Publications & Documents

This report presents a comprehensive overview of recent and longer-term trends in productivity levels and growth in OECD countries and selected G20 economies. The different chapters feature an analysis of latest developments in productivity, economic growth, sectoral reallocation, investment, labour productivity by firm size and labour income. This edition also includes a special chapter providing insights of productivity developments in 2023 based on experimental estimates for 38 OECD countries.

Growth has held up better in Egypt than in neighbouring countries until recently but inflation has reached very high levels and financing conditions have tightened along with foreign currency shortages. In this context, Egypt is stepping up economic reform efforts. The exchange rate needs to become more flexible with monetary policy geared to bring inflation down to target. High public debt makes Egypt more vulnerable to external shocks. Committing to a credible consolidation strategy is key to restore public finance health, which would improve investor confidence and thereby reduce debt servicing costs. While expanding cash transfers to the most vulnerable, broad-based energy subsidies should be phased out, which would also reduce emissions. As public investment has expanded substantially, further efforts to rationalise large-scale construction projects should be pursued, while allocating resources to green investment. To revive private sector growth, the regulatory burden and the state footprint ought to be reduced, and ongoing reforms including the divestment plan should be implemented fully and effectively. As the working-age population will expand with a rising education level, younger generations need to be better integrated into the labour market. This requires reducing labour taxation, enhancing public employment support and better aligning skills to labour market needs. SPECIAL FEATURES: IMPROVING THE BUSINESS CLIMATE TO REVIVE PRIVATE SECTOR GROWTH; PROMOTING BETTER-QUALITY JOB CREATION FOR INCLUSIVE GROWTH

In many countries, public expenditure, including transfers, plays a major role in reducing income inequality. The report reviews the various ways that budgeting can be used to this end. A first includes taking a broad approach to results-based budgeting, taking social and distributional goals into consideration. A second relies on integrating distributional impact analysis directly into the budget process. The report discusses the concrete experience of eight OECD countries in this area, analysing how they are integrating distributional impact assessment in spending and budgeting decisions. Finally, it discusses the tools, frameworks and data that are needed to take distributional considerations into account as part of evidence-informed policy making.

As climate change increases exposure to natural disasters, countries need new solutions to mitigate risks of natural hazards. For many in Asia and the Pacific, mobilising existing resources is not enough: they need to consider a grand design of disaster risk financing strategies. Catastrophe bonds (CAT bonds) can be an effective, market-based financing tool for the region. While the global CAT bond market has grown steadily since the 1990s, it remains weakly developed in Asia and the Pacific. Its successful development there requires robust purpose-built legal frameworks; developed general bond markets, especially in local currency; appropriate capacity building; and data-driven pricing models. This report explores each of these conditions along with policy suggestions for fostering them, and discusses the development of multi-country CAT bonds in Asia and the Pacific.