Browse by: "2009"

This report develops a conceptual framework for the assessment of costs and benefits associated with non-tariff measures that allows an evidence-based comparative assessment of alternative regulatory approaches.

Au cours de l’année 2008, l’Office flamand pour l’infrastructure scolaire (AGIOn) a évalué la qualité des bâtiments scolaires en Flandres, en utilisant un système de contrôle basé sur l’expérience internationale. Les résultats ont démontré que la plupart des bâtiments scolaires répondent aux exigences de base en matière d’habitabilité et de sécurité, mais ne sont pas à la hauteur en ce qui concerne les défis pédagogiques et sociaux du XXIe siècle.

Cet article émet des recommandations sur les approches à adopter en vue de la conception d’environnements pédagogiques durables. Les auteurs présentent des exemples récents de bâtiments scolaires britanniques qui réduisent leurs émissions de carbone et capitalisent sur les sources d’énergie renouvelables, et prédisent la manière dont les écoles répondront à leurs besoins énergétiques dans le futur.

CELE’s International Pilot Project on Evaluating Quality in Educational Spaces aims to assist education authorities, schools and others to maximise the use of and investment in learning environments. This article provides an update on the pilot project, which is currently being implemented in Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal and the United Kingdom.

This article recommends approaches to take in designing sustainable educational environments. The authors present recent examples of UK school buildings that reduce carbon emissions and capitalise on renewable energy sources, and predict how schools will respond to energy needs in the future.

L’Étude pilote internationale du CELE pour l’évaluation de la qualité des espaces éducatifs a pour objectif d’aider les autorités éducatives, les écoles et d’autres à optimiser l’utilisation des investissements dans les environnements pédagogiques. Cet article donne un aperçu de l’avancement de l’étude pilote actuellement mise en œuvre au Brésil, au Mexique, en Nouvelle-Zélande, au Portugal et au Royaume-Uni.

Determining comparability of effort between mitigation actions and targets proposed by different countries is an ongoing issue for international climate negotiations. A number of indicators have been proposed to reflect comparability of effort and differences in national circumstances; key amongst these are greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (per capita), GDP per capita, as well as GHG mitigation potential. This paper focuses on mitigation potential to provide a comparative assessment between six OECD member economies: Australia, Canada, the EU, Japan, Mexico and the US. GHG mitigation potential is defined to be the level of GHG emission reductions that could be realised, relative to the projected emission baseline in a given year, for a given carbon price.

Data for the selected countries were obtained across the time horizon of 2005-2050 from a total of 19 models, including models that are used to inform climate policy-makers in each of these economies. The paper examines the implications of model structure, and assesses how baseline scenarios vary between the models, before analysing the GHG mitigation potential estimates.

GHG mitigation potential is compared for carbon prices of USD 20, 50 and 100/tCO2e. For an assumed carbon price of USD 50/tCO2e, mitigation potential in Japan is estimated to be relatively lower than for the other five economies, ranging from 5-20% emission reduction from baseline in 2020. Although noticeably fewer models report data for Mexico at this price level, the models show deeper potential reductions in the range of 25-37% at the same carbon price. Mitigation potential estimates for Australia, Canada and the US show a wider range of 14-39% reduction relative to 2020 baselines. The EU shows a relatively tighter range of 16-29% emission reductions to 2020. The results of this study show greater emission reduction potentials in the year 2050 than in the year 2020 across the six economies examined, reflecting structural and technical changes that occur over time, including the availability of carbon capture and storage from 2030. In general, the paper finds closer agreement across the models for mitigation potential in 2020 than for later years, reflecting greater uncertainty as projections extend into the future.

In the course of 2008, the Flemish Agency for Infrastructure in Education (AGIOn) evaluated the quality of school buildings in Flanders using a monitoring system based on international experience. The results showed that most school buildings satisfy the basic requirements of habitability and safety, but they often fall short when it comes to the new pedagogical and social challenges of the 21st century.

The collapse in world trade volumes at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 was exceptional by historical standards. This paper shows that world demand (to which trade has become more responsive in recent decades) can explain most of the collapse in world trade, but that tight credit conditions have likely amplified the short-term trade response. Credit tightening likely accelerated the trade decline through trade finance constraints and its relatively larger impact on trade-intensive sectors. A portion of the trade decline remains unexplained, which may reflect a possible breakdown in global supply chains. Looking ahead, the pace of normalisation in financial conditions and the future evolution of global supply integration will affect the speed of recovery in trade and global output.

This document provides a first comparative overview of the presence and outcomes of the children of immigrants in the labour markets of OECD countries, based on a collection of data from 16 OECD countries with large immigrant populations. Its key findings are the following: • In about half of all OECD countries, children of immigrants - both native-born offspring of immigrants and foreign-born who immigrated before adulthood with their parents - account for ten or more percent of young adults (aged 20-29) in the labour market. • Most children of immigrants have parents from low- and middle-income countries, and the share with parents from such countries is larger among foreign-born children than among the nativeborn offspring of immigrants. This is a result of the diversification of migration flows over the past 20 years. • Among the native-born children of immigrants in European OECD countries, Turkey is the single most important country of parental origin, followed by Morocco. When comparing the countries of parental origin for the native- and the foreign-born children of immigrants, one observes in the European OECD countries a strong decline in the importance of the origin countries of the post-World War II wave of labour migration, in particular Turkey but also Morocco, Italy, Portugal and Pakistan. • In all countries except Germany and Switzerland, a large majority of the native-born children of immigrants have obtained the nationality of their countries of residence. • The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has demonstrated lower assessment results for the children of immigrants in most European OECD countries. There are close links between PISA outcomes and educational attainment levels. In the countries in which children of migrants have large gaps in PISA-scores vis-à-vis children of natives, children of immigrants are also strongly overrepresented among those who are low-educated. • One observes a clear difference between the non-European OECD countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States) on the one hand and European OECD countries on the other hand. In the former, the children of migrants have education and labour market outcomes that tend to be at least at par with those of the children of natives. In the European OECD countries (with the exception of Switzerland), both education and labour market outcomes of the children of immigrants tend to be much less favourable. • Part of the differences in labour market outcomes observed in most European OECD countries is due to the fact that the children of immigrants tend to have a lower educational attainment than the children of natives. However, significant gaps remain in many of these countries even after correcting for differences in average educational attainment. • The remaining gaps are particularly large for the offspring of migrants from Turkey and from certain non-OECD countries such as Morocco. In all countries, children with parents from middle-and low-income countries have lower outcomes than children of immigrants from highincome countries. The differences are particularly large for young immigrant women. • On average over the OECD countries for which data are available, the children of immigrants have an unemployment rate that is about 1.6 times higher than that of the children of natives, for both genders. The children of immigrants also have lower employment rates – the gaps compared with the children of natives are about 8 percentage points for men and about 13 percentage points for women. • For women, one observes much better results for the native children of immigrants than for young immigrants, suggesting that having been fully raised and educated in the country of residence brings some additional benefit. However, this is not observed for men, where the native-born children of immigrants do not seem to fare better than the young immigrants, particularly after accounting for the lower educational attainment of the latter group. • The less favourable picture for the female children of migrants compared with their male counterparts is less clear-cut after controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, in particular marital status and number of children. Part of the “double disadvantage” for the female offspring of immigrants seems to be due to the fact that in the age range under consideration (20-29 years), they are overrepresented among those who are (already) married and have children. Indeed, once controlling for this, native-born women who have parents from the Maghreb region or Southern Europe, as well those with Turkish parental origin, tend to have higher employment rates - relative to comparable natives - than their male counterparts. • When in employment, children of immigrants are in occupations similar to those of the children of natives. They are also widely spread throughout the economy, but tend to remain underrepresented in the public sector.

This paper investigates the notion and role of trust in modern societies as a first step towards the construction of indicators that could better inform our understanding of societal progress. Trust is commonly viewed as a proxy indicator of social capital, and a high level of trust is considered a factor that can enhance economic growth and social well-being. Indicators of trust inform about the quality of people’s interactions with others, hence on their assessment of the extent to which other people in the community are perceived as potential partners rather than as rivals. The paper, starting from the various notions and theories of trust provided in literature, discusses different definitions of trust, its various dimensions (i.e. interpersonal and institutional trust), their relation to the broader notion of social capital, and the different factors that affect it. It then overviews the measures currently used to assess trust, discussing their advantages and disadvantages. Questions assessing the degree of trust of respondents towards other people and institutions have been asked in dozens of large-scale surveys worldwide, and these data highlight systematic relations between trust and various dimensions of economic and social well-being. The paper concludes by noting the limits of available evidence and the scope for improvements through better survey design and more comparable survey questions.

This paper discusses the most relevant issues concerning teacher evaluation in primary and secondary education by reviewing the recent literature and analysing current practices within the OECD countries. First, it provides a conceptual framework highlighting key features of teacher evaluation schemes. In particular, it emphasises the importance of clarifying the purposes of teacher appraisal, whether summative when designed to assure that the practices enhancing student learning are undertaken or formative when conducted for further professional development objectives. It also encompasses the diverse criteria and instruments commonly used to assess teachers as well as the actors generally involved in the process and potential consequences for teachers’ professional life. Second, it deals with a number of contentious points, including the question of the use of student outcomes to measure teaching performance, the advantages and drawbacks of different approaches given the purpose emphasised and resource restrictions, the implementation difficulties resulting from different stakeholders’ interests and possible ways to overcome these obstacles. Finally, it provides an account of current empirical evidence, pointing out mixed results stemming from difficulties in assessing the effects of such evaluation schemes on teaching quality, teachers’ motivation and student learning. It concludes by considering the circumstances under which teacher evaluation systems seem to be more effective, fair and reliable. Developing a comprehensive approach to evaluate teachers is critical to make demands for educational best practice compatible with teachers’ appropriation of the process as well as to enhance the decisive attractiveness and recognition of the teaching profession.

Estonia gave up the exchange rate and monetary policy tools of macroeconomic management when it introduced its currency board in 1992. While the currency board arrangement served the country well during transition in the 1990s, it offers limited flexibility to implement policies that would ease the EU convergence as well as mitigate the global financial and economic crisis. The ongoing financial crisis has made euro adoption more attractive than ever and put it on the top of the country’s policy agenda. However, shocks affecting Estonia are only weakly synchronized with those of the euro area, and the structure of its economy also notably differs from the euro zone. To benefit fully from joining the EMU, Estonia must strengthen other adjustment mechanisms to shocks, including flexibility of the labour market, further improving its environment to do business and a framework, which allows for anti-cyclical fiscal policies.

Compulsory school education in Italy produces poor results in terms of 15-year olds’ performance on PISA tests, compared with other OECD countries, despite a relatively high level of expenditure. While the influence of social background is smaller than in many OECD countries, it is largely transmitted through a kind of self-segregation resulting from family choices among the different types of upper secondary school. Large differences in pupils’ performance between regions cannot be explained by the quantity of resources available; separating the influence of socio-economic conditions from school efficiency is difficult and must be treated carefully in plans for extending fiscal federalism. The Italian government is rightly concerned to get better value for money and this chapter argues that policies to improve the information available to schools and teachers on the results they are achieving, while giving them appropriate incentives, responsibility and power to respond to such information, are necessary accompaniments to expenditure-saving policies. An improved focus on good quality training, both for new recruits and experienced teachers, and recruitment procedures themselves, should also pay dividends on efficiency.

The global financial and economic crisis has struck Iceland with extreme force. Iceland’s three main banks, accounting for almost all of the banking system, failed in October 2008. They were unable to resist the deterioration in global financial markets following the failure of Lehman Brothers. The banks had pursued risky expansion strategies – notably borrowing in foreign capital markets to finance the aggressive international expansion of Icelandic investment companies – that made them vulnerable to the deterioration in global financial markets. They had also grown to be too big for the government to rescue. When access to foreign capital eventually closed, the banks failed. Non-financial firms and households were also vulnerable to the deterioration in global financial conditions, having taken on a lot of debt in recent years based on inflated collateral values. In some cases, the debt was foreign-currency denominated, without matching foreign-currency assets or revenues. In the wake of the banking crisis, the government obtained an IMF Stand-By Arrangement to provide favourable access to foreign capital markets and creditability for the recovery programme. Even so, the recession is likely to be deeper in Iceland than in most other OECD countries owing to the seriousness of the banking crisis and the weakness of private sector balance sheets. Reforms are needed to strengthen prudential regulation and supervision. This Working Paper relates to the 2009 Economic Survey of Iceland.

Remittance flows are an important source of financing for developing countries. In addition to the microeconomic impact at the household level, remittances have grown into an important pillar of macroeconomic stability, reducing volatility of external flows, lessening the probability of current account reversals, thus strengthening creditworthiness. By studying 83 developing countries covering the period 1993-2006, we analyse the impact of workers’ remittances on sovereign rating assessment. First, we look at the traditional determinants of sovereign ratings and assess to what extent remittances are taken into account. Second, we build a model for high-remittance receptors to capture the potential effect that remittances may have on Fitch, Moody’s and S&P ratings. Third, we assign ratings to unrated Latin American countries for which remittance flows are generally high. Our conclusion supports the view that credit rating agencies (CRAs) do take remittance flows into account to rate sovereigns. Nevertheless, this variable turns out to be significant for a limited set of countries, small in size and classified in the low and middle income categories. We derive policy implications and recommendations from our findings for boosting rating coverage.