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Mexicans work longer days than anyone else in OECD countries, devoting 10 hours to paid and unpaid work, such as cleaning or cooking at home. Belgians work the least, at 7 hours, compared with an OECD average of 8 hours a day.

Despite mounting competition from other operating systems (OSs), Apple’s iOS will continue to own the majority of the worldwide media tablet through 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. Due to the success of Apple’s iPad, iOS will account for 69 percent of media tablet OSs in 2011, and represent 47 percent of the media tablet market in 2015.

The Conference Board Measure of CEO Confidence™, which had bounced back in the final quarter of 2010, improved further in the first quarter of 2011. The Measure now reads 67, up from 62 last quarter (a reading of more than 50 points reflects more positive than negative responses).

Real GDP in the OECD area grew by 0.5% in the fourth quarter of 2010. Net exports and private consumption were the main contributors partly offset by an unwinding of inventories. This reverses the pattern seen in earlier quarters where inventory-rebuilding had contributed positively to GDP growth and net exports had contributed negatively.

The second comeback of the electric vehicle (EV) in little more than a decade has a much greater likelihood of success, and many in the industry believe that it will have a transformative effect on driving habits as well as the automotive and electric power industries. To prepare for the arrival of EVs in neighborhoods across the country, utilities in the United States will need to design and implement a complex network of information technology (IT) systems to support data analytics, smart charging management, and customer information management. However, according to a recent report from Pike Research, many utilities could be unprepared to deal with the impact of EVs on the electrical grid, due to a lack of standards for sharing information between utilities and external systems.

Governments must reform the underlying structure of their economies to boost economic growth and create jobs, according to the OECD’s latest Going for Growth report.

Growth in the G7 economies outside Japan appears to be stronger than previously projected, with accelerating private sector investment and trade boosting recovery, according to new analysis from the OECD.

Interbrand, the leading brand consultancy and authors of the annual Best Global Brands ranking of the top 100 world’s most valuable brands, have turned their attention to the global retail sector.

The IT industry continues to show strong signs of growth as technology budgets, cloud services usage, virtualization adoption, and IT staffing plans among small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) all showed their strongest gains in more than 18 months, according to a new report by Spiceworks™, Inc., the largest social business network for IT with more than 1.4 million SMB IT professionals.

Consumer prices in the OECD area rose by 2.4% in the year to February 2011, compared with 2.2% in January - the highest rate since October 2008. This increase was again driven by food and energy inflation which accelerated to 3.0% and 10.1% respectively in February, compared with 2.6% and 8.4% in January.