5 Economic Activities

[Giordano Thibault]

Underthe Taxonomy Regulation, the Commission had to come up with the actual list of environmentally sustainable activities by defining technical screening criteria for each environmental objective through delegated and implementing acts.

The Commission created an educational and user-friendly website offering a series of online tools to help users better understand the EU taxonomy in a simple and practical manner, ultimately facilitating its implementation and supporting companies in their reporting obligations.

Amendments to add economic activities to the list of those substantially contributing to the objectives of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and to clarify the reporting obligations for the additional activities. The delegated acts were approved in principle on 13 June 2023 and adopted on 27 June 2023. They will apply as of January 2024.

Publication of a Complementary Climate Delegated Act in the Official Journal, including, under strict conditions, specific nuclear and gas energy activities in the list of economic activities covered by the EU taxonomy.

The criteria for the specific gas and nuclear activities are in line with EU climate and environmental objectives and will help accelerate the shift from solid or liquid fossil fuels, including coal, towards a climate-neutral future.

This Delegated Act specifies the content, methodology and presentation of information to be disclosed by financial and non-financial undertakings concerning the proportion of environmentally sustainable economic activities in their business, investments or lending activities.

An economic activity takes place when resources such as capital goods, labour, manufacturing techniques or intermediary products are combined to produce specific goods or services. Thus, an economic activity is characterised by an input of resources, a production process and an output of products (goods or services).

An activity as defined here may consist of one simple process (for example weaving), but may also cover a whole range of sub-processes, each mentioned in different categories of the classification (for example, the manufacturing of a car consists of specific activities such as casting, forging, welding, assembling or painting). If the production process is organised as an integrated series of elementary activities within the same statistical unit, the whole combination is regarded as one activity.

Within the Secretariat, the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities (OCEEA) works with OSCE field operations and institutions to support participating States in implementing their commitments in the economic sphere and translating them into national policies in four main areas:

Good governance and anti-corruption: preventing corruption and conflicts of interest; improving national anti-corruption regulatory frameworks; and introducing fair and transparent public procurement procedures.

Anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT): exchanging information to more effectively identify, trace, and suppress money laundering and the financing of terrorism; to promoting stolen asset recovery initiatives; strengthening international co-operation and financial investigation techniques; conducting national risk assessments and supporting the implementation of international standards.

Transport, trade and border crossing facilitation: providing support for the development of international transport and logistics networks connecting Europe and Asia; dissemination of best practices and standards in the transport field; combating corruption in customs and border services; facilitating public-private partnerships.

Labour migration: supporting the development of and strengthening comprehensive and effective labour migration management policies as an important contributing factor to security, stability and growth.

OCEEA also organizes the annual Economic and Environmental Forum; holds a yearly Implementation Meeting to assess progress on the implementation of economic and environmental commitments by the OSCE participating States and identify future priorities; and works closely with the Organization's Chairmanship and under the guidance of the Economic and Environmental Committee, a subsidiary body of the Permanent Council.

This section deals with the beginnings of commerce during the era of French colonization in North America. Whaling and cod fishing, both seasonal activities, prompted the settlement of the first French colonists on the continent. Of course, only a small proportion of the population were directly involved, but fishing and whaling nevertheless continued to be a significant component of the economy throughout the course of the French regime and even much later.

ISIC is a standard classification of economic activities arranged so that entities can be classified according to the activity they carry out. The categories of ISIC at the most detailed level (classes) are delineated according to what is, in most countries, the customary combination of activities described in statistical units and considers the relative importance of the activities included in these classes. While the latest version, ISIC Rev.4, continues to use criteria such as input, output and use of the products produced, more emphasis has been given to the character of the production process in defining and delineating ISIC classes.

The groups and divisions, the successively broader levels of classification, combine the activities of producing units according to: similarities in the character of the goods and services produced, the uses to which the goods and services are put, and the inputs, process and technology of production.

Wide use has been made of ISIC, both nationally and internationally, in classifying data according to kind of economic activity in the fields of production, employment, gross domestic product and other statistical areas. ISIC is a basic tool for studying economic phenomena, fostering international comparability of data, providing guidance for the development of national classifications and for promoting the development of sound national statistical systems.

The categories of ISIC at the most detailed level (classes) are delineated according to what is, in most countries, the customary combination of activities described in statistical units and considers the relative importance of the activities included in these classes. While ISIC Rev. 4 continues to use criteria such as input, output and use of the products produced, more emphasis has been given to the character of the production process in defining and delineating ISIC classes.

The ILO Department of Statistics is the focal point to the United Nations on labour statistics. We develop international standards for better measurement of labour issues and enhanced international comparability; provide relevant, timely and comparable labour statistics; and help Member States develop and improve their labour statistics.

An economic activity is a process that, based on inputs, leads to the manufacture of a good or the provision of a service. The classification of activities divides economic activities into categories which, by aggregation, make it possible to define the sectors of activity (Agriculture, Industry, Construction, Trade, etc.).

The units in which business statistics are concerned (enterprises, legal units, establishments, etc.) may carry out one or more economic activities, but each unit has only one main activity. The sectoral classification of a unit corresponds to the sector of activity to which its main activity belongs.

In labour force or employment by activity statistics, individuals are classified according to the main activity of the establishment or enterprise that employs them. This establishment may be different from the one where they work, particularly for temporary workers, employees of cleaning companies and equipment maintenance services.

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Human activities, such as research, innovation and industry, concentrate disproportionately in large cities. The ten most innovative cities in the United States account for 23% of the national population, but for 48% of its patents and 33% of its gross domestic product. But why has human activity become increasingly concentrated? Here we use data on scientific papers, patents, employment and gross domestic product, for 353 metropolitan areas in the United States, to show that the spatial concentration of productive activities increases with their complexity. Complex economic activities, such as biotechnology, neurobiology and semiconductors, concentrate disproportionately in a few large cities compared to less--complex activities, such as apparel or paper manufacturing. We use multiple proxies to measure the complexity of activities, finding that complexity explains from 40% to 80% of the variance in urban concentration of occupations, industries, scientific fields and technologies. Using historical patent data, we show that the spatial concentration of cutting-edge technologies has increased since 1850, suggesting a reinforcing cycle between the increase in the complexity of activities and urbanization. These findings suggest that the growth of spatial inequality may be connected to the increasing complexity of the economy.

We thank . Nomaler, K. Frenken and G. Heimeriks for providing the data on scientific publications used in the main text, and G. Patience, C. Patience, B. Blais and F. Bertrand for providing the data on the age of references listed in scientific publications. We also thank R. Boschma, K. Frenken, M. Storper, A. J. Scott, T. Broekel, B. Jun, F. Pinheiro, A. Alshamsi and F. Neffke for useful comments and suggestions. Financial support from the Regional Studies Association through the Early Career Grant awarded to P.-A.B. is gratefully acknowledged. C.A.H. acknowledges support from the MIT Media Lab consortia, from the MIT-Skoltech seed grant and from the MIT-Masdar initiative. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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