The report Shrinking Smartly in Estonia: Preparing Regions for Demographic Change was produced by the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE), led by Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Director, as part of the Programme of Work of the Regional Development Policy Committee (RDPC).
The project was carried out with funding by the European Union via the Structural Reform Support Programme and in co‑operation with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM).
This report was elaborated jointly by the Economic Analysis, Data and Statistics Division, led by Rudiger Ahrend, and the Regional Development and Multi-level Governance Division led by Dorothée Allain-Dupré in the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities. It has been co‑ordinated and edited by Jaebeum Cho under the supervision of Andrés Fuentes Hutfilter, Jose Enrique Garcilazo and Antti Moisio. The report was jointly drafted by Jaebeum Cho (all chapters), Hyunjoon Cho (Chapter 2), Antti Moisio (Chapters 1 and 3), and Ana Isabel Moreno Monroy (Chapters 1 and 4), with contributions from Marc Bournisien de Valmont and Carlo Menon.
The OECD is grateful to Tiit Oidjärv and Andres Levald from the Estonian Ministry of Finance for their collaboration and extensive efforts throughout the implementation of the project. The OECD would also like to thank stakeholders from central government ministries for their support during the two fact-finding missions, their data inputs for the questionnaire and their feedback on draft versions of the report. Warm thanks are also due to Sverker Lindblad (Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications, Sweden) and stakeholders from municipalities and academia for their contributions and valuable inputs during the two fact-finding missions and the policy seminar. Special thanks are also due to Maria Paula Caldas (CFE) and Chris Jacobs-Crisioni (EC-JRC) for providing data inputs. The report also benefitted from comments from Isabelle Chatry (CFE), Maria Varinia Michalun (CFE), Abel Schumann (EDU), Courtenay Wheeler (CFE) and Yingyin Wu (CFE), as well as from input from CFE colleagues during an internal brown bag seminar.
Pilar Philip co-ordinated the production process of the report, and Eleonore Morena provided editorial assistance for the manuscript.