OECD Nations Research Articles

Nigeria’s development process, methodology and milestones planned for VISION 20:2020 - 13 years after

How has Nigeria performed in the area of human resource development and a knowledge-based economy?
 Amidst various reforms agenda, policies, development plans and programmes, Vision 2010, Seven-Point Agenda and a host of others, Nigerian leaders have articulated the Vision 20:2020, which targets to catapult Nigeria into the league of the first global 20 economies by the year 2020. This article focuses only on the second pillar of Nigerian vision 2020 which is “Human resources development and knowledgebased economy” and compare recent development indicators for Nigeria with those of advanced countries, the first 20 of which Nigeria aspired to join this year (2020). In contrast to the situation in highincome OECD nations, the vast majority of Nigerians are ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed and ill-educated. They live in the rural areas characterized by massive underdevelopment. Poverty is the basic malady of Nigeria which is involved in misery-go-round, as part of the slum of the world economy. Nigeria's Vision 20:2020 is, therefore, too ambitious. Furthermore, against the backdrop of the antecedents of policy reversals, summersaults and failures in Nigeria, the Vision is utopian. Recommendations include commitment of the leadership to sufficient discipline and political will to enforce development policies and programmes.

No Guidance at the Belgian oecd National Contact Point: Can Mediation Alone “Further the Effectiveness of the Guidelines”?

No Guidance at the Belgian oecd National Contact Point: Can Mediation Alone “Further the Effectiveness of the Guidelines”?

3 oecd National Contact Point, Belgium: Statement from the Belgian National Contact Point on the Specific Instance iuf/AB-InBev, 2 March 2020

3 oecd National Contact Point, Belgium: Statement from the Belgian National Contact Point on the Specific Instance iuf/AB-InBev, 2 March 2020

9 oecd National Contact Point, France: Initial Assessment, “Teleperformance in France and the World”, 26 June 2020

9 oecd National Contact Point, France: Initial Assessment, “Teleperformance in France and the World”, 26 June 2020

1 oecd National Contact Point, Switzerland: Initial Assessment, Specific Instance regarding LafargeHolcim submitted by Building and Wood Workers’ International, 26 May 2020

1 oecd National Contact Point, Switzerland: Initial Assessment, Specific Instance regarding LafargeHolcim submitted by Building and Wood Workers’ International, 26 May 2020

6 oecd National Contact Point, the Netherlands: Final Statement, iuf vs. Perfetti Van Melle, 15 June 2020

6 oecd National Contact Point, the Netherlands: Final Statement, iuf vs. Perfetti Van Melle, 15 June 2020

2 oecd National Contact Point, Germany: Final Statement, Specific instance submitted by südwind Institut, Sedane Labour Resource Centre, Stichting Schone Kleren/Clean Clothes Campaign against Adidas ag, 24 April 2020

2 oecd National Contact Point, Germany: Final Statement, Specific instance submitted by südwind Institut, Sedane Labour Resource Centre, Stichting Schone Kleren/Clean Clothes Campaign against Adidas ag, 24 April 2020

Exploring the existence of aviation Kuznets curve in the context of environmental pollution for OECD nations

Environmental degradation has put significant consequences at both the national and global levels. Economic development and ecological sustainability can be achieved by an increase in economic growth but on the cost of environmental quality. The basic aim of this analysis is to find the existence of the aviation Kuznets curve (AKC) and the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for the selected 21 OECD nations from 1980 to 2018. The aviation cargo and aviation passengers’ patterns are separately analyzed in relation to CO2 emissions to quantify whether Kuznets phenomenon exists in the aviation industry of OECD nations? The econometric results of panel GMM confirm the validation of the aviation Kuznets curve in case of aviation passengers such that the “inverted U shaped” pattern. While the environmental Kuznets curve and aviation cargo Kuznets curve do not exist in the OECD nation. It means that an increase in aviation cargo and economic growth increases the CO2 emissions showing the “U shaped” association. Moreover, the Pairwise Dumitrescu Hurlin panel causality test exhibits uni–directional association moving from economic growth to carbon emissions, while there is bidirectional granger causality among trade openness, aviation sector, and energy consumption to carbon emissions. The overall results suggest that OECD nations must consider the pollution reduction techniques, investment in renewable sources, continuous research, implementation of efficient energy sources, and the imposition of aviation emissions taxes to limit the pollution.

Anesthesiology and Critical Care Response to COVID-19 in Resource-Limited Settings: Experiences from Nepal.

It is difficult to predict the future course and length of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has devastated health care systems in low- and middle-income countries. Anesthesiology and critical care services are hard hit because many hospitals have stopped performing elective surgeries, staff and scarce hospital resources have been diverted to manage COVID-19 patients, and several makeshift COVID-19 units had to be set up. Intensive care units are overwhelmed with critically ill patients. In these difficult times, low- and middle-income countries need to improvise, perform indigenous research, adapt international guidelines to suit local needs, and target attainable clinical goals.

Corporate Governance Development and Practices in an Emerging Economy: A Review of Empirical Findings and Literature in Saudi Arabia

Purpose: The aim is to review the literature and present some of the academic contributions researchers have made in the study, development and practice of corporate governance (CG) in Saudi Arabia.
 
 Design/Methodology: We conducted a guided words search on electronic databases using “corporate governance in Saudi Arabia” as the search words. The scope of the study was restricted to the needed materials and information contained in refereed journals from 1965 to 2018 and held in the ABI/INFORM Global, Emerald databases and a few other internationally recognized electronic databases. The papers were first sorted into areas of possible CG application. They are finally analyzed and then synthesized.
 
 Findings: That six broad areas have been examined in relation to CG structures and development; they include: company financial performance, corporate social responsibilities, earnings management, corporate voluntary disclosures, financial structure and the role of CG in times of financial crisis. The papers are skewed in favour of, CG and company financial performance at the expense of other areas. CG has evolved, even though, the country’s institutional environment may not be too close to those of OECD nations, but the establishment of the new 2006 CG code is a positive addition to the business culture. Nevertheless, there are still other outstanding CG issues identified by scholars and practitioners that are not in conformity with international best CG practices.
 
 Research limitations/implications: The study’s analysis was restricted to between 1965 and 2018, and papers from some and not all electronic data bases were used. 
 
 Originality/value: The paper provides a comprehensive review and analysis CG development and practice in an emerging economy where greater importance is usually attached to informal relationships and other considerations than formal CG mechanisms.

Water Policy for Sustainable Management: A Review

Water is a fundamental need for life and societal growth. It is essential to meet personal and household needs, as well as for energy and industrial development, as well as to preserve critical water-dependent habitats and ecological services. Demand for the world's highly limited water supply is quickly growing, posing a threat to global food security and limiting its availability for food production. This research review addresses the increasing of global water use per year, global water policy for sustainable management, challenges, traits and opportunities with the objective of determining the best practice of water policy for the future generation. The world population increased from 2.77 billion to 7.794 billion since 1955 till end of 2020 with the growth rate of 1.88% to 1.05% respectively. The World Gross domestic product from 1960-2019 increased from 1.36 $ trillion to 87.67 $ trillion. Due to increasing population, economic development and climate change the global freshwater use since 1900 by broad regional groupings indicate that: OECD nations (Organizations for Economic Cooperation and Development) uses approximately 20-25%, BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) use the largest share at approximately 45% and the Rest of the World nations (ROW) use at 30-33%. Thus, to achieve sustainable water management, best water policy should provide a multi-disciplinary and comprehensive approach that addresses scientific, environmental, economic, landscape aesthetics, societal, and cultural issues.

Firm’s globalization and wage elasticity of labour demand in South Korea

ABSTRACT This study investigates the effects of exports and overseas investments on the wage elasticity of labour demand for both foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) and Korean MNCs using a 2006–2015 firm-level unbalanced panel dataset from South Korea. I employ the system generalized method of moments to estimate a dynamic labour demand function to solve the problem of reverse causality due to potential endogeneity. The results suggest that exports play a critical role in increasing wage elasticity among foreign MNCs, whereas overseas investments render labour demand more elastic among both foreign MNCs and Korean MNCs. Particularly, these effects of globalization on increasing wage elasticity became strengthened among foreign MNCs during the post-financial crisis period. Moreover, the intra-firm and inter-firm exports of foreign MNCs from OECD nations, which reflect the vertical integration of foreign MNCs with their affiliated firms, increase the wage elasticity of labour demand. Since overseas investments induce higher wage elasticity of labour demand, overseas investment substitutes for local production activity. These empirical results imply that the rapid pace of globalization exacerbates the instability of the local labour market, and the aggravation of employment vulnerability during the post-crisis period is driven by foreign MNC activity.

REVIEW: Noted: Fix the system before it’s too late

The Broken Estate: Journalism and Democracy in a Post-Truth World, by Mel Bunce. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2019. 224 pages. ISBN 9780947518356
 NEW ZEALAND has probably the worst television systems of any OECD nation, media ownership so concentrated that there is only one truly independent newspaper left, plummeting readership levels and almost insuperable economic challenges. And yet, as London-based New Zealand journalist-turned academic Mel Bunce observes, there has never been a time when the country most needed a functioning, independent media system that people could trust.
 In this slim, but powerful volume, she outlines what is wrong with New Zealand’s media and ways that it might be fixed.

Time preferences as partisan politics: what do party manifestos show in twenty-two OECD countries?

ABSTRACT This study examines the correlation between economic freedom and sexual freedom in the twenty-two OECD nations included in the 2020 Comparative Welfare States Dataset (Brady and Stephens, 2020. Comparative welfare states data set. University of North Carolina and WZB Berlin Social Science Center). Our research builds on prior work by Unwin (1934. Sex and culture. Oxford University Press, 1935. Sexual regulations and cultural behaviour. Oxford University Press, 1940. HOPOUSIA or the sexual and economic foundations of a new society. Oskar Piest) and Bose (2013). License to Sin: The Politics and Opportunity Cost of Sexual Freedom. SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2039060 or http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2039060. who suggest that economic freedom and sexual freedom are negatively related. We develop an economic and sexual freedom score from the Manifesto Project (Volkens et al., 2020. The manifesto data collection. In M. P. (MRG/CMP/MARPOR) (Ed.), Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB)) and take the difference between the two and track the difference since primarily the end of World War II. Our hypothesis is that right parties will emphasize more economic freedom in their party platforms than sexual freedom, whereas left parties will have more to say about sexual freedom in their party platforms than economic freedom. The difference is because the parties are attracting different types of voters based on their time preferences.

Hydrogen penetration and fuel cell vehicle deployment in the carbon constrained future energy system

This research details outcomes from a global model which estimates future hydrogen penetration into a carbon constrained energy system to the year 2050. Focusing on minimum and maximum penetration scenarios, an investigation of global fuel cell vehicle (FCV) deployment is undertaken, cognizant of optimal economic deployment at the global level and stakeholder preferences in a case study of Japan. The model is mathematically formulated as a very large-scale linear optimization problem, aiming to minimize system costs, including generation type, fuel costs, conversion costs, and carbon reduction costs, subject to the constraint of carbon dioxide reductions for each nation. Results show that between approximately 0.8% and 2% of global energy consumption needs can be met by hydrogen out to the year 2050, with city gas and transport emerging as significant use cases. Passenger FCVs and hydrogen buses account for almost all of the hydrogen-based transportation sector, leading to a global deployment of approximately 120 million FCVs by 2050. Hydrogen production is reliant on fossil fuels, and OECD nations are net importers - especially Japan with a 100% import case. To underpin hydrogen production from fossil fuels, carbon capture and storage (CCS) is required in significant quantities when anticipating a large fleet of FCVs. Stakeholder engagement suggests optimism toward FCV deployment while policy issues identified include necessity for large-scale future energy system investment and rapid technical and economic feasibility progress for renewable energy technologies and electrolyzers.

The effect of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption on economic growth: Non-parametric evidence

We employ a non-parametric modelling technique to examine the time-varying impact of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption on economic growth. The specific nonparametric method that we employ is the local linear dummy variable estimation (LLDVE) method, which we apply to OECD and non-OECD panels for the period 1990 to 2015. While previous studies employing parametric models have recognised the existence of non-linearities and instability in the relationship between renewable (and non-renewable) energy consumption and economic growth, the LLDVE method has the advantage that it does not make any assumptions about functional form and, hence, is better able to approximate the non-linear relationship. Our estimates suggest that non-renewable energy consumption exerts a positive and significant impact on economic growth across OECD nations with the coefficient function exhibiting an upward trajectory over time. The impact of renewable energy consumption on economic growth, however, is statistically indistinguishable from zero in these countries for most of the study period. Both renewable and non-renewable energy consumption promote economic growth in non-OECD countries, suggesting that developing countries may play an important role in the transition process to renewables despite constraints in technical progress.

Predictors of (in)efficiencies of Healthcare Expenditure Among the Leading Asian Economies - Comparison of OECD and Non-OECD Nations.

PurposeThe goal of this study was to assess the effectiveness of healthcare spending among the leading Asian economies.MethodsWe have selected a total of nine Asian nations, based on the strength of their economic output and long-term real GDP growth rates. The OECD members included Japan and the Republic of Korea, while the seven non-OECD nations were China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand. Healthcare systems efficiency was analyzed over the period 1996–2017. To assess the effectiveness of healthcare expenditure of each group of countries, the two-way fixed effects model (country- and year effects) was used.ResultsQuality of governance and current health expenditure determine healthcare system performance. Population density and urbanization are positively associated with a healthy life expectancy in the non-OECD Asian countries. In this group, unsafe water drinking has a statistically negative effect on healthy life expectancy. Interestingly, only per capita consumption of carbohydrates is significantly linked with healthy life expectancy. In these non-OECD Asian countries, unsafe water drinking and per capita carbon dioxide emissions increase infant mortality. There is a strong negative association between GDP per capita and infant mortality in both sub-samples, although its impact is far larger in the OECD group. In Japan and South Korea, unemployment is negatively associated with infant mortality.ConclusionJapan outperforms other countries from the sample in major healthcare performance indicators, while South Korea is ranked second. The only exception is per capita carbon dioxide emissions, which have maximal values in the Republic of Korea and Japan. Non-OECD nations’ outcomes were led by China, as the largest economy. This group was characterized with substantial improvement in efficiency of health spending since the middle of the 1990s. Yet, progress was noted with remarkable heterogeneity within the group.

An analysis of the policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in France, Belgium, and Canada

ObjectivesThis paper presents an overview and comparative analysis of the epidemiological situation and the policy responses in France, Belgium, and Canada during the early stages of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic (Feb.-Aug. 2020). These three countries are compared because they represent a spectrum of different governance structures while also being OECD nations that are similar in many other respects. MethodsA rapid review of primary data from the three countries was conducted. Data was collected from official government documents whenever possible, supplemented by information from international databases and local media reports. The data was then analysed to identify common patterns as well as significant divergences across the three countries, especially in the areas of health policy and technology use. ResultsFrance, Belgium and Canada faced differing epidemiological situations during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the wide variety of policy actions taken appears to be linked to existing governance and healthcare structures. The varying degrees of federalism and regional autonomy across the three countries highlight the different constraints faced by national policy-makers within different governance models. ConclusionsThe actions taken by all three countries appear to have been largely dictated by existing health system capacity, with increasing federalism associated with more fragmented strategies and less coordination across jurisdictions. However, the implications of certain policies related to economic resilience and health system capacity cannot yet be fully evaluated and may even prove to have net negative impacts into the future.

10 oecd National Contact Point, the Netherlands: Final Statement, Specific Instance of uni Global Union vs. veon , 11 February 2020

10 oecd National Contact Point, the Netherlands: Final Statement, Specific Instance of uni Global Union vs. veon , 11 February 2020

Trapped Factors and China’s Impact on Global Growth

AbstractAfter a recent increase in Chinese import competition, European firms increased innovation. We present and rationalise these patterns using ‘trapped factors’ at the micro level within a stylised equilibrium model of product-cycle trade and growth. Trade integration of the magnitude observed between the OECD and low-wage nations as a whole can considerably increase the long-run growth rate and welfare. In the short run exposed firms devote trapped factors to increased innovation, leading both to increased innovation at these individual firms as well as to a small amount of extra transitional growth overall. China accounts for half of the dynamic trade gains.