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Construction work is about to begin on a new “intelligent” primary school for 300 students (later to be expanded for 600) in the Municipality of Solaro in the province of Milan. This is the fi rst primary school building in Italy designed according to the principles of the “intelligent school” as defi ned by the Centre for Educational Innovation and Experimentation of Milan (CISEM). The building received the 2006 EUROSOLAR Prize.
French
Average inflation in Sweden has been one of the lowest among European countries since the mid- 1990s. Three supply-side factors help to explain this phenomenon, all related in some sense to increased global integration. First, a shift towards imports from low-cost producing countries has resulted in falling import prices. Second, deregulation and increased product market competition with foreign companies entering the market has led to price falls in some sectors, notably in retailing. Third, wage growth has lagged productivity and kept unit labour costs down. This paper reviews these factors and analyzes the policy options for the central bank. This paper relates to the OECD Economic Survey of Sweden 2007 (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/sweden).
To help policymakers form a judgment on inflation risks and the required monetary policy stance the OECD has developed an analytical framework based on a set of 'eclectic' Phillips curves estimated for the two largest OECD economies, the United States and the euro area, which is presented in this paper. This framework is used in the preparation of the Economic Outlook to explain recent developments in core inflation, excluding food and energy, based on developments in measures of economic slack (the output gap), spill-over effects from energy prices onto core inflation and lagged responses to past inflation via expectations formation. The fact that the knock-on effects from energy shocks onto core inflation appear small in comparison with the 1970s can be explained by the secular fall in energy intensity, a low and stable rate of 'mean inflation' -- to which observed inflation reverts after a shock has worked its way through -- and persistent slack in the aftermath of the bursting of the dotcom bubble.
Child poverty is firmly on the policy agenda in many OECD countries. One of the main issues in the debate is the appropriate balance between the so-called “benefits strategy” (increasing the adequacy of benefits for low-income families with children) and the so-called “work strategy” (promoting policies to increase employment among poor families). The need to choose between these two apparent alternatives is sometimes seen as a consequence of an unavoidable trade-off between adequacy of benefits, work incentives and the costs of assistance...
Fiscal consolidation is required in most OECD countries. This is especially so in view of mediumand long-term spending pressures on public finances, related, inter alia, to ageing. Based on a dataset covering a large number of OECD fiscal consolidation episodes starting in the late 1970s, the paper presents evidence, both descriptive and econometric, on macroeconomic conditions and policy set-ups that have been effective in triggering and sustaining fiscal consolidation. Main findings include: Large initial deficits and high interest rates have been important in prompting fiscal adjustment and also in boosting the overall size and duration of consolidation. Concerning the quality of fiscal policies, an emphasis on cutting current expenditures has been associated with overall larger consolidation. Fiscal rules with embedded expenditure targets tended to be associated with larger and longer adjustments, pointing to institutional features playing a potentially important role in generating successful consolation efforts. Experience across countries also shows that certain design features such as transparency, flexibility to face shocks and effective enforcement mechanisms seem important for the effectiveness of fiscal rules.

This paper is based mainly on responses – nearly 300 – to a web-based survey of academic staff in UK higher education. The survey examined their personal and professional values and their views on the values that should underpin higher education. Their perceptions of current reality in terms of national policy and processes and of institutional management expectations, with examples provided of events that disturbed them, raise questions about the longer term health of higher education as it has been understood. The project was seen as a pilot aiming to provoke debate about how well traditional values and standards “fit” with mass levels of higher education provision, and government emphases on the economic role of higher education. The findings are set in a theoretical context drawing on models by Clark (1983), Becher and Kogan (1992) and the author (McNay, 1995, 2005a).

French

Values and ethics are automatically incorporated into any teaching/learning environment or endeavour, whether or not they are consciously stated objectives. The focus on “quality of education” has sharpened as people have become concerned about a perceived rise in materialism as standards of living have improved; materialistic ambitions increasingly fill the ideological gap created by the move to a pluralistic society in which there is a less general consensus of values and ethics. There is increasing demand for insight into the potential of the formal teaching/learning process for inculcating, learning/unlearning (as the case may be) and consolidating values. The manner in which teachers are trained has far-reaching implications for the youth in schools, and a systemic inquiry into the structure, role, responsibilities, aims and curricular objectives of teacher education is the obvious starting point. This paper tries to delineate the global normative aims of education as a model for assessing the composition of the teacher education curriculum in Pakistan. It looks at the intended curriculum, bearing in mind that the formal and the active curricula may not necessarily converge. The paper accepts that ethics and values education is still in a formative stage. However, one critical question that will remain open at the philosophical level is “which values should be included?” and this needs to be vigorously researched to establish guidelines that have global consensus. The next crucial question will then be “how best to teach to ensure that these ethics and values are internalised by learners?” 

French
This article explains how Ireland has incorporated low energy design into primary and post-primary schools and gives an overview of projects that have helped inform this approach.
French
This paper reviewed current discounting practice in the OECD. It found a wide variance in guidance across countries (which may or may not be justifiable by different economic conditions), and significant differences in guidance within countries. Furthermore, even when discounting guidance is specified, it is not always followed in practice.
A clear conclusion from this study is the allocation of public funds would be substantially improved if OECD countries provided departments with a consistent set of guidance on discounting. This guidance should provide for the analysis of long-term projects, programmes and policies, which are increasingly important, particularly with respect to environmental concerns. Finally, guidance should incorporate advances in theory of discounting under long-term uncertainty. A recipe for determining the appropriate rate of decline in the discount rate is included in this paper.

Triggered by sub-prime and Shanghai stock exchange volatility, major stock markets suffered a significant correction at the end of February. Markets have since recovered and European markets have over the past few weeks more than compensated these losses. While another downturn on the Shanghai exchange end of May led to some increases in volatility on major markets, they have so far not altered their course...

This paper analyses changes in the governance of universities as a result of growing demands from society as well as of a strong penetration of management ideology into all kinds of institutions. For this purpose the paper uses a theoretical framework focusing on two governance mechanisms in social systems: entry control and performance control. These belong to a larger set of homogenising forces, which the new institutionalists label as (1) coercive, (2) normative and (3) mimetic. Using this theoretical framework to analyse the development of Swedish universities, the author concludes that their governance has undergone a considerable change. Coercive forces that were previously exercised through detailed budgeting have, in recent years, been operating through representation in leading bodies and through the selection of university leaders. This has occurred through a crowding out of normative forces. At the same time there have been strong mimetic forces based on modern management ideas. 

French

National and international rankings of institutional performance are playing a growing role in contemporary higher education. It is critical that researchers develop pragmatic, educationally sensitive and methodologically informed approaches for managing this aspect of higher education. This paper compares three approaches for modelling key indicators which underpin a national evaluation of university education in Australia: rankings of aggregate institutional performance; comparisons of institutional change over time; and performance variations within fields of education. The results show that simple institution-level aggregations are misleading, and that contemporary analytical methods must be used to account for the influence of fields of education. More broadly, the findings expose the need for a more robust methodological development of university rankings.

French
The contribution of higher education institutions to regional development is a theme that has attracted growing attention in recent years. Knowledge institutions are increasingly expected not only to conduct education and research, but also to play an active role in the economic, social and cultural development of their regions. The extent to which higher education institutions are able to play this role depends on a number of circumstances: the characteristics of the institutions, the regions in which they are located and the policy frameworks are all significant. At the same time, there are signs of more fundamental conceptual and strategic confusion. The discussions in this domain are frequently characterised by slogans and popular metaphors. This literature review was prepared to support the OECD project entitled 'Supporting the Contribution of Higher Education Institutions to Regional Development', which was conducted by the OECD Programme on Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE) in collaboration with the Directorate of Public Governance and Territorial Development. Drawing mainly from a selection of European and North American publications, the report takes an overall view on the development of higher education institutions in the regional context. It focuses on the evolution and discourses of higher education and research, the regional aspects of higher education policies, the various functions and roles that the institutions play, measures taken to link the universities with their regional partners, and the conditions which favour or hamper stronger regional engagement.
This report discusses methods of measuring unauthorized migration to the United States. The “residual method” involves comparing an analytic estimate of the legal foreign-born population with a survey-based measure of the total foreign-born population. The difference between the two population figures is a measure of the unauthorized migrant population in the survey; it can then be corrected for omissions to provide a measure of the total unauthorized population. The report includes a detailed description of the residual methods and the underlying data and assumptions as it has been applied to recent data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) and decennial censuses. The paper presents new results of estimates derived from the march 2006 CPS which show that the unauthorized population in the U.S. has reached 11.5 million; of these, 6.5 million or 57% are from Mexico. The report also presents derived data on a range of social and economic characteristics of the unauthorized population developed with an extension of the residual estimates. Finally, historical data on trends in unauthorized migration and several alternative estimation methods are presented and discussed.
As the number and share of the population aged 65 and over will continue to grow steadily in OECD countries over the next decades, improvements in the functional status of elderly people could help mitigate the rise in the demand for, and hence expenditure on, long-term care. This paper assesses the most recent evidence on trends in disability among the population aged 65 and over in 12 OECD countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. The focus is on reviewing trends in severe disability (or dependency), defined where possible as one or more limitations in basic activities of daily living (ADLs, such as eating, washing/bathing, dressing, and getting in and out of bed), given that such severe limitations tend to be closely related to demands for long-term care. One of the principal findings from this review is that there is clear evidence of a decline in disability among elderly people in only five of the twelve countries studied (Denmark, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States). Three countries (Belgium, Japan and Sweden) report an increasing rate of severe disability among people aged 65 and over during the past five to ten years, and two countries (Australia, Canada) report a stable rate. In France and the United Kingdom, data from different surveys show different trends in ADL disability rates among elderly people, making it impossible to reach any definitive conclusion on the direction of the trend. One of the main policy implications that can be drawn from the findings of this study is that it would not be prudent for policymakers to count on future reductions in the prevalence of severe disability among elderly people to offset completely the rising demand for long-term care that will result from population ageing. Even though disability prevalence rates have declined to some extent in some countries, the ageing of the population and the greater longevity of individuals can be expected to lead to increasing numbers of people at older ages with a severe disability and in need of long-term care. The results of the projection exercise to 2030 for all countries, regardless of different trends in disability prevalence, confirm this important finding.

This report examines developments in environmental financing in Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) since 2000. It focuses on expenditures, both domestic sources of finance, as well as external environmental assistance; the latter includes Official Development Assistance/Official Assistance (ODA/OA), and lending from International Financial Institutions (IFIs).

This paper discusses broad trends in the rates and levels of international migration over the past three decades, the places that migrants leave from and the destinations they choose; and some of the demographic and policy implications of these trends. It raises some features of international mobility trends over the past three decades that are, superficially, somewhat contradictory: stable rates of emigration but growing numbers of emigrants; and an apparent dynamism in the flow but a stable concentration of migrants going to more developed nations. On the one hand, these facts can be somewhat simply resolved by reference to the demographic divide between the less and more developed world. On the other hand, these facts hold implications for the past and future impacts of admission policies on international mobility.
Infrastructure investment represents large capital values, whereas the benefits and other consequences are extended into the future. This makes methods to assess investment plans an important issue. This paper develops a framework in which infrastructure networks are interpreted as determinants of the spatial organisation of an economy, while the very same organisation is assumed to influence the growth of functional urban regions (FUR) and thereby the entire economy. The suggested framework is formulated so as to facilitate the modeling of agglomeration economies, and hence to separate intra-regional and interregional transport flows. A basic argument is that transport networks should preferably be described by their (physical) attributes, and several accessibility measures are presented as tools in this effort. This type of accessibility measures combine information about time distances between nodes in a FUR and the corresponding location pattern. The attempts to estimate aggregate production functions and associated dual forms is assessed in view of the so-called new growth theory are discussed, and it is concluded that this approach has been more successful when cross-regional data are employed in combination with infrastructure measures that reflect attributes. The discussion of macro approaches is followed by a detailed presentation of how accessibility measures can depict the spatial organisation of FURs and the urban areas inside a FUR. Such measures are candidates as explanatory variables in macro models, although the presentation concentrates on applications in commuting models, and sector growth models. In particular, the paper presents a model in which an individual urban area’s accessibility to labour supply interact with the same area’s accessibility to jobs, in the context of a FUR. Empirical results from Sweden are used to illustrate how the spatial organisation and its change is influenced by the inter-urban networks of urban areas in a FUR. It is also argued that the model is capable of depicting essential aspects of recent contributions to the economics of agglomeration.
This Working Paper compiles a set of recent comparable OECD data on revenues, inputs, and public sector processes and proposes a way forward in data collection. It is the first of three annual Working Papers as the Public Governance and Territorial Development (GOV) Directorate of the OECD builds up to the first publication of a major biennial publication, “Government at a Glance”, in late 2009. It is accompanied by a volume entitled “Measuring Government Activities” (OECD, forthcoming) that sets out the proposed approach and that poses technical alternatives for expert review and comment. The first part of this volume provides a comprehensive exposition of the proposed data classification and analysis.
French
After the radical reforms undertaken in the 1980s, the NZ tax system has long been regarded as one of most efficient within the OECD, and is based on a comprehensive income approach. Looking forward, the country will require a tax regime that helps the economy to continue raising living standards, supports savings and investment and copes with emerging pressures such as increasing geographic mobility of labour and capital. In this context, it will be important to have in place a clear long-term direction for the tax system to guide reforms. There are at least two broad options that are worth considering: adapting the system within a comprehensive income approach or adopting a dual income tax system. Future changes to the tax system need to be consistent with the approach ultimately adopted. In any case, a number of limitations of current tax bases will need to be tackled. This Working Paper relates to the 2007 OECD Economic Survey of New Zealand (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/nz).
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