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It is a well recognised rule in international law that the property of aliens cannot be taken, whether for public purposes or not, without adequate compensation. Two decades ago, the disputes before the courts and the discussions in academic literature focused mainly on the standard of compensation and measuring of expropriated value. The divergent views of the developed and developing countries raised issues regarding the formation and evolution of customary law. Today, the more positive attitude of countries around the world toward foreign investment and the proliferation of bilateral treaties and other investment agreements requiring prompt, adequate and effective compensation for expropriation of foreign investments have largely deprived that debate of practical significance for foreign investors.
Disputes on direct expropriation – mainly related to nationalisation that marked the 70s and 80s -- have been replaced by disputes related to foreign investment regulation ...
Bilateral and regional investment agreements have proliferated in the last decade and new ones are still being negotiated. Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) clauses link investment agreements by ensuring that the parties to one treaty provide treatment no less favourable than the treatment they provide under other treaties in areas covered by the clause. MFN clauses have thus become a significant instrument of economic liberalisation in the investment area. Moreover, by giving the investors of all the parties benefiting from a country’s MFN clause the right, in similar circumstances, to treatment no less favourable than a country’s closest or most influential partners can negotiate on the matters the clause covers, MFN avoids economic distortions that would occur through more selective country-by-country liberalisation. Such a treatment may result from the implementation of treaties, legislative or administrative acts of the country and also by mere practice ...
L’obligation d’accorder un « traitement juste et équitable » est souvent énoncée concurremment avec d’autres normes visant à assurer la protection de l’investissement direct étranger par les pays d’accueil. Il s’agit d’une norme de traitement à caractère « absolu » et « non contingent », c’est-à-dire une norme qui définit le traitement qui doit être accordé selon des termes dont le sens exact reste à déterminer en fonction d’un contexte spécifique d’application, à l’inverse des normes « relatives » intégrées dans les principes du « traitement national » et de « la nation la plus favorisée », qui définissent le traitement requis eu égard au traitement accordé à d’autres investissements1. Cette norme, à laquelle font parfois référence les toutes premières ébauches d’instruments miltilatéraux de commerce et d’investissement, a été instituée principalement par le biais du réseau de plus en plus important des traités bilatéraux d’investissement ...
Le maintien d'une croissance économique rapide est de plus en plus tributaire des gains de productivité, en particulier dans le secteur des services. La concurrence a un rôle important à jouer dans la réalisation de ces gains. Néanmoins, la stratégie de développement de la Corée a eu tendance à affaiblir la concurrence et se traduit par une politique interventionniste héritée du passé. Le renforcement de la concurrence passe par une rénovation de la politique de la concurrence, une ouverture accrue aux échanges internationaux ainsi qu'à l'investissement direct étranger (IDE), et une amélioration du cadre réglementaire dans les industries de réseau. Il conviendrait de renforcer les prérogatives de la Commission coréenne de la concurrence, tout en alourdissant les sanctions prévues par la loi et en revoyant à la baisse les dispositions spéciales prévues pour certains secteurs. Les obstacles aux importations demeurent supérieurs à la moyenne de l'OCDE, notamment dans l'agriculture ...
This paper examines the determinants of female labour force participation in OECD countries. The econometric analysis uses a panel data set covering 17 OECD countries over the period 1985-1999, and distinguishes between part-time and full-time female participation rates. It shows a positive impact on female participation of a more neutral tax treatment of second earners (relative to single individuals), childcare subsidies, and paid maternity and parental leave. On the other hand, child benefits reduce female participation due to an income effect and their lump-sum character. Female education, the general labour market conditions, and cultural attitudes remain major determinants of female participation. Simulations illustrate the potentially significant impact that some of the examined policies could exert on female participation ...
This paper examines the impact of old-age pension systems and other social transfer programmes on the retirement decision of older males in OECD countries. For each of the 55-59, 60-64 and 65+ age groups, a new panel dataset of retirement incentives embedded in those schemes is constructed, focusing mainly on the implicit tax rate on continued work. These currently differ widely across OECD countries: they are high in most Continental European Countries, compared with Japan, Korea, English-speaking and Nordic countries. Simple cross-country correlations and panel data econometric estimates both show that implicit taxes on continued work have sizeable effects on the departure of older male workers from the labour force ...
Capital services measures have long been recognised as the appropriate concept to capture capital input in production and productivity analysis. However, only few countries’ statistical agencies construct and publish such capital services measures. This paper describes capital services measures developed by OECD and presents estimation methods and results for the G7 countries. By way of example, the consequences of applying capital services measures instead of measures of gross or net capital stocks in the computation of rates of multi-factor productivity growth are examined for three countries, the United States, France and Australia ...
In most OECD countries, public spending rose steadily as a share of GDP over the past decades to the mid-1990s, but this trend has since abated. The spending pressures stemming from the continued expansion of social programmes have been partly compensated by transient or one-off factors. Pressures on public spending, however, appear likely to intensify, in particular as a consequence of ageing populations. Since most OECD economies have very little scope for raising taxation or debt to finance higher spending, reforms to curb the growth in public spending while raising its cost effectiveness are now required. Based on detailed country reviews for over two-thirds of OECD countries, this paper identifies three main areas for action: the budget process; management practices; and the use of market mechanisms in the delivery of public services ...
The latest system of national accounts (SNA93) recommended that purchases of software (and any ownaccount production) should be treated as investment as long as the acquisition satisfied conventional asset requirements. This change added about 1 per cent to GDP in most OECD economies in the mid-1990s. However, the range of the revision has been significantly different across countries, leading many observers to question the comparability of these statistics. An OECD task force has formulated a set of recommendations describing a harmonised method for estimating software and this paper provides estimates of changes to GDP levels and growth that might be expected if the OECD recommendations were applied. Estimates of changes are also presented using an alternative harmonised method. Whichever harmonised method is applied, the impact on GDP levels is likely to be significant, and in some countries about 1 per cent of GDP ...
The purpose of the System of Health Accounts
- Changes in health systems and concomitant health policy questions have been challenging the traditional system of health expenditure statistics over the last couple of decades. What are the major factors accounting for health expenditure growth? What factors explain the differences between countries in expenditure growth? How to ensure sustainable financing? What are the major factors accounting for the differences in the structure of health spending? How are the changes in health spending structure and the performance of health systems related? In order to answer such questions, reliable, comparable and appropriately detailed health expenditure data are required. The System of Health Accounts intends to provide the foundation for health statistics that are able to meet these challenges.
Box 1
What is the System of Health Accounts?
The System of Health Accounts (SHA) proposes an integrated system of comprehensive and internationally ...
La décentralisation a été recommandée par les pays donateurs et les agences de développement comme un facteur important d’incitation à une plus large participation des citoyens et à une meilleure gouvernance locale, facilitant ainsi la réduction de la pauvreté en partant de la base. Ce document de travail reconsidère cette hypothèse, en passant en revue 19 études de cas par pays disponibles dans la documentation.
Les catastrophes naturelles (sécheresses, tremblements de terre, épidémies, inondations, ouragans) sont nuisibles au bien-être, tant par leurs retombées immédiates et de long terme que par la nuisance provoquée par l’insécurité qui leur est associée chez les individus adverses au risque. Ainsi, la gestion des effets des catastrophes naturelles, de même que celle du risque de leur déclanchement, sont des questions urgentes pour le développement économique. Ce document fournit un cadre conceptuel pour mieux comprendre les catastrophes naturelles. Celles-ci impliquent des coûts humains tragiques et se distinguent des situations à risque, qui sont des événements tels que les tremblements de terre ou les inondations : les situations à risqué ne deviennent des catastrophes que lorsque les sociétés leur sont vulnérables. Par conséquent, les politiques publiques internationales pour le développement peuvent contribuer à réduire leur coût en visant sur la vulnérabilité. Un examen de deux ...