OECD proceedings

This report summarizes issues discussed at the OECD Workshop on Genetic Testing ..., held in Vienna, Feb. 23-25 and co-sponsored by the European Commission.

How can innovation and technology better contribute to environmental sustainability? What factors drive firms to innovate for the environment? How can environmental and innovation policies be better designed to stimulate innovation for the environment? How can better policy coherence be achieved? A recent OECD workshop addressed these crucial questions that lead to a better understanding of the interaction between innovation and the environment and explored elements of "best practice" policies that can stimulate innovation for the environment and shift our development path towards sustainability.

As we embark on a new century, some 33 million people are out of work in the OECD area. Policies to increase employment have topped most countries' domestic political agendas in the past decade. And employment and unemployment are likely to remain major economic and social challenges for many countries in the years to come. This book presents the proceedings of a conference on labour markets which was organised by the Ministries of Labour and Finance of Finland, with the support of the OECD and the European Commission. It advances thinking on new policy measures, such as active labour market policies and measures to "make work pay" and focuses on specific experiences in a few individual countries, namely the United States, Japan, Finland and Denmark. It includes papers from politicians, high level officials from the European Commission and the OECD Secretariat, social partners and prominent representatives from the academic community. Proceedings of the Helsinki Conference, January 2000.

OECD countries believe that foreign direct investment (FDI) will play a critical role in the rise of standards of living among nations well into the 21st century. A crucial aspect will be whether FDI’s contribution to economic development will respond in a balanced and sustainable way to the aspirations and expectations of host and home countries alike. This and other related issues were highlighted at a conference on the Role of Investment in Development, Corporate Responsibilities and OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. This event provided a unique forum for dialogue between participants from OECD member states and developing countries, academic, business and labour circles and civil society on the development impact of FDI, the effectiveness of national policies and the responsibilities of multinational enterprises. These issues are expected to be taken up again at the forthcoming WTO Ministerial in Seattle.

Traditional welfare and employment policies have been unable to tackle the problems of high unemployment and exclusion in OECD countries and recently a wave of new approaches has emerged together with new political notions of welfare-to-work. This book describes these new approaches in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France and the Netherlands. All these countries are relying increasingly on local agencies to design and manage policy to try and ensure that policy solutions meet local needs and to bring to bear local energies, skills and resources. What is the role that local agencies can play? How can they be integrated in effective partnerships? And what policy tools can best be applied? This book gives valuable answers to these questions and shows that governments and practitioners have much to learn from each other on the practicalities of implementing effective welfare-to-work policies. These Proceedings of the Sheffield Conference, held in November 1998 in collaboration with the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) in the United Kingdom, were prepared by the Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) Programme of the OECD's Territorial Development Service.

The once booming dynamic economies in Asia were drawn into a whirlpool of business failures and economic devastation following the flotation of the Thai baht in July 1997, and the consequent collapse of asset prices and currency depreciations in several East Asian countries. High growth in these emerging market economies had masked important structural weaknesses that eventually triggered the economic slump now referred to as the Asia Crisis. To address the structural measures needed to restore sustained economic growth and stability in the crisis-affected countries, this book brings forth analyses and recommendations on the crisis from internationally respected economists and policy makers and the OECD. Overall, experts conclude that, to deal with the crisis and alleviate social distress, structural reforms of government, business and the financial sector must be undertaken rapidly. Such reforms must be established with a long-term view to protect these and other countries from future crises. Economic recovery in Asia is a high priority for the OECD. As an international organisation with experience across a broad range of structural issues, it is a unique forum for the exchange of views on national experiences with policy reforms and possible improvements in the functioning of financial markets. In November 1998, the OECD's Centre for Co-operation with Non-Members (CCNM) held the symposium that led to this publication. Experts from OECD Member and non-member economies attended the symposium. This publication assembles their contributions and provides insight into the possible role of the OECD in promoting economic recovery in the region.

This publication provides two sets of comparative studies on insurance regulation and supervision covering Asia and Latin America. Altogether 31 countries and economies in these regions are covered. As far as Latin America is concerned, it is the first OECD publication dealing with insurance issues in this region. The work constitutes a valuable reference on insurance policy issues for policy makers and experts in the public sector, actors in the private sector and academics both in OECD Member countries and non-Member economies.