Alistair Nolan

Alistair Nolan has worked with the OECD since July 1997. He currently works in the Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, where he focuses on public policies to foster innovation. He recently managed a two-year OECD project aimed at assessing the role of intangible assets in innovation and growth, leading to the newly-released book Supporting Investment in Knowledge Capital, Growth and Innovation. For a number of years he specialised in the assessment of all aspects of public policy towards entrepreneurship. Mr. Nolan helped to prepare the OECD’s 1998 flagship publication Fostering Entrepreneurship and was responsible for two OECD books on business incubation: Business Incubation: International Case Studies (1999) and Good Practice in Business Incubation (2000). He has also prepared OECD policy recommendations on business networks and enterprise clusters. He is the author of the 2003 OECD book Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development, which reviews knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship and sets out detailed programme and policy guidance for central and local governments. He has also specialised in the evaluation of public policy, and is the editor and co-author of the 2005 OECD publication Evaluating Local Economic and Employment Development: How to Assess What Works in Programmes and Policy. For three years Mr.Nolan worked in the OECD’s Directorate for Education to develop a programme to provide objective measures of the skills of the adult populations across the OECD area (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies – PIAAC). PIAAC provides a unique data set with which to examine the relationships between the stock and distribution of adult skills and a broad range of economic, employment and social outcomes. Mr.Nolan also worked for two years managing a team of OECD analysts assessing the quality of the environment for direct investment in ten OECD non-member countries. Prior to joining the OECD he worked as one of a small group of staff responsible for monitoring and evaluating the technical assistance programme of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. In this context he was responsible for evaluating projects and programmes in fields ranging from training to technology transfer, environmentally clean production and investment promotion. Over a number of years with UNIDO he also occupied posts in research, policy and the design of technical co-operation. Mr. Nolan holds an M.Phil. from Cambridge University in the Economics and Politics of Development, as well as post-graduate qualifications in corporate finance, financial economics, and studies in environmental economics and project finance.