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The Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI) has recently initiated a pilot project to develop a new prototype school, involving users in the design phase. This is the first time in Korea that users have been consulted on issues relating to school design.

Ce document est consacré à l’étude des déterminants économétriques des réserves de change de 1980 à 2008 à partir d’un panel de quelque 130 pays. Il s’appuie sur les publications existantes en adoptant un modèle à correction d’erreurs sur données de panel et en élargissant l’échantillon de façon à couvrir la période récente qui a été marquée par une accélération continue de l’accumulation de réserves dans de nombreux pays. Les résultats de l’analyse tendent à montrer que le volume des échanges commerciaux et la profondeur du système financier national sont des déterminants robustes du volume des réserves sur le long terme, en particulier depuis une quinzaine d’années. Les estimations permettent aussi de constater que des changements en matière de PIB, de régime de change, d’instabilité des cours de change ou d’ouverture financière sont autant de facteurs ponctuels qui peuvent produire un effet permanent sur le volume des réserves. En outre, on observe des effets fixes significatifs spécifiques aux pays, ce qui suggère que des facteurs spécifiques à des pays et invariants dans le temps sont importants pour expliquer la variance des réserves de change entre différents pays. Néanmoins, plusieurs pays continuent à détenir des réserves très supérieures à ce qu’impliquent ces résultats économétriques, surtout ces dernières années. Parmi ces pays, on retiendra en particulier la Chine et le Japon, surtout lorsque l’on exprime en dollars l’écart que présentent ces pays avec le comportement moyen.

The EU Public Procurement Directives only apply to contracts of a value that meet or exceed the relevant EU financial threshold. Different thresholds apply to different types of contracting authorities/entities and also to different types of contracts. In order to prevent abusive methods of calculating the value of the contracts, the Directives also provide for rules and methods of calculating the estimated value, as well as prohibition of methods designed to circumvent the Directives. SIGMA Brief 5 aims to increase understanding of what principles apply to the calculation of financial thresholds and of the value of individual contracts.

Le Secrétariat de l’OCDE, à l’invitation du Groupe National d’Experts de AHELO, a mandaté l’association Tuning pour conduire un travail initial sur les résultats d’apprentissage qui seront utilisés dans le cadre d’évaluations valides et fiables d’étudiants provenant de divers établissements et de différents pays. Les deux disciplines sélectionnées pour l’étude de faisabilité AHELO sont l’ingénierie et l’économie.

Suivant l’approche TUNING, des universitaires provenant de divers pays et régions du monde, se sont mis d’accord sur une définition des résultats attendus d’étudiants de 1er cycle universitaire dans les deux disciplines. Ce document de travail présente le produit de leur réflexion s’agissant de l’économie.

Ce rapport a pour objet de susciter la réflexion collective sur les résultats de 1er cycle en économie au niveau transnational. Les membres du groupe de travail AHELO-Tuning ont identifié une variété de résultats d’apprentissage correspondants.

Le document présente également le champ couvert par l’économie, les types de diplômes et de métiers possibles pour le premier et le second cycle. Il reflète par ailleurs les débats sur le rôle des résultats d’apprentissage et réunit les approches ayant servi à les définir. Un résumé des travaux conduits précédemment sur les résultats d’apprentissage en économie est inclus.

This paper uses data derived from tax returns to analyse trends in the share of pre-tax personal income going to top income recipients. These data provide a more reliable source of information on top incomes than household surveys and allow a perspective of almost a century. Since the early 1980s there has been a recovery in the share of top incomes, especially in the share of the top percentile group. The increase started earlier and has been greater in the US than elsewhere. Strong upward trends can also be seen in other English-speaking countries, but such trends are more muted in Continental European countries. The differences in trends between countries may reflect measurement issues to some degree.

An important feature of the increased share is that it is mostly attributable to higher employment and business income, not capital income, and reflects such factors as the incentive effects of cuts in (top) marginal tax rates and the fact that the remuneration of top executives and finance professionals has become increasingly related to ‘performance’, particularly through the use of stock and stock options.

The policy implications of these trends depend in part on income mobility; and the limited data available suggest that there is significant mobility and that its scale has decreased only slightly over time. They also depend on the likely behavioural response to increased taxation of top incomes, where the empirical literature suggests that taxable income elasticities in some countries can be large. The paper considers the pros and cons of possible reforms in the light of such evidence.

Lack of regulatory transparency is a major and recurrent obstacle for businesses seeking to trade internationally. This study finds that transparency mechanisms applied at different stages of the design, finalisation and implementation of domestic regulation have allowed countries to reduce administrative burdens, generate savings both for the administration and for the private sector and maintain a relation of confidence conducive to a smoother enforcement of related policies. They have also helped them enhance the readability of laws and regulations and the predictability of their enforcement (thus further reducing indirect business costs), and prevent potential frictions with trading partners. The resulting improvements in terms of potential business costs can strongly influence the attractiveness of the country for foreign investors.

The world has been changing so fast that educational systems have not had time to keep pace. We therefore need to rethink, renew and modernise our schools, as well as develop a new educational experience for children. In order to do this, it is crucial that we devise a new approach to developing our educational systems. This article proposes a novel way of generating new ideas, based on empirical knowledge.

This paper is the result of a joint effort of OECD/DAC and LenCD to assemble the critical messages about training and learning that are emerging from the current international scrutiny of training and capacity development. It synthesises current wisdom on the topic, and offers a sense of direction on where the debate is going, particularly in terms of approaches to capacity development interventions at country and field levels. The paper is written primarily for the demand side, i.e. those in the South who request and/or are beneficiaries of capacity development activities, together with Northern donor institutions who commission and pay for the activities.

This paper provides an overview of existing measures relating to non-product-related processes and production methods (PPMs) adopted in the context of climate-change-mitigation policies, especially those linked to the life-cycle greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions of particular products. Such domestic PPM-related requirements and schemes are important policy tools for promoting sustainable development and are aimed at addressing GHG emissions resulting from the activities involved in producing, processing and transporting the product to the final consumer. Their ostensive purpose is to promote better environmental outcomes and to ensure that domestic climate-change policies and incentives do not inadvertently undermine other environmental objectives. Even though the general objectives of the reviewed regulations and private schemes are comparable (e.g. the promotion of renewable-energy sources, or provision of information on the carbon footprint of goods), the approaches, level of detail, choices of instruments and targeted environmental characteristics vary considerably from country to country and from scheme to scheme. Some regulations rely more or less extensively on market mechanisms, attaching price premiums to certain types of products. Others introduce command-and-control provisions limiting the use of certain PPMs, variously defined in different countries. Still others target certain types of fuels eligible for public support, with varying eligibility criteria. Private schemes mainly use environmental sustainability claims to secure consumer preference. The choice of different instruments presumably entails different trade impacts. However, all of the reviewed measures and schemes are fairly new, and experience with their application and therefore their potential trade effects has so far been relatively limited.

Specialisation or division of labour is an important source of economic growth, but the degree of division of labour is constrained by the extent of the market. Trade in tasks represents the latest turn in a virtuous cycle of deepening specialisation, expansion of the market and productivity growth. It has attracted a lot of attention in the policy debate not for its contribution to international division of labour and productivity growth, but for its possible detrimental impact on labour markets, particularly in high income countries. This paper analyses the task content of goods and services and sheds light on structural changes that take place following trade liberalisation. The task content of goods and services is estimated by combining information from the O*Net database on the importance of a set of 41 tasks for a large number of occupations and information on employment by occupation and industry. The study shows that tasks that can be digitised and offshored are often complementary to tasks that cannot. Therefore, the assessment of the offshorability of a job requires that one take into account all tasks being performed. The paper finds that import penetration in services has a small, but positive effect on the share of tasks related to getting and processing information being performed in the local economy. In other words, offshoring complements rather than replaces local information processing. As distortions in the market for intermediate inputs, including offshored tasks, have a larger negative impact the more diversified and complex the economy, possible adverse effects of offshoring on the labour market should be dealt with through social and labour market policy measures, not trade restrictions. In addition, if trade restrictions are imposed, they should be levied on imported value added, not on the total import value.

The deployment of technologies for the mitigation of greenhouse-gases (GHGs) is dependent on a wide range of services, including those that are imported. Business services, telecommunications services, and construction and related engineering services figure prominently. This paper aims to develop a better understanding of the specific roles that these services play in helping to mitigate GHG emissions, and to identify the major suppliers and consumers. It presents examples and mini-case studies that explore how particular services complement the deployment of GHG mitigating technologies. With respect to the four modes of services trade, instances of mode 1 (cross-border trade) trade taking place over the Internet appear to be more commonplace, often complementing movement of personnel. Examples of mode 2 trade (consumption abroad) typically involve training of a client’s personnel. Mode 3 trade (commercial presence) is critical for the provision of services that entail construction and operation of production facilities. The temporary movement of natural persons (mode 4) is also common, especially where expert judgement or supervision is required for a short period of time.

Information and communications technology (ICT) has been seen as a major contributor to productivity growth and as a key tool for innovation. Trade liberalisation can play a role in encouraging ICT adoption by fostering competition and by reducing ICT prices. While the trade in ICT goods has more than doubled since the mid-1990s, the share of trade involving low and middle income countries has significantly increased, with China now being the largest trader. During the same period, tariff levels have declined thanks in part to the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), although substantial tariffs remain with respect to ICT goods not covered by the ITA and by those imposed by non-participants to the ITA. The multilateral trading system produced early successes in the ITA and the negotiations on basic telecommunications at the World Trade Organization (WTO), but the progress has since been more modest. Yet it provides opportunities to further trade liberalisation in ICT goods, both with respect to tariffs and to non-tariff issues, not least through the Doha negotiations.

We analyze the effects of trade liberalization on Mexican employment at an occupational level for the period from 1992 to 2009, ranking occupations by skill level. We find that the reduction in trade costs associated with Mexico's entry to NAFTA is related to larger employment expansions in low-skill occupations. This evidence runs counter to a story of skilled-biased technological change in Mexico, and in favour of a heterogeneous-firm model of trade in tasks where the offshoring cost of an occupation is positively related to its skill level. After NAFTA, labour demand for unskilled workers has increased and labour demand for skilled workers has been stagnant, even though supply of skilled workers has increased in the last 20 years. We provide intuitive evidence to identify a number of relevant bottlenecks in the Mexican economy that may be associated with these developments.

The German economy is characterized by a high degree of foreign exposure through exports and imports. This paper considers the link between trade and labour market outcomes in Germany. To that end we combine individual-level data from the German Socio Economic Panel for the period 1999 to 2007 with industry-level data on various aspects of trade – exports, imports and offshoring. We consider their effects on wages and the probability of moving into unemployment. Our econometric analysis suggests that there is little impact of trade-related variables on individual-level wages, whereas there appears to be some impact with respect to employment. We find some important differences between manufacturing and services sectors, in particular with regard to exporting and offshoring.

Globalisation in the pharmaceuticals sector is entering a new phase. Many new drugs are marketed globally, and these revenues encourage further investment in research and development (R&D). The industry is undergoing substantial transition, with increased competition and downward pressure on prices. Moreover, there have also been widespread concerns that R&D productivity may be declining in recent years. This study examines how various linkages between trade and innovation work in the pharmaceuticals sector, focusing on the role of globalisation in the current innovation challenges of the pharmaceutical industry. It finds that emerging economies are increasingly important markets for pharmaceutical companies and more active participants in the R&D process. While this is an important part of an effort to reduce R&D costs and to improve R&D performance by established multinationals, this also contributes to upgrading the R&D capability of emerging economies. Various trade facilitating measures have been put in place at the international level, including tariff elimination under the World Trade Organization (WTO), plurilateral and bilateral regulatory harmonisation, mutual recognition and enforcement cooperation, and intellectual property protection. Given the growing participation of emerging economies in this sector, further involvement of emerging economies in these arrangements is likely to become more important to facilitate trade and globalisation of R&D.

In light of the importance of the relationship between trade and employment in Japan, this paper examines the effects of exports on employment (i.e. the number of workers), working-hours, and total worker-hours (i.e. employment times working-hours). This paper utilized the Japanese input-output table for the period from 1975 to 2006, which enables us to estimate the effects of exports on the industry's employment (i.e. direct effect) but also on other industries' employment (i.e. indirect effect). The major findings are threefold. First, the demand for worker-hours from exports increased but this is not large enough to offset the decreases in demand for worker hours from domestic final demand. As a result, total worker-hours in Japan have declined since 1990. Second, the demand for employment from exports has increased since 1985 both in manufacturing and non-manufacturing. This result implies that the manufacturing exports affected indirectly non-manufacturing employment through inter-industry linkages. Finally, the overall demand for working-hours from exports and domestic final demand declined between 1980 and 2006 although it increased slightly in manufacturing after 1995. There are two possible policy influences behind these adjustment processes. One is the change in Japanese labour standard law. The other is the change in the Japanese worker dispatch law. Although these two policies have different implications, policy makers need to recognize the importance of the flexibility of the adjustment in either case.

This paper addresses the relationship between trade, employment and wages in Italy from the perspective of the specific features of its international specialisation pattern. It focuses on several key questions: To what extent has international economic integration, including trade and international outsourcing, changed the structure of the Italian economy? To what extent has exposure to foreign competition helped Italian firms to restructure and upgrade their production, so as to increase the skill intensity of their activities? What are the effects of these processes on employment and wages? The paper opens with a short review of the relevant literature and a description of recent developments in the trade specialisation pattern of the Italian economy, including its linkages with the structure of employment. This is followed by the main original contribution of the paper consisting of an econometric study structured around two parts. The first part presents an estimate of the employment effects of trade and off-shoring in the Italian manufacturing industry based on a panel of 15 sectors for the period from 1999 to 2008. The second part addresses the relationship between trade and wages using a rich micro-level panel of individual workers for the period from 1997 to 2003. In light of the results, the paper then considers the main policies adopted in Italy to facilitate the adjustment of employment and wages to external shocks, including short-term effects of trade liberalisation. The Italian case appears to confirm that international economic integration, while generating important static and dynamic benefits, requires a flexible and efficient social security system, able to assist workers displaced by external competition or other kinds of structural change. In view of shortcomings in the existing system, a comprehensive social security reform, inspired by principles of universal access, medium-term financial equilibrium, and a proper design of individual incentives, may be necessary to better help workers displaced by international integration.