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Housing policies of the central and eastern European countries are changing dramatically. Governments as suppliers of housing for the public are being replaced by market mechanisms in the private sector. To facilitate the development of housing markets, establishing well-functioning housing finance systems has emerged as an important policy issue for transition economies. This publication contains selected papers originally submitted to the workshop on housing finance in transition economies organised by the OECD in June 2000. It provides the first in-depth survey of current situations and challenges in the development of housing finance in major transition economies, in particular, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia. It also reviews current trends in housing finance in advanced market countries and their implications for transition economies.
All societies depend on biodiversity and biological resources, and policy-makers are increasingly aware that development pressures are today generating unprecedented rates of biodiversity loss. The fact that biodiversity issues often receive low priority in policy decisions is at least in part due to problems involved in assessing its contribution to society -- these values defy easy description and quantification. What cannot be quantified, or is difficult to monitor and evaluate, is easy to disregard. The result is that biodiversity fails to compete on a level playing field in policy decisions with the forces driving their decline.
This Handbook describes the types of values usually associated with biodiversity. While there are exceptions to the need to prioritise economic values over other cultural, traditional and spiritual values, economic valuation has a sound theoretical foundation that can help clarify the tradeoffs implicit in public policy decisions. On the other hand, the Handbook recognises the limitations of the economic approach, and considers how economic and non-economic values can eventually be reconciled.
The Handbook also reviews the various methodological approaches often used to quantify these values. Data requirements and limitations are discussed. These methodologies are then applied to a series of concrete policy contexts, ranging from land use planning to the determination of legal damages for environmental degradation.
This document sets out the objectives, organisational context, and plan for a Harmonised Integrated Classification System for Human Health and Environmental Hazards of Chemical Substances and Mixtures.
The international community is committed to helping partner countries meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving global poverty by 2015. Effective use of scarce official development assistance is one important contribution to this end. The Development community, under the auspices of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), is dedicated to implementing improvements that deliver more effective support to the efforts of partner countries. This book presents a set of practical steps that should significantly improve the effectiveness of development assistance.
A probing report on the harm caused by hard-core cartels, on progress made in combating them, and on the challenges that lie ahead. Since adoption of its 1998 recommendation on effective action against hard-core cartels, the OECD has been leading an international effort to restrict their activities. This report reviews progress in combating hard-core cartels notably through strengthened sanctions against companies and individuals. It also quantifies the harm cartels cause and identifies improved methods of investigation. Despite recent progress in several jurisdictions, much remains to be done and this report outlines and identifies the challenges that lie ahead.
The private provision of biodiversity products and services is proving to be quite feasible in some circumstances. Some biodiversity products and services are already being profitably marketed. Private markets also need to be supported by appropriate public policies. This publication provides a conceptual framework for market creation in the biodiversity policy arena, as well as several examples of where the use of markets can assist policy makers in the search for more sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity.
This second edition of Health at a Glance brings together the latest comparable data and trends concerning health status and risks, the activity and resources of health care systems, as well as health expenditure and financing across the 30 OECD countries. It contains a larger set of indicators than the previous edition. Health at a Glance provides striking evidence of the variations across OECD countries in most indicators of health status, health care activity and expenditure.
For each indicator, there are charts illustrating variations across countries and over time, brief commentaries highlighting the key findings conveyed by the data, and a methodological box with the definition of the indicator. In addition, a statistical annex provides data tables for each indicator, often presenting long time series going as far back as 1960. The key indicators are drawn from OECD Health Data 2003.
Striking the right balance between the conservation/sustainable use and the loss of biodiversity requires accounting for all the impacts of its destruction. Weighing the loss against any potential benefits will ensure that the social, as well as economic, well-being of everyone are at the best levels possible. Market-based economic systems have the potential to ensure that such a balancing occurs, but require that all the impacts of its loss, or use, have been fully internalised into market transactions.
This book shows how public policy in the form of market creation can be used to internalise the loss of biodiversity. It promotes the use of markets to ensure that our collective preferences for conservation and sustainable use are reflected in economic outcomes.
Hydrogen and fuel cells are vital technologies to ensure a secure and CO2-free energy future. This book draws primarily upon information contributed by IEA governments. In virtually all the IEA countries, important R&D and policy efforts on hydrogen and fuel cells are in place and expanding. Some are fully-integrated, government-funded programs, some are a key element in an overall strategy spread among multiple public and private efforts. The large amount of information provided in this publication reflects the vast array of technologies and logistics required to build the “hydrogen economy”.
Housing finance markets in Central and Eastern European countries are typically small in scale and under-developed, though it is generally recognised that fostering housing finance markets contributes to economic development and brings social benefits to the public. This book presents a comparative study on housing finance markets in the Central and Eastern European countries. It is based on an OECD market survey conducted in 2004 and on selected country data prepared for the OECD workshop on housing finance in transition economies held in December 2004. It reports on the progress and challenges in housing finance markets in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Ukraine.
Health technology has the tremendous potential to change our understanding of disease, transform the delivery of health-care services, and improve health outcomes. But using such technology comes at a price. Health Technologies and Decision Making analyses the barriers to, and facilitators of, evidence-based decision making in OECD health-care systems. It examines how countries can successfully manage the opportunities and challenges arising from health-related technology by optimising decision-making processes, recognising the value of innovation, dealing with uncertainty, and producing and co-ordinating health technology assessment. The book also considers the capacity of health systems to respond to the particular challenges of fast-developing health-related biotechnologies.
This third edition of Health at a Glance – OECD Indicators 2005 provides the latest comparable data and trends on different aspects of the performance of health systems in OECD countries. It provides striking evidence of large variations across countries in indicators of health status and health risks, and in the costs, allocation of resources and outputs of health systems. Compared to the previous edition, it contains an expanded set of indicators related to health promotion and disease prevention, reflecting growing policy interest in striking a better balance between spending on prevention and care.
Each indicator in the book is presented in a user-friendly format, consisting of charts illustrating variations across countries and over time, brief commentaries highlighting the key findings conveyed by the data, and a methodological box on the definition of the indicator. Each table and graph has a StatLink at the bottom, enabling users to find the related data in spreadsheet form over the internet. In addition, a statistical annex provides additional information for each indicator, often presenting long time series going as far back as 1960.
This publication takes as its basis OECD Health Data 2005, the most comprehensive database on health and health systems across the 30 OECD member countries.
The international community is committed to helping partner countries meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving global poverty by 2015. Effective use of scarce official development assistance is one important contribution to this end. The good practices presented here represent a set of practical steps that – if applied by development agencies – should significantly improve the effectiveness of development assistance. Following the first volume of good practices published in 2003, this second volume focuses more specifically on good practice in providing budget support and support to sector-wide approaches. The book also includes a chapter setting out good practice in providing support to capacity development for public financial management.
Der Bericht untersucht folgende Aspekte:
Die Frage, ob der Zugang, den die Schüler zu Computern haben, im Ländervergleich und zwischen verschiedenen Schülergruppen gleichmäßig verteilt ist.
Die Frage, wie die Schüler IKT nutzen und wie ihre Einstellung hierzu ist.
Den Zusammenhang zwischen IKT-Zugang und -Nutzung der Schüler und ihren Leistungen in PISA 2003.
Die Implikationen für die Bildungspolitik.
Price indexes can be constructed using a “hedonic method” that adjusts for changes in the quality of a product by focusing on a set of key product characteristics. This handbook contributes to a better understanding of the merits and shortcomings of conventional and hedonic price indexes and methods, and provides an analytic basis for choosing among them. It sets out “best practice” principles for constructing hedonic indexes and examines criticisms of hedonic indexes. The handbook brings together material that is now scattered in a wide number of places, but goes beyond the economic literature in significant respects. It has been written because there is a widespread view that the principles for conducting hedonic investigations are not readily assembled for statistical agency work, which is the primary audience of this volume.
This first book in the new OECD Insights Series examines the increasing economic and social importance of human capital - our education, skills, competencies, and knowledge. As economies in developed countries shift away from manufacturing, economic success for individuals and national economies is increasingly reliant on the quality of human capital. Raising human capital has emerged as a key policy priority, particularly for low-skilled individuals, who are at risk of being left even further behind.
Policy in this area is focusing on early childhood development, improving quality and choice in schooling, creating excellence in tertiary education, and widening access to adult learning. Drawing on the research and analysis of the OECD, this dynamic new book uses straightforward language to explain how countries across the OECD area are responding to the challenge of raising their levels of human capital. This book includes Statlinks, URLs linking statistical tables and graphs in the text of the book to Excel spreadsheets showing the underlying data.
This publication explores a range of helpful policy measures and institutional reforms. Drawing from an extensive review of 14 regions across 12 countries as well as OECD territorial reviews, it considers the regional engagement of higher education regarding teaching, research and service to the community. It offers answers to the following questions: What is higher education’s regional engagement all about? What are its drivers and barriers? What does regional engagement mean for the governance and management of higher education institutions, for regions and for nations? And how does regional engagement fit in with the pursuit of world class academic excellence?
This 2007 edition of Health at a Glance provides the latest comparable data and trends on different aspects of the performance of health systems in OECD countries. It provides striking evidence of large variations across countries in indicators of health status and health risks, as well as in the inputs and outputs of health systems. For the first time, this publication also includes a chapter on new comparable indicators of quality of care, showing variations across countries in measures such as survival rates after heart attack, stroke and cancer. Each indicator in the book is presented in a user-friendly format, consisting of charts illustrating variations across countries and over time, brief descriptive analyses highlighting the key findings conveyed by the data, and a methodological box on the definition of the indicator. A statistical annex provides additional information for most indicators, often presenting time series going as far back as 1960. This publication takes as its main basis OECD Health Data 2007 database. The publication also includes StatLinks, URLs linking tables and charts via the internet to Excel® spreadsheet files containing the underlying data.