The
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (
OECD) (in
French Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, OCDE) is an
international organisation of thirty countries that accept the principles of
representative democracy and
free-market economy. 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.
The OECD provides 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.
