In coming decades, governments will be increasingly confronted with enduring societal challenges—threats to the physical environment, the management of natural resources, growing mobility and its consequences, increasing security concerns, and a gradual shift to the information society. Tackling these challenges effectively will require consistent, sustained, coordinated efforts over long periods of time. Space-based technology can help in this regard. Space technology offers inherent strengths, such as non-intrusive, ubiquitous coverage, dissemination of information over broad areas, rapid deployment, and global navigation capability. Space systems may be able to provide effective support to public action, if appropriate applications can be developed in a timely manner. Space 2030 explores the challenges for developing space-based applications. It assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the institutional, legal, and regulatory frameworks that currently govern space activities. The book concludes with an overall policy framework for governments to use when drafting policies designed to ensure that the limitless potential of space is actually realized.

Space 2030: Tackling Society's Challenges

OECD, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

Literature & Fiction

OECD.

<div> This book takes stock of the progress made by OECD member countries in implementing policy reforms and suggests future priorities for each. It examines how states with weak labor utilization, as some European countries, could increase labor force participation and thus raise living standards. The publication also discusses how countries with comparatively low labor productivity, such as Japan, could reduce their income gap relative to the leading countries. It also suggests policy prioritiesfor strongly performing countries. Economic Policy Reforms provides a rich set of recent comparative indicators covering structural policy areas such as labor markets, education, and product market regulation. These indicators enable countries to see their economic performance and structural policies in comparison with others. In addition, the book contains four analytical chapters covering: Trends in product market regulation in OECD countries, including recent indicators The effectsof pension schemes on the labor-force participation of older workers The trends and determinants of the labor-force participation of women The long-term budgetary implications of tax-favored retirement saving plans </div>

Economic Policy Reforms: Going for Growth

Business & Money

Economics

Despite all the talk of globalization, the world economy is still far from a textbook model of unfettered trade. Nontariff barriers on goods have been lowered significantly in the course of successive trade negotiations, but more can be done. This is the message conveyed by the Doha Development Agenda, the mandate of which includes negotiations to further improve market access for nonagricultural products. This volume reviews concerns that exporters and governments have raised about market access. It looks at where and why certain nontariff measures are being applied to traded goods, including prohibitions and quotas, nonautomatic import licensing schemes, customs fees and charges, and export restrictions. Looking beyond Tariffs will expand the knowledge base of policymakers, negotiators, and anyone interested in learning about the use of these measures and other market access issues.

Looking Beyond Tariffs: The Role of Non-Tariff Barriers in World Trade (Oecd Trade Policy Studies)

International

Although health systems differ widely in their design, the inputs they use, and the outcomes they attain, policymakers in all OECD countries share the common goal of achieving high-performing health systems. Health and health care have improved dramatically over the past few decades, but at a cost, and public budgets are feeling the pinch. At the same time, further opportunities exist to improve the performance of health systems. Developed nations are grappling with the issues of sustainable financing, equitable access to services, better health outcomes, consumer responsiveness, and receiving maximum value for their money. This volume offers a synthesis of findings from recent OECD studies undertaken as part of the three-year Health Project, an initiative to answer many of the key questions facing today's health policy makers. It provides information and analysis on a wide variety of topics, such as new and emerging health-related technologies, long-term care, private health insurance, health care cost control, equity of access across income groups, health workforce planning and productivity, and waiting times for elective surgery. Building on international experience and grounded in new data on cross-country differences, this report offers an up-to-date map of the road to performance improvement.

Towards High-Performing Health Systems: The OECD Health Project

Conflicts of interest in both the public and private sectors have become a major matter of public concern worldwide. The OECD Guidelines define a conflict of interest as occurring when a public official has private-capacity interests that could improperly influence the performance of his or her official duties and responsibilities. However, identifying a specific conflict of interest in practice can be difficult. Resolving the conflicting interests appropriately in a particular case is something that most people find even more challenging. Managing Conflict of Interest in the Public Sector focuses on specific techniques, resources, and strategies for: Identifying, managing and preventing conflict-of-interest situations more effectively; and Increasing integrity in official decisionmaking that might be compromised by a conflict of interest. This toolkit provides nontechnical, practical help to enable officials to recognize problematic situations and ensure that integrity and reputation are not compromised. The tools themselves are provided in generic form. They are based on examples of sound conflict-of-interest policy and practice drawn from various OECD member and non-member countries. They have been designed for adaptation to suit countries with different legal and administrative systems.

Managing Conflict of Interest in the Public Sector: A Toolkit

Education & Reference

This book highlights the effects a looming OECD-wide "pension crisis," with the prospect of large fiscal burdens, will have on policy reform. Any significant reform is politically complicated by the prospect of lower payments and fears of pensioner poverty—and even reformed systems may not be able to deliver what they promise to their constituents. Furthermore, there are many differences among countries about how best to achieve pension policy goals. Overall, pension systems in most countries are becoming very complex, making it difficult to know how much an individual pension will be worth in the future, and where best to implement reforms. Pension Policy in OECD Countries looks at mandatory pension programs in the public and private sectors of the 30 member countries of the OECD, as well as possible safety nets for the elderly. It also provides information on the current tax rates to provide a rounded picture of the situation.

Pensions at a Glance: Public Policies Across OECD Countries

Since the launching of Sputnik in 1957, media coverage of space has focused almost exclusively on spectacular missions such as the 1969 Apollo moon landing and the current Spirit exploration of Mars. But far less publicized advances in space technologies have led to the development of sophisticated military and civil space assets—that provide a growing number of services, ranging from communication, remote sensing, and earth observation to navigation and locationbased programs. While military space assets have gained strategic prominence in the arsenals of space-faring nations, the services provided by civil space assets have a growing impact on our daily lives. What does the future hold for the space sector? What applications are most likely to become successful? Using a scenario-based approach, Space 2030 explores the evolution of major components of the space sector (military space, civil space, and commercial space) over the next thirty years. The report takes into account four major factors of change: geopolitical developments, socioeconomic developments, energy and the environment, and technology. It assesses the prospects of a number of applications, based on anticipated advancement in microelectronics, nanotechnology, and robotics, as well as space-related technologies.

Space 2030: Exploring the Future of Space Applications

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

The 2006 edition of Education at a Glance enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries' performances. It provides a rich, comparable, and up-to-date array of indicators on the performance of education systems and represents the consensus of professional thinking on how to measure the current state of education internationally. The indicators look at who participates in education, what is spent on it, and how education systems operate and the results achieved. New material in this edition includes • further analysis of results of the 2003 survey of the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) • trend data on tertiary qualifications, including projections for the year 2014 • trend data on survival rates in tertiary education • the impact of demographic trends on education systems, as well as projections on expenditure for the year 2015 • trend data on expected years of education • instruction time per subject for 9-to-14-year-olds • a picture of student mobility and the significance of internationalization of higher education The Excel spreadsheets used to create the tables and charts in this book are available via the STATLinks printed in this book.

Education at a Glance 2006: OECD Indicators (EDUCATION AT A GLANCE OECD INDICATORS)

Science & Math

Mathematics

In June 2006, the OECD and the Chinese government invited specialists on China's agri-environmental issues and policies to address the following questions: • How can balance be achieved between the objectives of expanding food production, raising rural welfare, opening up the domestic market to international trade, and protecting the environment? • How might policy measures be changed toward market-based policy instruments to ensure that polluters pay and providers of environmental benefits are rewarded? • What would be the best policy mix in China combining taxes and payments, regulations, and voluntary and stakeholder participation in watershed and land resource management to further environmental and social objectives, and long-term sustainability? This book, containing the experts' responses along with issues raised during their debates, offers a timely analytical overview of current thinking on environmental and agricultural policy in China.

China in the Global Economy: Environment, Water Resources and Agricultural Policies: Lessons from China and OECD Countries

Learning resources are often considered key intellectual property in a competitive higher education world. However, more and more institutions and individuals are sharing their digital learning resources over the Internet, openly and for free, as open educational resources (OER). This study, building on previous OECD work on e-learning, asks why this is happening, who is involved, and what the most important implications of this development are. The report offers a comprehensive overview of the rapidly changing phenomenon of open educational resources and the challenges it poses for higher education. It examines reasons for individuals and institutions to share resources for free and looks at copyright issues, sustainability, and business models, as well as policy implications. Giving Knowledge for Free will be of particular interest to those involved in e-learning or strategic decisionmaking within higher education, to researchers, and to students of new technologies.

Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources

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