OECD

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (in French: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, OCDE) is an international organisation of 30 countries that accept the principles of representative democracy and free-market economy. Most OECD members are high-income economies with a high HDI and are regarded as developed countries.

It originated in 1948 as the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), led by Robert Marjolin of France, to help administer the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. Later, its membership was extended to non-European states. In 1961, it was reformed into the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development by the Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The OECD's headquarters are at the Château de la Muette in Paris.

History

The Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) was founded in 1948 to help administer the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. The headquarters was in the Chateau de la Muette in Paris, France. As the Marshall Plan faded, the OEEC focused on economic questions.

In the 1950s the OEEC provided the framework for negotiations aimed at determining conditions for setting up a European Free Trade Area, to bring the Common Market of the Six and the other OEEC members together on a multilateral basis. In 1958, a European Nuclear Energy Agency was set up under the OEEC.

Following the 1957 Rome Treaties to launch Europe's Common Market, the Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was drawn up to reform the OEEC. The Convention was signed in December 1960 and the OECD officially superseded the OEEC in September 1961. It consisted of the European founder countries of the OEEC plus the United States and Canada, with Japan joining three years later.

More than just increasing its internal structure, OECD progressively created agencies: the Development Center (1961), International Energy Agency (IEA, 1974), and Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering.

Objectives and action

A setting in which governments can compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good practices, and co-ordinate domestic and international policies. The mandate of the OECD is broad, covering economic, environmental, and social issues. It is a forum where peer pressure can act as a powerful incentive to improve policy and implement "soft law" — non-binding instruments that can occasionally lead to binding treaties.

Exchanges between OECD governments flow from information and analysis provided by a secretariat in Paris. The secretariat collects data, monitors trends, and analyses and forecasts economic developments. It also researches social changes or evolving patterns in trade, environment, agriculture, technology, taxation and other areas. The OECD is also known as a premium statistical agency, as it publishes highly-comparable statistics on a very wide number of subjects.

Over the past several decades, the OECD has tackled a range of economic, social, and environmental issues while further deepening its engagement with business, trade unions and other representatives of civil society. Collaboration at the OECD regarding taxation, for example, have fostered the growth of a global web of bilateral tax treaties.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) promotes policies designed:

• to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employment and a rising standard of living in Member countries, while maintaining financial stability, and thus to contribute to the development of the world economy;
• to contribute to sound economic expansion in Member as well as nonmember countries in the process of economic development; and
• to contribute to the expansion of world trade on a multilateral, nondiscriminatory basis in accordance with international obligations.

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