Public Administration

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call to achieve peace and prosperity for all by 2030, leaving no one behind. This paper summarises available evidence to measure the distance that OECD countries need to travel in order to reach SDG targets...

The Great Recession and the subsequent period of subdued GDP growth in most advanced economies have highlighted the need for macroeconomic forecasters to account for sudden and deep recessions, periods of higher macroeconomic volatility, and...

As well-being has matured as a statistical and measurement agenda, it has become increasingly relevant as a “compass” for policy, with a growing number of countries using well-being metrics to guide decision-making and inform budgetary processes. One...

The effect on the household consumption price index from possible sources of error in capturing digital products depends on the weight of the affected products. To calculate upper bounds for this effect, we apply weights based on the average...

The paper describes inequality trends in selected emerging economies (Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa) in a range of monetary (i.e. income) and non-monetary dimensions of people’s life (i.e. education, health...

Cross-country differences in the measurement of labour input contribute to observed productivity gaps across countries. In most countries, labour force surveys (LFS) form a primary source of information for employment related statistics, such as...

This paper describes and evaluates the OECD methodology to estimate Air Emission Accounts (AEAs) for carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), in line with the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA).

This paper describes development patterns beyond GDP in a long-term historical perspective. It revisits the discussion on the goals of development in light of the current discussions on ‘Beyond GDP’, provides evidence on GDP and well-being outcomes...

Data on ethnic, racial and indigenous identity can help render certain minorities statistically visible, and expose potential discrimination and inequalities. This paper systematically reviews diversity data collection practices in OECD countries and...

Businesses have a significant impact on people’s economic and social conditions, as well as on environmental outcomes. This paper presents an overview of the various kinds of initiatives aimed at measuring or reporting on business’ impact, or certain...

The last decade has seen major advances in the measurement of well-being in national statistics – but what are governments doing to incorporate these metrics and frameworks into policy decision making? This paper describes the progress made in many...

A key feature of the 2008 revision of the System of National Accounts was the treatment of R&D expenditure as investment. The question arises whether the standard approach towards accounting for growth contribution of assets is justified given the...

This paper summarises available evidence on the distance that OECD countries need to travel in order to reach the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for children and young people. More than 50 indicators are included in this analysis,...

The System of National Accounts, which provides information on important macroeconomic indicators such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), household disposable income and final consumption, typically excludes the value of unpaid household activities....

The OECD Better Life Index is an interactive composite index that aggregates average measures of country’s well-being outcomes through weights defined by users. This paper studies these weights by analysing the responses given by close to 130 000...

This paper describes the results of an international initiative on trust (Trustlab) run in six OECD countries between November 2016 and November 2017 (France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Slovenia and the United States). Trustlab combines cutting-edge...

This paper describes how household wealth is distributed in 28 OECD countries, based on evidence from the second wave of the OECD Wealth Distribution Database. A number of general patterns emerge from these data. First, wealth concentration is twice...

A key policy concern in recent years has been the decline in levels of trust by citizen in public institutions. Trust is one of the foundations upon which the legitimacy and sustainability of political systems are built. It is crucial to the...

Interpersonal trust (i.e. trust in other people) is an issue of high interest to both policy-makers and researchers seeking to understand what drives social and economic outcomes. However, for trust to usefully inform policy and analysis it is...

The digital economy has created some new measurement challenges for macroeconomic statistics and may have exacerbated some older ones, raising some concerns about the scope and estimation of GDP. Against a backdrop of slowing rates of measured...

Traditionally, the main source of data used to measure countries’ participation in international production networks or global value chains (GVCs) has been conventional international trade statistics. However, international fragmentation of...

The last decade has seen a sustained surge of interest in measures of subjective well-being on the part of economists and other social scientists. The vast majority of the academic literature on subjective well-being focuses on measures of life...

New data sources, commonly referred to as “Big Data”, have attracted growing interest from National Statistical Institutes. They have the potential to complement official and more conventional statistics used, for instance, to determine progress...

Government debt has many characteristics and thus cannot be fully captured by one indicator. There are several different ways of defining government debt, and each definition can lead to different interpretations of a government’s financial...

Although the costs associated with the international transport and insurance of merchandise trade are an important determinant of the volume and geography of international trade, remarkably little (official) data exist. Combining the largest and most...

The paper provides a first assessment of the range of governance statistics that are available in OECD countries, reaching three main conclusions. First, while several statistics relating to various aspects of governance are already available, they...

We revisit the issue of how best to measure the labour and capital shares in OECD economies, distinguishing between production- and income-based perspectives. The former adopts a producer perspective with gross income as a reference: it uses a...

In 2011, an Expert Group was launched to carry out a feasibility study on the compilation of distributional measures of income, consumption and wealth across household groups consistent with national accounts data. This group developed a methodology...

This paper assesses inequality in longevity across education and gender groups in 23 OECD countries around 2011. Data on mortality rates by age, gender, educationals attainment and for, 17 countries, cause of death, were collected from national...

Societal progress is about improvements in the well-being of people and households. Assessing such progress requires looking at the diverse and multidimensional experiences and living conditions of people. Measuring well-being and progress is a key...