Programme to help decision makers in government and industry assess the economic, social and technological trends shaping our long term future. The Programme offers a number of distinguishing features:
- improved monitoring of the long term economic and social horizon, with early warning on emerging domestic and international issues
- more accurate pinpointing of major developments and possible trend breaks
- greater analytical appreciation of key long term issues
- better dialogue and information sharing to help set policy agendas and map strategy.
Areas covered are:
- LI>macroeconomic, trade and development issues (including the evolution of the world economy at large and long term prospects for particular regions or countries)
- industrial and technology policies (including prospects for particular sectors and the implications of new technologies)
- labour and social policies (including work and employment, demography, health, societal changes)
- natural resources (including energy and the environment)
- the methodology of futures research (including scenario methods, time series analysis ,global modelling).
Maintains a database of abstracts of most significant publications (defined as those offering the most significant data and projections, fresh insights or innovative approaches to the long term issues facing the public and private sectors).
From this database regular Highlights of the OECD Information Base are produced: each includes a short article intended for wide distribution together with a sample of abstracts used in the preparation of the article. More substantive analyis papers are also published
The database, Highlights and other publications are available on a CDROM
WWW site also has a selection of the Highlights papers