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This paper tests for the existence of a bank lending channel in the transmission of monetary policy in Brazil using monthly aggregate data for the period 1995:12 through 2008:6. The test is carried out in a VECM setting that allows for multiple cointegrating relationships among the variables of interest. We find evidence of two cointegrating vectors, which we identify as bank loan demand and supply functions by testing for a number of exclusion and exogeneity restrictions on the cointegrating relationships. Loan supply is negatively related to the interbank deposit certificate rate in the long term, which confirms the existence of a lending channel for monetary transmission. The VECM’s short-term dynamics show that loan demand is equilibrium-correcting. But short-term disequilibria in the supply of loans are corrected through changes in the interbank deposit certificate rate, suggesting that monetary policy plays a role in restoring equilibrium in the credit market by affecting the borrowing rate faced by banks to raise non-deposit funds. This Working Paper relates to the 2009 OECD Economic Survey of Brazil (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/brazil)
This paper describes patterns and developments of regulation that potentially affect product market competition in OECD countries over the past decade. It uses the 2008 update and revision of the OECD indicators of product market regulation (PMR) that integrate to a larger extent than in the past information on sector-specific regulation and adapt a simpler and more transparent aggregation technique. The results show that OECD countries have extensively liberalised product markets over the past ten years and – as a consequence - convergence of regulation across OECD countries can be observed. However, reforms appear to have slowed in the most recent period (2003-2008) as compared with the earlier period (1998- 2003). Easing of product market regulation appears to have been driven to a considerable extent by reforms in sector-specific regulation, notably as regards the gas, electricity and telecommunications markets. Countries appear also to have followed consistent reform approaches. However, scope for further reform remains, especially as regards controls of governments over businesses, and as regards certain sectors such as professional services and retail trade.
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.
This paper analyses trends in and driving forces of the revenue composition of sub-central governments (SCG). Between 1995 and 2005 the share of SCG in total government spending increased from 31 to 33%, while the SCG tax share remained stable at around 17%, increasing SCG’s dependence on intergovernmental grants. While equal access to public services is the most common justification for such grants, the grant systems of most countries are much larger than required by equalization. Moreover, rather than smoothing out SCG revenue fluctuations over the cycle, grants often tend to exacerbate them. Finally, there is some evidence that grants reduce SCG tax raising effort, inflate SCG spending and increase SCG deficits and debt. The economic crisis will both sharply reduce SCG’s own tax revenues and – via budget constraints at the central level – increase pressure on the grant system. The crisis could hence help rethink the SCG revenue mix, their tax structure and the size and design of intergovernmental transfers.
This paper analyses trends and driving forces in the revenue composition of sub-central government (SCG). Between 1995 and 2005 the share of SCG in total government spending increased significantly from 31 to 33 percent while the SCG tax share remained stable at around 17 percent, increasing SCG’s dependence on intergovernmental grants. While equal access to public services is the most common justification for such grants, the grant systems of most countries are much larger than required by equalization. Moreover, rather than smoothing out SCG revenue fluctuations over the cycle, grants often tend to exacerbate them. Finally, there is some evidence that grants reduce SCG tax effort, inflate SCG spending and increase SCG deficits and debt. Efficiency and accountability would call for a higher share of SCG spending covered by own taxes. However, that is not easy: increasing property taxes – the most suitable tax for SCG – usually meets with strong resistance. Tax sharing arrangements where central government cedes a part of its income or consumption tax revenue could help lift the SCG tax share without increasing the total tax burden.

Tanzania could be a major food-exporting country but its dependence on rainfall, poor transport and marketing infrastructures, as well as low access to technology, lead to persistent food security problems. The Tanzanian government has decided to focus its Agricultural Sector Development Programme (ASDP) on irrigation. However, even though the importance of irrigation to reduce Tanzania’s dependency on rainfall is undisputed, it would have been better to have a two-fold programme with one part focusing on production-related investments such as irrigation and the other fostering commercial agriculture and the private sector. While donor commitments to agriculture show a mixed trend, Tanzania is one of the few African countries with a basket fund in agriculture. The Tanzanian government aims to establish the ASDP as the sector programme to which all donor interventions should be aligned. First reviews of the ASDP reveal that capacity to implement the programme is lacking at all levels. A lot of capacity building and a change of mindset in Local Government Authorities (LGAs) are needed to make farmer empowerment and private sector involvement a reality. Furthermore, rural and agricultural development efforts should be better co-ordinated as both draw on the same limited capacities at the local level.

This paper examines how the different forms of development finance for low-income countries are likely to be affected by the global financial crisis, principally through reductions in remittances, aid flows and FDI. It argues that the channels of transmission of the crisis for particular countries will not necessarily be obvious ones. Despite initiatives to lower the debt burden for low-income countries over recent years, the crisis will also have consequences for the external debt sustainability as they struggle with falling export revenues, currency depreciations and rising fiscal deficits. In other senses, however, the crisis represents an opportunity for reform. With regard to aid, for instance, it is suggested that a hard-budget constraint on aid budgets may help focus attention on increasing aid efficiency. Moreover, it is argued that the prospects for the developing world depend not only on how the financial crisis evolves in the OECD countries, but also increasingly on how growth holds up in the rest of the developing world. In this sense, the paper discusses the possibility that South-South linkages are strengthened in the wake of this crisis. Finally, the paper looks at the global governance issues that arise from the crisis. In many areas, existing policy frameworks have been discredited by the crisis. It is argued that future reforms in global governance and regulatory structures need to take into account more fully the developing world to be effective.
This paper reviews and assesses in terms of availability, reliability and transparency existing policy and outcome indicators that have been found to be linked both directly and indirectly to economic growth and living standards. Indicators aiming at capturing the political and social situation of countries, as well as governance-related issues, are examined (e.g. political system, political stability, corruption, crime and violence). Topics also include product and labour markets, infrastructure, trade, financial indicators and composite indices of reform.

This paper focuses on Swiss GDP revisions and the uncertainty they generate from the point of view of monetary policy. After a description of the revisions features, we use GDP vintages to compute real-time output gaps using a production function approach. Then, with a nominal feedback rule, we assess the impact of GDP – and hence output gap – on revisions monetary policy. The main results are threefold. First, Swiss GDP revisions – similarly to those of other small economies – are large, and estimates converge slowly to their final value. Second, GDP mismeasurements clearly exacerbate the difficulty in estimating output gaps. Third, the impact of revisions on monetary policy varies over time. Via its effect on output gaps, ceteris paribus, the inaccuracy of GDP estimates risks introducing a procyclical bias in monetary policy decisions.

A well-functioning labour market is essential to sustain rapid economic growth in the face of population ageing. Priorities are to reverse the rising share of non-regular workers, which has negative implications for both growth and equity, and encourage greater employment of women and youth, who are under-represented in the labour force. Attracting more women to employment requires increasing the availability of childcare, strengthening maternity leave and creating more family-friendly workplaces. Youth employment rates should be boosted by upgrading tertiary education through stronger competition and closer links to enterprises to reduce mismatches. Educational reform should be extended to elementary and secondary schools to enhance efficiency and decrease the burden of private tutoring. The age of retirement of employees should be raised by eliminating mandatory retirement and phasing out the retirement allowance. Active labour market policies should focus on policies to expand human capital rather than wage subsidies.
  • 01 Jan 2009
  • Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling
  • Pages: 91
  • in SIGMA Papers
Before joining the EU in May 2004, Central and Eastern European countries were required to professionalise their civil services. Most were perceived as having made improvements sufficient to be granted EU membership status. But what happened next? Five years after accession, this paper answers the question.
French
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.
French

There have been calls to increase the autonomy of higher education institutions in Europe for a number of years. They have been counterbalanced by demands for increasing accountability and a European quality assurance system. In London in 2007, the European ministers of education decided to implement a European register of accredited quality agencies, and defined standards for registration. Being part of the register requires “substantial compliance with all standards” instead of “full-compliance”. This might take into consideration the context of the national higher education system, the role of the agency in the quality assurance system, and even the national culture and traditions, allowing for different interpretations, some imprecision, and diverse degrees of flexibility and compliance.

Indications from the United States suggest an emerging desire at the federal level to play a more visible role in regulating higher education through intervention in the accreditation system to ensure increased institutional accountability. This may have a parallel in the European situation. While in the United States the attempts at increased federal control have so far apparently failed, in Europe quality systems linked to higher education institutions were replaced with “independent” accrediting agencies. We analyse these changes and offer a possible interpretation for the differences on the two sides of the Atlantic.

Accréditation supranationale, confiance et autonomie des établissements : Contrastes du développement de l’accréditation entre l’Europe et les États-Unis


À l’échelon européen, certains soulignent depuis plusieurs années la nécessité de conférer une autonomie accrue aux établissements d’enseignement supérieur, alors même que d’autres exigent que ces derniers rendent davantage de comptes concernant leurs activités et leurs performances.

À Londres en 2007, les ministres européens de l’éducation ont décidé la mise en place d’un registre européen où figureront les agences accréditées et où seront définies les normes auxquelles ces agences devront se plier pour être autorisées à y figurer. Les conditions à respecter pour pouvoir être inscrit au registre européen sont ainsi passées d’une « conformité totale à l’ensemble des normes » à une « large conformité ». L’interprétation de ces normes pourrait s’effectuer en tenant compte des spécificités propres à chaque système d’enseignement supérieur national, au rôle de chaque agence au sein du système d’assurance qualité, voire de la culture et des traditions nationales, laissant la voie ouverte à des divergences d’interprétation, à une certaine marge d’imprécision et à divers degrés de flexibilité et de conformité.

Des indications provenant des États-Unis suggèrent l’émergence d’un souhait, au niveau fédéral, de jouer un rôle plus visible dans la régulation de l’enseignement supérieur, via l’intervention du système d’accréditation pour assurer un développement de la responsabilité institutionnelle. Cette tendance incite naturellement à établir un parallèle avec la situation observée en Europe.

Tandis qu’aux États-Unis, les tentatives visant à renforcer le contrôle par les autorités fédérales semblent avoir échoué, en Europe, les systèmes de qualité liés aux établissements d’enseignement supérieur ont été remplacés par des agences d’accréditation « indépendantes ». Dans ce rapport, les auteurs proposent une analyse de ces changements et suggèrent une interprétation possible des différences existant des deux côtés de l’Atlantique.

High expectations surrounded the two waves of eastward EU enlargement in 2004 and 2007, with the extension of the EU Internal Market being expected to deliver a substantial boost to economic growth in new and old member States alike. Indeed, considerable progress has been made, with existing evidence pointing to increased trade and FDI flows, enhanced east-west migration and a more stable macroeconomic environment. However, completion of the internal market is progressing at an uneven pace, and comparatively less progress can be seen in services industries, which provide over two-thirds of jobs and value added in the economy. Empirical estimates suggest that competition and trade-enhancing reforms in services industries could generate substantial productivity improvements across EU member economies. Over a period of 10 years, the predicted increase in labour productivity resulting from a bold reform package is around 10% for the average EU country, and new member States stand to gain even more. In addition to service-sector reform, priorities towards a more integrated EU internal market should include removing remaining barriers to labour mobility, improving transport infrastructure, mutual recognition of qualifications, and enhanced market integration of network industries. Finally, a more explicit use of benchmarking may help to enhance the momentum of future internal market reforms.
New Zealand’s living standards remain well below the OECD average. This is entirely attributable to persistently low labour productivity, which in turn is related to economic geography as well as structural policy factors. The small size and remoteness of the economy diminish its access to world markets, the scale and efficiency of domestic businesses, the level of competition and proximity to the world’s technology frontier. This points to the need for a “New Zealand policy advantage”, that is, a set of structural policies attractive and welcoming enough to overcome the geographic handicap and attract the drivers of prosperity – investment, skills and ideas – to New Zealand. The reforms of the 1980s and 1990s laid much of the groundwork for creating this advantage and for a pick-up in productivity growth. But in recent years, New Zealand has lost ground relative to its OECD peers. The reform focus shifted away from growth and the government introduced much often poor quality regulation. Policies should be refocused around the productivity goal in a number of areas, beginning with those covered in this paper, namely international trade, the business climate for domestic and foreign investment, public sector efficiency, infrastructure, innovation and natural resources management. This paper also evaluates the recently legislated emissions trading scheme through a productivity lens. This Working Paper relates to the 2009 OECD Economic Survey of New Zealand (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/nz).

The growing cost and frequency of natural catastrophes and their implications for economic growth and development have led to a concern over the level of public awareness and education relative to large-scale catastrophes and disaster risk reduction measures. Public awareness and education of disaster risk reduction are, in particular, increasingly acknowledged as important components of effective risk management of natural catastrophes. The financial component of disaster risk management and mitigation strategies, involving risk transfer and compensation strategies, is also recognised as being important for reducing the financial impact of catastrophes on individuals, businesses, and governments, and permitting more rapid economic and social recovery. As such, systematic promotion of public awareness and education of risks and risk reduction measures, including financial loss-sharing and risk transfer tools, is an important aspect of national and international strategies to reduce vulnerability and losses from catastrophic events.

The aim of this paper is to assess the ability of social spending to smooth output shocks and to provide stabilization. The results show that overall social spending is able to smooth about 16 percent of a shock to GDP. Among its subcategories, social spending devoted to Old Age and Unemployment are those that contribute more to provide smoothing. Moreover, the stabilization effects of social spending are significantly larger in those countries where the size of social spending is higher. The empirical results are economically and statistically significant and robust.
During the 1990s and the 2000s a variety of crises affected the stability of international capital markets: from the European Monetary System crisis in 1992-93 and the emerging market crises to today’s financial crisis have been present in the arenas of capital markets. These crises stimulated the theoretical and empirical literature on the economics of the crises in several ways, among other things on the determinants of a crisis, its impact on domestic output, and policy implications. In most of the recent crises public sector financing difficulties combined with currency problems dominated the collapse of these countries. Both unsustainable fiscal and monetary policies were important factors behind these crises (...)
French
This paper examines key trade and trade related issues facing South Africa. It describes South Africa‘s re-entry into the global trade architecture and its economic growth in the context of its trade performance, as well as the composition and performance of South African exports at the product and sector level in the period from the early 1990s to 2006. The study also assesses South Africa‘s comparative trade performance based on a gravity model of international trade and discusses some key historical and recent trade policy developments. Finally, the study provides an econometric assessment of the impact of South Africa‘s trade liberalisation during the period from 1988 to 2003 on labour and total factor productivity across its industrial sectors. It shows that while South African trade performance has been good in recent years there is significant room to liberalise further as an adjunct to labour market reforms. Further trade policy liberalisation would bring about important equity and efficiency gains. Multilateral trade liberalisation has the potential to maximise the gains and ease the transition to freer trade for South Africa but unilateral liberalisation also deserves consideration.
This report gives an overview of sensor technology and fields of application of sensors and sensor networks. It discusses in detail selected fields of application that have high potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reviews studies quantifying the environmental impact. The review of the studies assessing the impact of sensor technology in reducing greenhouse gas emissions reveals that the technology has a high potential to contribute to a reduction of emissions across various fields of application. Whereas studies clearly estimate an overall strong positive effect in smart grids, smart buildings, smart industrial applications as well as precision agriculture and farming, results for the field of smart transportation are mixed due to rebound effects. In particular intelligent transport systems render transport more efficient, faster and cheaper. As a consequence, demand for transportation and thus the consumption of resources both increase which can lead to an overall negative effect.
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