Publications & Documents

This paper analyses regulations that support non-motorised mobility in Bogotá and Mexico City. It reviews the promotion of bicycles as a sustainable alternative to cars and the rapid implementation of cycling lanes as a substitute for public transport under the Covid-19 crisis. It also discusses the renewed interest in support for dockless micromobility sharing systems. It focuses on subsidies and revision of regulations as avenues to ensure that micromobility will make a durable contribution to sustainable mobility in these cities.

The work of teachers matters in many different ways. Not only do they provide students with the knowledge and skills needed to thrive in the labour market, but they also help develop the social-emotional skills that are vital for students’ personal development and for their active citizenship. But how do teachers best achieve this? By linking 2018 data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) with evidence from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) – known as the TALIS-PISA link – this report aims to identify the teacher and school factors that matter most for student achievement and social-emotional development. The report uses a data-driven approach – based on machine learning and standard regression analyses – to identify the dimensions that are most strongly linked with student outcomes, and then combines this with a careful review of theory and previous research to analyse and interpret the findings. These findings provide a rich illustration of the many ways in which teachers and school leaders might influence the success of their students, acting as a tool for educators to reflect upon their own practice. Finally, the report offers several directions for education policy.

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.

What does teaching look like? What practices are most impactful? By directly observing teaching in the classroom, this study trialled new research methods to shed light on these key questions for raising student outcomes around the world. This report provides a detailed account of classroom management, social and emotional support, and instructional practices in the classrooms of eight countries and economies, drawing upon the observation of lesson videos and instructional materials, the analysis of teacher and student questionnaires, and the measurement of students’ cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes.

This paper studies the potential drivers of governments’ approval rates in 18 Latin American countries using Internet search query data from Google Trends and traditional data sources. It employs monthly panel data between January 2006 and December 2015. The analysis tests several specifications including traditional explanatory variables of governments’ approval rates – i.e. inflation, unemployment rate, GDP growth, output gap – and subjective explanatory variables – e.g. perception of corruption and insecurity. For the latter, it uses Internet search query data to proxy citizens’ main social concerns, which are expected to drive governments’ approval rates. The results show that the perception of corruption and insecurity, and complaints about public services have a statistically significant association with governments’ approval rates. This paper also discusses the potential of Internet search query data as a tool for policy makers to understand better citizens’ perceptions, since it provides highly anonymous and high-frequency series in real-time.