See Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

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The OECD Global Forum is part of the work of the OECD's Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, but with particular emphasis on negotiation, application and interpretation of tax treaties, transfer pricing and effective exchange of information between tax admin­istrations.

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Guidance first created by the OECD in 1995 to define rules for multinational corporations' use of transfer pricing, including the “arm's length method".

Now updated by the use of country-by-country reporting.

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Offshore banking is the supply of banking services from an offshore financial centre or secrecy jurisdiction that might also be described as a tax haven to customers who are not located in that jurisdiction.

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Although most tax havens or secrecy jurisdictions (see separate entries) like to call themselves Offshore Finance Centres (OFCs) the terms are not synonymous.

Tax havens offer low or minimal rates of tax to non-residents.

This does not however necessarily mean that they also host a range of financial services providers.

An OFC offers low tax rates and hosts a functional financial services centre, usually including branches or subsidiaries of major international banks as well as the offices of accountants and lawyers to service offshore clients.

States and microstates that host tax havens and OFCs dislike both terms, preferring to call themselves International Finance Centres (see separate entry for discussion of this term).

See also ‘secrecy providers'.

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An oligopoly exists when a small number of firms control a market. They successfully prevent competition from other firms and, as a result, keep prices above those that an open market might otherwise set. Oligopoly is widespread within the modern economy.

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Open market operations are a tool used by a Treasury or central bank that seeks to influence interest rates by controlling the money supply.

To achieve this goal the agency undertaking the activity buys or sells the bonds (or, in the case of the UK, the gilts) issued by the government of the jurisdiction in the open market. As such, open market operations are trades in bonds already in issue, rather than in newly issued bonds or gilts.

The aim of these trades is to influence the money supply and, therefore, the interest rate on central bank reserve accounts by either increasing that supply (which reduces interest rates and stimulates economic activity) or reducing it (which does the opposite).

The sums involved are quite considerable. From 2010 to 2021, the UK's Debt Management Office, on average, owned more than £115 billion of gilts so that it could engage in open market operations. The range of balances held was, however, smaller than this implies, with a maximum of £127 billion in 2010 and a low of £107 billion in 2020.

Although these gilts are owned by a UK government agency that is under the direct control of HM Treasury, it would seem that they are included in the UK national debt by the Office for National Statistics, which makes little accounting sense.

Blog commentator Clive Parry has offered this more detailed explanation:

Open market operations are conducted by the Bank of England to add or drain Reserves (the BoE is the “bankers' bank” and Reserves are the money held by commercial banks in their bank accounts at the Bank of England). This is done in order to maintain interbank interest rates at or close to desired, policy levels. This is typically done by borrowing/lending money overnight in the open market (hence the name) against gilt collateral (Repo); lending money adds reserves and prevents overnight interest rates going too high, borrowing money drains reserves and prevents overnight interest rates falling too low.

Whilst most open market operations are conducted just overnight it is often the case that the Central Bank will forecast a shortage/excess of Reserves will persist for a longer period. In this case Term Repos (borrowing or lending cash against gilt collateral for longer periods – 1 week to 1 month, perhaps – will be conducted. Occasionally, outright purchases or sales of gilts (in the secondary market) will be used to add or drain reserves on a semi-permanent basis.
In recent years, outright purchases of gilts have been huge. This is called Quantitative Easing (QE) but in essence it is merely an extension of traditional open market operations and has the effect of adding huge quantities of Reserves into the system and keeping interest rates across the entire maturity spectrum very low. Because of the size and novel nature of this intervention the Government gave specific authorisation and, through the Asset Purchase Facility (APF) all the profits/losses/interest on the portfolio of gilts purchased is borne by HMT. As such, they should not be considered as either part of the National Debt or the Bank of England balance sheet.

In addition to BoE open market operations and QE, the DMO also operates in the gilt market. They are charged with managing the National Debt. This mainly means selling gilts at auction on behalf of HMT but they are also responsible for the efficient operation of the market and in this role they will buy and sell particular gilts to manage overall duration of the debt portfolio and provide liquidity in individual issues as required. This is separate from any activity the BoE is involved in.

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The OECD says that it brings together the governments of countries committed to democracy and the market economy from around the world.

Established in 1961 it has developed a particular role with regard to tax-related issues where it has established most of the rules with regard to taxation of transnational corporations, to systems for information exchange now in use, the most commonly used models for double tax agreements and Tax Information Exchange Agreements as well as automatic information exchange, and has played a significant role in the attack on tax havens / secrecy jurisdictions. It has, how­ever, been criticised for being a ‘rich country club' and for being too lenient on its own members.

In 2015 its Base Erosion and Profits Shifting programme was considered a significant success for advancing country-by-country reporting and automatic information exchange but since then it has struggled to develop systems to tax the income of tech companies properly and it is now the subject of growing criticism from within the business, NGO, civil society and developing country communities for failing to do so.

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The Overton window is named after Joseph Overton, the US think-tank policy specialist who is credited with creating it.

The theory originally suggested policy exists on a spectrum plotted vertically to prevent that there is a left-right orientation to the analysis. The spectrum as originally proposed was as follows:

• Unthinkable
• Radical
• Acceptable
• Sensible
• Popular
• Policy

The idea was, however, inevitably used to describe the left-right spectrum and so became in that context:

• Unthinkable
• Radical
• Acceptable
• Sensible
• Popular
• Policy
• Popular
• Sensible
• Acceptable
• Radical
• Unthinkable

Overton suggested that it was the job of think tanks to  identify the range in  which policies existed and to then promote ideas that then shifted policy in the direction that they wished to promote.

The term is more generally used to describe where the centre of opinion is located on a left-right spectrum, the consensus being that the neoliberal era has shifted it markedly to the right with the ‘Overton window' being located as a result some way from the midpoint in the noted range.

When viewed in this way as a spectrum the term ‘policy' makes little sense and the term compromise might replace both popular and policy. The results is this range:

• Unthinkable
• Radical
• Acceptable
• Sensible
• Compromise
• Sensible
• Acceptable
• Radical
• Unthinkable

The centre ground is not ideological in this perspective, but is instead focussed on the management of consensus.

Although the term is often used to describe politics in general it may be more useful to use it as an analytical tool to address particular issues and to consider where public opinion is on that topic. For example, the issue of whether the state should subsidise public schools with tax breaks could be plotted in this way, moving from yes it should through various conditionalities until the point where subsidy should not be supplied is proposed and the possible mechanisms to shift opinion could then be explored. This was the way in which Overton imagined that his idea might be used.

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