remains markedly below the OECD frontier. Insufficient competition is an important contributor to this performance, as the relatively small number of competitors in New Zealand’s small market contributes to market concentration. Ensuring adequate competition policy settings is important for offsetting these geographic handicaps, foster innovation and support higher living standards. This paper reviews the competition landscape and the recent reforms in several concentrated markets and network sectors and provides recommendations for additional sectoral reforms or inquiries. It also provides recommendations for improving the overall regulatory landscape, including the prerogatives of the Commerce Commission and other government regulators and regulations on business entry and conduct. Finally, it addresses the question of competition enforcement in digital markets, where New Zealand faces some of the same challenges that other OECD economies have to tackle.

New Zealand, like other countries, needs to address climate change on two fronts simultaneously. Adapting to a hotter world while meeting its emissions reduction targets. New Zealand will need to become better prepared for more extreme weather that climate change will bring about. Councils will need new sources of revenue to fund the infrastructure that adaptation requires. Maintaining a comprehensive package of private insurance for climate-related losses with sharper premium price signals will also be essential. Developing a long-term energy strategy that weighs up all the main options for reducing emissions, while ensuring security of supply in a hotter world, is also crucial. New Zealand has made important strides to strengthen the policy framework for reducing GHG emissions. An important part of the framework is the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). However, the ETS should be reviewed with a focus on the treatment of carbon removals through afforestation. New Zealand’s next overall emissions reduction plan should be underpinned by a rigorous and comprehensive cost-benefit comparison of the different emissions reduction options.

Egypt’s working age population is set to expand substantially, with a rising education level, making for growth opportunities. However, employment ratios have trended down, while informality has become increasingly prevalent, particularly penalising the youth. Such trends should be reversed by creating more and better-quality jobs, thereby better integrating people into the labour market, in particular the youth. Easing rigid market regulations would boost productivity and promote formal job creation. High labour costs should be reduced, which would also bring a larger share of the working age population into formal employment. At the same time, social protection and worker support should be expanded to address labour market insecurity and obstacles to labour force participation. Education is also key to foster productivity growth and formal jobs. Ongoing reforms, notably the National Structural Reform Programme, aim at developing skills, promoting female labour force participation and expanding social benefit programmes. These important initiatives should be complemented by additional policy measures to ensure sufficient job creation and improve job quality, thereby durably raising living standards for all and improving employment prospects especially for younger generations.

The education policy framework and New Zealand’s autonomous school system have many strengths and centres of excellence. New Zealand has a deep pool of highly talented and motivated teaching professionals, but the system is performing below potential. Student achievement is declining and equity is not improving, and outcomes are too variable even in the same school. Many of the support elements are lacking, including a sufficiently detailed curriculum, efficient assessment tools, specialist subject teaching practice and curriculum implementation advice, and initial teacher education tailored to the unique demands the system imposes. The Ministry of Education’s operational capacity was pared back too far. Many improvements can be made without increasing total spending. The Ministry should continue to develop its operational support capacities. The government should better spread best practices, and continue efforts to provide a detailed curriculum, an assessment system and education of teachers and training for boards and principals better informed by data, evaluations, education research and the expertise of the system’s experienced actors.

The paper presents novel indicators to measure financial sector digitalisation that cover 21 OECD countries over the 1995-2018 period, showing a significant increase in digital penetration though at different speeds and intensities across countries. The indicators are used to study the impact of financial sector digitalisation on economic activity, highlighting significant positive effects on the productivity of downstream industries. A 10% increase in financial sector digitalisation is associated with a 0.1 percentage point increase in productivity growth for the average industry, with a stronger impact in intangible-intensive industries. Digitalisation in finance is also associated with an easing of credit constraints, particularly benefiting intangible-intensive industries and SMEs, via an improvement in credit allocation and market conditions. Results suggest that policy actions aimed at supporting digital infrastructure, promoting competition in communications, fostering finance innovation, and encouraging high-level skill formation (especially in STEM fields) could sustain and enhance productivity growth through financial sector digitalisation.

Composition Adjusted-Labour Input (CALI) measures account for workers’ differences in skills and productive capacity. This study reviews the most relevant literature to have produced CALI estimates to date and presents a generic approach to produce CALI measures for 21 countries. It finds that education and age (proxy for work experience) are two key workers’ characteristics to be included in CALI measures, with additional workers characteristics having a more limited impact. Replacing a traditional measure of labour input, such as hours worked, with a measure of CALI in the growth accounts leads to a significant downward revision in multifactor productivity (MFP) growth in countries that experience large changes in the composition of labour.

Public administration reforms can lead to a more accountable and effective civil service, better organisation of the administration, and higher quality public services for citizens and businesses. This report analyses the institutional and strategic framework for public administration reform in the Palestinian Authority. It includes recommendations for improving this framework as well as the co-ordination mechanisms, systems, and processes for public administration reform.

This paper examines gender-related philanthropic giving in developing countries amid rising funding needs for gender equality, persistent inequalities, and a global gender backlash. It analyses support from 44 domestic and 40 cross-border foundations reporting to the OECD Centre on Philanthropy and the Creditor Reporting System, respectively. It finds that gender-related domestic disbursements have slightly risen from USD 27 million in 2016 to USD 30 million in 2019. Cross-border philanthropic commitments towards gender equality have tripled in five years, reaching an average of USD 3.4 billion per year in 2021-2022. However, 68% of cross-border giving towards developing countries remains gender-blind, potentially reinforcing existing gender gaps. Funding remains limited to few actors, with ten international foundations providing 97% of total cross-border giving for gender equality in developing countries. Finally, intersectoral approaches remain underfunded, with cross-border philanthropic giving addressing simultaneously climate change and gender equality in developing countries amounting on average to USD 557 million per year in 2021-2022.

Since the Great Financial Crisis (2007–08) many countries have explored how education systems can better prepare students for their working lives in order to reduce youth unemployment and enhance educational engagement and achievement. This paper focuses on Career Pathways, learning programmes delivered in general secondary education that allow students to undertake a deep exploration of a vocational field of interest while keeping their options for the future open. In a first-of-its-kind analysis and building on understanding of historic provision, the study considers innovation in programme development in five predominantly Anglophone countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Scotland and the United States) since 2010. While historically participation in Career Pathways has been strongly associated with better employment outcomes for learners, evaluations have highlighted important challenges to their delivery at scale for the full range of learners. This paper reviews a range of responses to historic challenges based on study visits to five countries and closes with policy recommendations for future enhancement of provision.

This paper offers insights on the factors that determine household choices related to energy use, based on data from the third OECD Survey on Environmental Policies and Individual Behaviour Change (EPIC). The analysis profiles households according to patterns in reported energy use and investment in energy-related technologies, assesses the factors driving such decisions and estimates households’ willingness to pay to reduce the emissions of the electricity they use. Results suggest that the feasibility of installing low-emissions energy technologies appears to remain a key obstacle to their uptake, and that households are willing to pay a small but positive premium for electricity produced with fewer emissions. The presence of cross-country differences in behaviours and preferences signals the importance of considering local factors in approaches to energy policies. Environmental concern and environmental motivation increase engagement in sustainable choices, pointing to the cross-cutting relevance of policy efforts to improve environmental knowledge and awareness.

On average, primary school students in OECD countries receive 805 hours of instruction per year, and lower secondary students 916 hours, spread over 38 school weeks. However, these averages mask wide variations across countries. The total length of school vacations averages around 14 weeks per year, ranging from less than 11 weeks in Costa Rica and Denmark to 17 weeks in Greece, Latvia and Lithuania. The organisation of the school year, in particular the length of the summer holidays, is frequently debated but is rarely the subject of educational reforms because of its sensitive nature. Contrary to common assumptions, the length of instruction time is not closely related to students’ academic performance. The quality of instruction and other factors such as students’ participation to private tutoring and extracurricular educational activities, play critical roles in determining learning outcomes, too.

This document is the peer review report of the National Contact Point (NCP) of Iceland. The objectives of NCP peer reviews are to assess to what extent the NCP is functioning and operating in accordance with the core effectiveness criteria set out in the implementation procedures; to identify the NCP’s strengths and possibilities for improvement; to make recommendations for improvement; and to serve as a learning tool for all NCPs involved. The peer review of the NCP of Iceland was conducted by a team of reviewers from the NCPs of Finland and Poland, along with representatives of the OECD Secretariat.

This document is the peer review report of the National Contact Point (NCP) of Romania. The objectives of NCP peer reviews are to assess to what extent the NCP is functioning and operating in accordance with the core effectiveness criteria set out in the implementation procedures; to identify the NCP’s strengths and possibilities for improvement; to make recommendations for improvement; and to serve as a learning tool for all NCPs involved. The peer review of the NCP of Romania was conducted by a team of reviewers from the NCPs of Kazakhstan, Portugal, and Spain, along with representatives of the OECD Secretariat.