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This article assesses the role and responsibilities of the budget advisor in developing countries and what factors make for success and failure. Since efficient budget institutions are important, the role of the budget advisor may include providing advice on institutional issues as well as on technical questions and the budget reform process itself.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) by OECD-based multinational enterprises (MNEs) in developing and emerging economies has increased dramatically over the past two decades. While generally perceived as beneficial for local development, it has also raised concerns about unfair competition and the protection of workers’ rights in host countries. This paper documents the recent increase in FDI and assesses its effects on wages and working conditions for workers of foreign affiliates of MNEs and those of their independent supplier firms. The evidence suggests that MNEs tend to provide better pay than their domestic counterparts, especially when they operate in developing and emerging economies. The positive impact on wages also appears to spread to the employees of domestic firms that serve as suppliers of MNEs or recruit managers with prior experience in foreign firms, but these spillover effects are small. MNEs also provide more training than domestic firms, but it is unclear whether this reflects a causal impact of foreign ownership.
This paper describes pharmaceutical pricing and reimbursement policies in Germany, considering them in the broader environment in which they operate, and assesses their impact on the achievement of a number of policy goals. Pharmaceutical coverage is comprehensive, with a high level of public funding, and ensures access to treatments. However, recent increases in out-of-pocket payments may impair affordability for the poorest part of the population. Germany does not regulate ex-manufacturer prices of pharmaceuticals at market entry (though distribution margins are regulated for reimbursed drugs). On the other hand, maximum reimbursement amounts (known as reference prices) are set for products which can be clustered in groups of equivalent (generic) or comparable products (...)
Certain areas related to the topics under discussion here lie outside my field; for instance the evaluation of risk assessment and security deficiencies in the transport sector. What has convinced me of the importance of this subject are a few very general conclusions, indeed I would say, impressions, that I have drawn from the truly remarkable development of our powers to analyse the risk decision-making process over some years now. In this paper, the term “uncertainty” is often used with reference to the management of risks arising from intentionally malicious acts3. The costs of security in this sense of the term are an element of every transport budget today. In addition to the costs of prevention, surveillance and forecasting, the costs of the potential damages arising from such acts will also have to be taken into consideration from this point onwards. The events of 11 September 2001, which accelerated this trend, should suffice to convince us that, from now on, the consequences of such damages will be on a scale comparable to the costs of war (...)
With its publication of the Thematic Review on the Transition from Initial Education to Working Life in 2000, OECD has laid the foundation for the development of indicators regarding the transition from education to work. One of the core activities of OECD’s Network B in 2005 and 2006 was to further develop these indicators by establishing a framework for monitoring transition systems. A transition system is defined as “the social institutions and processes through which a society provides its members to make the transition from the education system to the employment system”. The current report presents the results of this developmental work. It first presents the results of a quick scan carried out among the Network B members on the policy goals for transition systems and relevant indicators used to assess national situations (November 2002-January 2003). Next a theoretical framework is presented that identifies the most relevant characteristics of transition systems. It also relates the outcomes of the transition system to relevant characteristics of the educational system on the one hand and the employment system on the other hand. Based on the results of the quick scan and the developed theoretical framework, an evaluation of the earlier defined policy goals is carried, proposing a new set of 11 policy goals. As a next step, the existing data sources from OECD, EUROSTAT and major international surveys have been analysed to identify relevant indicators for the policy goals as well as descriptors for relevant other aspects of the developed framework. This report presents an overview of these indicators and descriptors. The theoretical framework and the developed set of indicators have been discussed at the March 2006 meeting of the Network B in Washington DC. Members of the network have also sent written comments. All these comments have been taken up in this final version. The report concludes with recommendations for the further data collection strategy.
This report examines the role played by immigrant health workers in the Canadian health workforce but also the interactions between migration policies and education and health workforce management policies. Migrant health worker makes a significant contribution to the Canadian health workforce. Around 2005-06, more than 22% of the doctors were foreign-trained and 37% were foreign-born. The corresponding figures for nurses are close to 7.7% and 20%, respectively. Foreign-trained doctors play an important role in rural areas as they contribute to filling the gaps. In most rural areas, on average, 30% of the physicians were foreign-trained in 2004. Over past decades the evolution of the health workforce in Canada has been characterised notably by a sharp decline in the density of nurses and a stable density of doctors, which is in contrast with the trends observed in other OECD countries. This evolution is largely the result of measures were adopted at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s in order to address a perceived health workforce surplus.
This study finds that trade in services contributes to a broader services supplier base that supports competitiveness in high-technology and high-value added manufacturing. It is shown that with low, but still significant trade costs in services, large countries have a comparative advantage for services-intensive manufactured goods, an advantage that is enhanced if the country also produces intermediate services more effectively or has lower barriers to entry for services suppliers. Countries with superior organisational technology (using producer services more effectively) will strengthen their comparative advantage in manufacturing following services trade liberalisation. The impact of services trade liberalisation on trade in manufacturing is non-linear. Until trade costs have reached a threshold level the trade response is quite modest. Consequently, going the last mile of services trade liberalisation, including lowering regulatory barriers, will have the largest impact. Exports of labour-intensive manufactures require a host of supporting services and the need for these services has increased over time due to rapidly changing consumer tastes and growing consumer awareness of health, safety and social standards. In order to support industrial development, developing countries need to focus their services trade policy not only on offensive interests, but also on ensuring that local manufacturers have the best possible access to services. Improving market access in telecommunications and business services; particularly legal services, accounting, advertising and technical consulting services would have the largest impact.
Monetary policy has been one of the main pillars of the post-2001 stabilisation programme. Encouraged by its success, the central bank shifted from implicit to explicit inflation targeting in 2006 and set a medium-term inflation target of 4%, applicable from end 2007. However this objective faced with two important challenges. On the one hand, inflation inertia settled in and non-tradable inflation stagnated at more than 10%, further fuelled by persistent surge in global commodity and energy prices. On the other hand, real interest rates remained high, continuing to fuel strong capital inflows and currency appreciation, and undermining the competitiveness of labour-intensive segments of the economy. Turkey is, therefore, faced with the classic dilemma of successful catching-up economies: Inflation inertia requires a tight policy while competitiveness losses appear to go beyond the absorption and adaptation capacity of large segments of the economy. This chapter argues that resolving this issue requires monetary policy to be supported by broader policies, including proactive competition policy to reduce costs and prices in services, enforcement of a credible multi-yearly spending framework to consolidate confidence in fiscal stability, and employers' and employees' commitment to anchor prices and wages more on the inflation target. Success with such policies would help shift the burden away from the central bank's interest rate as the only available instrument to increase the credibility of the inflation target.
Health outcomes and the quality of health care in Iceland are very good by international comparison, while income-related health inequality appears to be smaller than in most other countries. However, the health-care system is costly and, according to OECD estimates, public expenditure on health and long-term care could reach 15% of GDP by 2050 if no restraining measures are taken. This highlights the importance of raising cost-effectiveness and spending efficiency more generally. To this end, it would seem advisable to remove impediments to private provision and open up the health sector to competition. At the same time, the introduction of cost-sharing should be considered where it does not exist (as in hospitals), although concerns about equity need to be taken into account. This would relieve the burden on public finances, as would the introduction of spending ceilings, cost-efficiency analysis and activity-based funding arrangements. The high cost of pharmaceuticals should be reduced by promoting competition and the use of inexpensive generic drugs.
This review surveys trends in physician supply in the United States from 1980 to the present with particular attention to the participation of International Medical Graduates. It discussed the composition of the physician workforce with regards to the number of family practitioners, specialists, women physicians and the aging of the workforce. Changes in the inflows and outflows of the physician workforce are discussed and, in particular, how international migration, retirement, part-time practice and alternative employment have impacted the physician workforce.
The UK has a population of 56 million, and most healthcare is delivered through the National Health Service (NHS). The NHS employs more than one million staff. In the late 1990s shortages of skilled staff were a main obstacle to improving services in the NHS. The response by government was to “grow” the NHS workforce. There are four main policy options to “grow” the workforce- increase home based training; improve retention rates of current staff (to reduce need to recruit additional staff); improve “return” of staff currently not practising; and internationally recruit health professionals. International recruitment was used to achieve rapid growth in the NHS workforce. It was facilitated by fast tracking work permits for health professionals, by targeting recruits in specified countries, using specialist recruitment agencies, and by co-ordinating local level recruitment within the NHS (...)
This paper uses “extreme-bound”-type analysis to revisit the determinants behind widely differing economic growth in Russian regions. Using data of 77 regions for 1993-2004, it separately examines the growth drivers for the phase of economic decline up to 1998, and for the period of strong growth afterwards. Looking at forty variables considered to be potentially related to growth, it determines, for each of the two periods, the ones robustly associated with Russian economic performance. Among the variables considered are proxies of politico-institutional features, indicators of economic reform, and measurements of both economic and non-economic initial conditions. The main findings, based on close to one million regressions, are as follows: during the period of economic decline up to 1998, differences in Russian regional growth were almost entirely driven by initial conditions, with resource and human capital endowments, industrial structure, and geographical location playing the dominant roles. However, since the 1998 crisis, the importance of initial conditions has declined significantly, and is now basically reduced to hydrocarbon wealth and advantageous geographical location. More reform-oriented policies, as well as better regional leadership are found to have come to make a significant difference. These results point to determinants of economic performance in periods of actual economic decline being quite different from those in “normal” times of economic growth.
This paper examines the relationship between tax structures and economic growth by entering indicators of the tax structure into a set of panel growth regressions for 21 OECD countries, in which both the accumulation of physical and human capital are accounted for. The results of the analysis suggest that income taxes are generally associated with lower economic growth than taxes on consumption and property. More precisely, the findings allow the establishment of a ranking of tax instruments with respect to their relationship to economic growth. Property taxes, and particularly recurrent taxes on immovable property, seem to be the most growth-friendly, followed by consumption taxes and then by personal income taxes. Corporate income taxes appear to have the most negative effect on GDP per capita. These findings suggest that a revenue-neutral growth-oriented tax reform would be to shift part of the revenue base towards recurrent property and consumption taxes and away from income taxes, especially corporate taxes. There is also evidence of a negative relationship between the progressivity of personal income taxes and growth. All of the results are robust to a number of different specifications, including controlling for other determinants of economic growth and instrumenting tax indicators.
This study illustrates a methodology to assess economic impacts of climate change at city scale, focusing on sea level rise and storm surge. It is based on a statistical analysis of past storm surges in the studied city, matched to a geographical-information analysis of the population and asset exposure in the city, for various sea levels and storm surge characteristics. An assessment of direct losses in case of storm surge (i.e. of the damages to buildings and building content) can then be computed and the corresponding indirect losses – in the form of production and job losses, reconstruction duration, amongst other loses – deduced, allowing a risk analysis of the effectiveness of coastal flood protections, including risk changes due to climate change and sea level rise. This methodology is applied in the city of Copenhagen, capital of Denmark, which is potentially vulnerable to the effects of variability in sea level, as a low lying city....
Foreign direct investment (FDI) represents an increasingly important dimension of international economic integration with global FDI flows growing faster than output over the past two decades. FDI is a particular form of investment, as it transfers knowledge as well as finance that may otherwise be unavailable in the domestic economy. This paper uses firm-level data to identify FDI spillovers across countries, sectors and time. The analysis suggests that knowledge-related spillovers from FDI vary considerably across sectors. Services industries enjoy the strongest productivity-enhancing effects of FDI, particularly through backward linkages. There is no strong evidence of horizontal productivity spillovers at the aggregate level. The results also indicate a significant and positive correlation between the degree of trade openness and output when measuring the impact of foreign presence in the domestic economy. A positive interaction is found between trade liberalisation and productivity spillovers. Thus, trade liberalisation can be seen as an important component of any reform package designed to help countries maximise the benefits of FDI.
Envisagée en termes de Troisième mission, l’université « entreprise », également appelée université « entrepreneuriale », s’est peu à peu inscrite dans le panorama conceptuel ordinaire des politiques publiques. Les analystes ne sont toutefois pas parvenus à s’entendre sur ce qu’implique réellement cette Troisième mission pour les deux autres volets de l’activité universitaire. Ainsi, il existe peu de données probantes fiables permettant d’affirmer que la Troisième mission a un impact négatif sur l’enseignement et/ou la recherche (fondamentale). Selon Martin et Etzkowitz (2000), certaines preuves anecdotiques indiquent que la Troisième mission contribuerait, au contraire, à dynamiser les deux missions traditionnelles. C’est précisément sur ce débat que les auteurs de cet article souhaitent apporter leurs lumières. Ils s’intéressent, à cet effet, à la façon dont la Troisième mission peut réellement promouvoir les activités d’enseignement et de recherche, soulignant à quel point cet effet de levier présente, en lui-même, une importance bien supérieure à la Troisième mission. Les auteurs sont ainsi persuadés qu’une imbrication de l’enseignement, de la recherche et des activités relevant de la Troisième mission peut, grâce au développement progressif et mutuel de ces volets, avoir pour effet de renforcer leurs dynamiques respectives. Conceptualiser globalement l’engagement des établissements en faveur de la Troisième mission en termes « d’architecture entrepreneuriale » peut permettre aux universités de stimuler leur développement institutionnel au-delà de la Troisième mission. Les auteurs concluent en envisageant l’avenir du point de vue des politiques d’enseignement supérieur et de la gestion des établissements d’enseignement supérieur.
Framed in terms of the Third Mission, the “enterprise” or “entrepreneurial” university has increasingly become normalised in public policy; however there remains much contention about the implication of third stream activities. There is little rigorous evidence as to whether the Third Mission adversely affects teaching and/or (basic) research. Martin and Etzkowitz (2000) note there is some anecdotal evidence that the Third Mission has had a positive impact. Indeed, it is to this debate that this paper seeks to contribute. It considers how the Third Mission can positively reinforce teaching and research activities and how this is arguably more significant than the Third Mission itself. Indeed, it proposes that triangulating teaching, research and third stream activities should reinforce the respective dynamics of each through their recursive and reciprocal development. Conceptualising institutional engagement with the third stream holistically in terms of entrepreneurial architectures may enable universities to stimulate institutional development beyond the Third Mission. The paper concludes by reflecting upon and looking towards the future of higher education policy and the management of higher education institutions.
L’idée de concevoir des bâtiments scolaires en réponse au changement ne date pas d’hier. Toutefois, la situation actuelle diffère peut-être en raison de la nature et de l’ampleur des évolutions que nous devons désormais anticiper. L’OCDE a lancé une série de projets à même de faciliter la planification et la conception des infrastructures éducatives de demain. Ces projets visent en effet à étudier d’une part les changements qui agitent le secteur de l’éducation, et d’autre part les environnements d’apprentissage innovants. Les acteurs en charge de la planification scolaire doivent depuis longtemps anticiper la nature des évolutions démographiques de demain, et prévoir par exemple, dans telle ou telle zone géographique, d’augmenter ou de réduire la capacité d’accueil en milieu scolaire au vu des tendances démographiques locales. Désormais, la difficulté réside, pour eux, dans la complexité et l’incertitude qui caractérisent le monde du XXIe siècle. Les résultats du projet de l’OCDE baptisé « L’école de demain : les grandes mutations qui transforment l’éducation » recensent notamment, parmi les facteurs à l’origine de cette incertitude, la baisse des taux de fécondité, la mondialisation rapide de l’économie et la hausse du nombre de familles monoparentales. Face à ces différents phénomènes, responsables politiques et établissements d’enseignement n’ont d’autre choix que de répondre à deux questions essentielles : en quoi consiste l’éducation ? Quelle forme doit-elle revêtir ? Un autre projet de l’OCDE, axé sur l’étude des environnements d’apprentissage innovants, vise quant à lui à déterminer les moyens dont disposent les établissements scolaires pour proposer les expériences d’enseignement et d’apprentissage sans lesquelles nul ne peut prétendre à « apprendre tout au long de la vie ». Les économies et les sociétés ont toutes intérêt à faire de chaque élève un apprenant autonome, capable d’acquérir des connaissances spécialisées dans différents domaines, donc de se reconvertir si nécessaire. La recherche sur l’apprentissage met en évidence deux éléments centraux : il est essentiel de laisser les élèves « s’approprier » l’apprentissage, celui-ci étant par ailleurs un processus à la fois social, culturel, intra personnel et actif. Les travaux de recherche menés sur cette question montrent également que les élèves ont moins de mal à comprendre des matières complexes dans les environnements qui leur permettent de prendre part, avec d’autres membres de la communauté, à des activités faisant appel aux connaissances. Pour se prêter à ce genre d’interactions, les environnements d’apprentissage doivent être radicalement différents de ceux que l’on a conçus jusqu’à présent, et notamment mettre moins l’accent sur les cours « magistraux » dispensés dans les salles de classe traditionnelles.
We model the dynamics of social assistance benefit receipt in Britain using data from the British Household Panel Survey, waves 1–15. First, we discuss definitions of social assistance benefit receipt, and present information about the trends between 1991 and 2005 in the receipt of social assistance benefits, and in annual rates of transition into and out of receipt. Second, we review potential multivariate modelling approaches especially the dynamic random effects probit models that are used in our empirical analysis and, third, discuss sample selection criteria and explanatory variables. Fourth, we present our regression estimation estimates and interpret them. The final section contains a summary of the substantive results, and highlights some lessons concerning application of the analysis for other countries and some methodological issues.
L’économie informelle est difficile à quantifier, mais, quel que soit l’indicateur retenu, elle est très répandue en Amérique latine : elle concernerait environ la moitié de la population active de cette région. Au Mexique, seul pays latino-américain membre de l’OCDE, quelque 60 pour cent de la main-d’oeuvre non agricole, soit près de 22 millions d’individus, ont un emploi informel ou travaillent à leur compte. Ces travailleurs se retrouvent, par choix ou non, en dehors du système fiscal et de protection sociale associé à l’économie organisée, ce qui témoigne de la rupture du contrat social entre les citoyens et l’État.