Government involvement in “voluntary” initiatives for corporate responsibility has been extensive. This chapter reviews four main types of involvement -- legal and regulatory incentives, tax expenditures on the NGO sector, contributions to compliance expertise and moral suasion. The most...

Recent socio-economic trends, welfare state reform; the emergence of civil society and democracy have highlighted the growing significance of the non-profit sector – a sector between state and market – often associated with concepts such as ‘social economy’, ‘third sector’,...

Virtual worlds are increasingly evolving into Internet-mediated “spaces”, where large groups of people meet and interact in real-time while experiencing a shared sensation of being there together. This enables richer and more dynamic social interaction and collaboration across national and...

Computer and video games is a young industry with rapid growth underpinned by technological development. The global market in 2003 was over USD 21 billion compared with USD 32 billion for the recorded music industry. The main segments are off-line consoles and PCs; online and wireless games are...

Drawing on an expanding array of intelligent web services and applications, a growing number of people are creating, distributing and exploiting user-created content (UCC) and being part of the wider participative web. This study describes the rapid growth of UCC and its increasing role in...

OECD Committee on Consumer Policy Forum Session on Online Advertising and Marketing Directed toward Children, intended to provide information on how OECD Member countries are dealing with issues related to children and the Internet.

Report on the 2nd Roundtable on Economics for Consumer Policy, held in October 2006, to consider the economic theories of information disclosure with a focus on two major industry sectors – telecommunications and financial services.

Students who are highly engaged in a wide range of reading activities are more likely than other students to be effective learners and to perform well at school. Research also documents a strong link between reading practices, motivation and proficiency among adults. Proficiency in reading is...

This report on consumer information campaigns concerning scams, makes recommendations for five areas in which practice can be improved to ensure that scams are more effectively understood and that campaigning against them is more integrated.