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To achieve its vision to become one of the most attractive and competitive regions in Europe by 2025, the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region put in place eleven fields of action that promote sustainability across policy areas, such as sustainable and needs-based mobility, regional innovation promotion, regional energy transition and education of the future. This report offers guidance on how the metropolitan region could harness the SDGs as an integrated framework to address its main challenges, including climate change, the impacts of digitalisation on the labour market, territorial disparities among urban and rural areas as well as the co-ordination of actors and policies across three different federal states, notably on funding.

This report discusses the costs and benefits of the transition from cash to accrual accounting in the public sector for SIGMA partners in the Western Balkans and the European Neighbourhood. The countries are attracted by the promises of accrual accounting and the corresponding IPSAS standards that it will improve transparency, accountability and financial decision-making. This report investigates whether the reform towards accrual accounting is indeed recommendable given that the reform towards IPSAS-based financial statements also carries a higher administrative burden and often requires government-wide adaptation or adjustment of the financial information systems. In this report, evidence from case studies of five EU Member States and four SIGMA partners is combined with a review of the academic literature to understand the balance of the benefits versus the costs of the reform.

Vocational education and training (VET) is an important part of education systems around the world. VET systems differ widely between countries in how programmes are designed and delivered. Moreover, countries differ in terms of the types of providers that deliver VET. This report looks at the VET provider landscape in Australia, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. It provides insights into the number of different providers by country, their focus areas and target populations. It describes how providers are different and how they overlap, as well as structures and initiatives to foster co-ordination between them.

Being able to swim empowers individuals to make choices, have agency, and be free to choose core aspects of their life, such as working safely on or near water. It is also associated with lifelong health benefits and reduces the risk of drowning. Using data from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll 2019, this paper provides the first global estimates of adults’ ability to swim without assistance. Individuals in high-income countries are considerably more likely to report being able to swim without assistance than individuals in low-income countries. Disparities also exist within countries. In particular, women are less likely to be able to swim without assistance than men in virtually all countries, birth cohorts, and levels of education. Investing in reducing inequalities in life skills, such as swimming, can foster economic development and empowerment, especially in light of threats, such as climate change.

Understanding adults’ attitudes towards the environment is necessary to gauge the opportunities and challenges of creating effective and politically-feasible climate policies. Using data from the Wellcome Global Monitor 2020, the European Social Survey (Round 8), World Values Survey and EM-DAT, this paper examines how adults’ environmental attitudes vary within and across countries and details how environmental attitudes are associated with adults’ engagement in pro-environmental behaviours and support for environmentally-friendly policies. The paper explores whether the extent to which individuals prioritise the environment over the state of the economy or vice versa depends on individuals’ exposure to natural disasters or negative labour market conditions. Results indicate that people’s economic vulnerability and the sectors they work in impact their attitudes towards their environment and support for public policy. Furthermore, the findings suggest that increases in unemployment and exposure to natural disasters influence the extent to which individuals prioritise the environment.

This review contributes to a better understanding of the gender wage gap in Germany and puts forward key elements of a policy package to reduce gender pay gaps. It provides a detailed analysis of the role of firms in the gender wage gap by focusing on the pay gap between similarly skilled men and women between and within firms. The within-firm component captures differences in pay between men and women within firms related to differences in tasks and responsibilities, or differences in pay for work of equal value (e.g. bargaining, discrimination). The between-firm component captures the role of differences in pay between firms (unrelated to workforce composition) due to the tendency of women to work in low-wage firms. The review analyses gender differences in job mobility and the earnings consequences of career breaks following childbirth to shed light on the evolution of the gender wage gap across the working life. To put results for Germany in context, they are systematically benchmarked to those of four nearby countries (i.e. Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Sweden). The policy discussion extends the empirical analysis by putting forward a comprehensive policy package with an emphasis on policies targeted at firms.

As data become an important resource for the global economy, it is important to strengthen trust to facilitate data sharing domestically and across borders. Significant momentum for related policies in the G7, and G20, has gone hand in hand with a wide range of – often complementary – national and international initiatives and the development of technological and organisational measures. Advancing a common understanding and dialogue among G7 countries and beyond is crucial to support coordinated and coherent progress in policy and regulatory approaches that leverage the full potential of data for global economic and social prosperity. This report takes stock of key policies and initiatives on cross-border data flows to inform and support G7 countries’ engagement on this policy agenda.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war have revealed vulnerabilities in Germany’s economic model: undiversified energy supply, an over-reliance on fossil fuels, delayed digitalisation and disruptable supply chains. Digital technologies may significantly disrupt manufacturing industries Germany has dominated for decades, threatening future competitiveness. The green transition also requires significant industrial transformations. Germany can call upon one of the world’s most advanced innovation systems in dealing with these challenges, but a new more agile and experimental approach to STI policy is needed. This Review outlines how to develop such an approach and what STI policies need to focus on: create markets for future innovations, more significant and more risk-tolerant finance for innovation, inter-disciplinary knowledge exchange, improved data infrastructure and capabilities. Given the internationally shared challenges of dealing with transitions, the insights presented in the review will be of interest to policymakers, stakeholders and analysts from Germany and across the OECD.