Youth unemployment is one of the principal social and economic challenges of this decade in Europe and around the world. Long spells of unemployment can have serious long-term effects for individuals, such as reduced earnings and social exclusion. It is estimated that one year of unemployment...

Social enterprises have gained importance in the policy debate in many European and non-European countries, as also demonstrated by the European Commission’s recent “Social Business Initiative”. This marks an important milestone for European policy makers and other stakeholders involved in...

More than one-third of the European Union’s adult population would rather be self-employed than an employee if given the chance to choose, according to the 2012 Flash Eurobarometer survey. At the same time, there is a large entrepreneurial potential in social groups that are either...

Inclusive entrepreneurship policies are intended to give everybody the opportunity to start up in business or self-employment regardless of their social background and to improve labour market outcomes for people who are under-represented or disadvantaged in entrepreneurship and self-employment....

Disability impacts a large number of people – approximately 16 % of the working age population in the EU is afflicted with a long-standing health problem or disability (European Commission, 2007). And this number will grow as the population ages in industrialised countries due to the...

A key issue for OECD countries is to understand how to strengthen the position of the destination, how to be more effective in supporting a stronger, more inclusive and sustainable tourism growth and how to further improve its competitiveness in the global tourism market. This report examines...

The tourism sector is highly dependent on quality human resources to develop and deliver a competitive tourism offering. This report examines approaches to encourage the creation of more and better tourism jobs, with a particular emphasis on enhancing the skills and career development...

This paper shows the performance of eighty leading innovative local clusters on six measures of enterprise performance: share of new and young firms and growth of employment, turnover, profitability, liquidity ratio and solvency ratio. The data show the performance of clusters before and during...

In the United States, local and regional government agencies have increasingly adopted industry cluster approaches to economic development and a similar move is surfacing in the employment and workforce development field. Career cluster/pathway approaches are important in a complex and...

This policy review of vocational education and training in the West Midlands, United Kingdom was prepared within the framework of the OECD LEED project, "Leveraging Training and Skills Development in SMEs". The report identifies ways of overcoming some of the barriers to workforce development in...