1887
  1. Home
  2. Papers
  3. Browse by: "2010"

Browse by: "2010"

Index

Title Index

Year Index

/search?value51=igo%2Foecd&value6=2010&sortDescending=true&sortDescending=true&value5=2010&value53=status%2F50+OR+status%2F100+OR+status%2F90&value52=&value7=&value2=&option7=&value4=subtype%2Farticle+OR+subtype%2Fworkingpaper+OR+subtype%2Fpolicybrief&option5=year_from&value3=&option6=year_to&fmt=ahah&publisherId=%2Fcontent%2Figo%2Foecd&option3=&option52=&sortField=prism_publicationDate&sortField=prism_publicationDate&option4=dcterms_type&option53=pub_contentStatus&option51=pub_igoId&option2=&page=21&page=21
China’s population is set to age fast, owing to low fertility and rising life expectancy. With ongoing migration of the younger cohorts to urban areas the increase in the old-age dependency ratio will be even more pronounced in rural than in urban areas. Very different pension arrangements exist across the country, with diverse and segmented systems in urban areas, belated retirement and low replacement ratios in rural areas, and special rules governing public sector pensions. Labour mobility is impeded by some of features of the current pension system, not least limited benefit portability. Various reforms have been initiated or proposed over the past decade. Some add to the existing fragmentation, while others, notably those providing for greater geographical pooling, have only partly been implemented. Also, under current rules, effective replacement rates are fairly low and projected to decline further, both for rural and urban residents, which may be difficult to sustain with the elderly living less and less with their descendants. Furthermore, as the countryside ages, much of the additional burden will be shouldered by local governments with insufficient resources. These challenges can be addressed by gradually consolidating the various regimes, raising retirement ages and shifting more of the cost of rural pensions to the central government. Even if different schemes for different categories of workers were to persist, each should be unified over time, first provincially and then nationally, phasing out the urban-rural distinction.

Universities are, to a large extent, publicly funded. It is reasonable to expect that society should benefit as a result. This means that scientific research should at least have a potential societal impact. Universities and individual researchers should therefore give serious thought to the societal relevance of their research activities and report on them widely. Core questions they should be asking are: “Do we do the right things?” and “Do we do them right?”. This implies that as well as indicators of scientific quality, attention should be given to indicators of societal relevance. These two considerations are examined in the context of current evaluation practices of academic research. Twelve indicators of societal relevance are proposed, focusing on both their socio-cultural and economic value. The examples given mainly concern the health and life sciences. This paper concludes with a discussion of the key challenges in evaluating the societal relevance of scientific research.

The current economic and financial crisis has shaken confidence in funded pension systems in general and in defined contribution (DC) pension plans in particular. The crisis has highlighted the impact of market conditions on retirement savings accumulated in DC pension plans and the uncertainty as to whether those retirement savings may prove adequate to finance retirement – particularly for those close to retirement. The purpose of this paper is to provide recommendations on how to ensure adequate retirement income from DC pension plans. In this context, this paper addresses three main questions: 1) How much do people need to save? 2) How can the effects of market risk on DC pension plans be alleviated? 3) How can retirement income be protected during the payout phase? The analysis concludes that in order to deliver adequate retirement income from DC pension plans with a certain degree of certainty, there is a need for comprehensive measures which include: higher contributions; increasing the contribution period by postponing retirement; setting as default options relatively conservative investment policies including life-cycle strategies; and managing risk in the payout phase with inflationindexed life annuities.

Tougher issuance conditions related to the surge in government borrowing needs are the reasons why issuance arrangements have not always been working as efficiently as before the crisis. This prompted debt management offices (DMOs) in the OECD area to review existing issuance policies and procedures. The crisis also had an impact on the use of indicators or guidelines relating to the key risks of the maturity structure of issuance or outstanding debt. Although OECD issuance procedures are likely to differ considerably at the level of technical standards and detailed institutional arrangements, increased integration of global financial markets has encouraged the standardisation of financial instruments and convergence of general issuance procedures. As a result, OECD issuance policies and procedures are broadly similar with a high degree of transparency and predictability. However, in response to tougher issuance conditions, DMOs have implemented changes in existing issuance procedures and policies that may have led to a somewhat greater diversity of primary market arrangements and procedures. The paper also reviews strategies and indicators for the management of the debt portfolio. Although issuance procedures and targets for portfolio management may have become somewhat more opportunistic in some jurisdictions, debt managers continue to emphasise the importance of transparency and predictability.

Financial markets have recovered substantially but vulnerabilities remain significant. Ample liquidity may lead to new bubbles, particularly in some emerging markets, and uncertainties about government exit strategies and regulatory changes threaten a fledgling upswing. Co-ordination and communication of exit policies will be important, and exit from policy stimulus should not be precipitated at the current juncture. While financial institutions have increasingly obtained market financing and paid back state aid, the sector remains fragile; thus, such voluntary pay-backs should meet preconditions aimed at ensuring the soundness and sustainability of the concerned institutions’ balance sheets. At the same time, expectations of future writedowns and more stringent capital rules put pressure on bank lending more generally. Restarting securitisation to support lending would be important and could be fostered by government initiatives focussing on standardisation, transparency and due diligence to restore investor confidence. Regulatory reforms currently being proposed concern accounting rules, capital requirements and compensation issues. However, further reforms are required to address such systemic issues as moral hazard created by public support. Measures would include resolution mechanisms for large and systemically important banks as well as appropriately fire-walled business structures for the financial sector. Peer pressure via co-operation in international standard-setting and relevant bodies should help to keep the reform momentum, overcome political impediments to reform and maintain a level playing field.

This paper discusses the financial systems of OECD Enhanced Engagement Countries (EE5: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and South Africa). Rather than providing a comprehensive survey of each financial system, it is designed to highlight some of the salient features of EE5 financial systems, emphasising those aspects of the system that these countries have in common and those that are different from those in OECD countries. While there are significant differences among EE5 countries, this group shares some distinctive characteristics. EE5 have relatively lower financial assets/GDP ratios and their financial intermediation remains relatively bank dominated and less international. Equity markets have reached proportions comparable to those of OECD countries, but fixed income markets (especially private debt markets) remain relatively backward. At the same time, the financial systems of EE5 countries have been developing rapidly supported by steady reforms. Going forward, many institutions outside OECD countries are likely to become bigger players in financial markets, and the emergence of large asset holdings, rising shares of world equity and bond markets and the emergence of powerful financial institutions in new regions of the world are likely to influence the contours of the world financial system in years to come.

Central banks have responded with exceptional vigour to the crisis by using their traditional interest-rate tools to their limits and deploying a wide range of unconventional measures. This paper documents these responses in a systematic way, reviews the evidence about their impact, and discusses the need to exit from these measures. Unconventional monetary policy measures appear to have been broadly successful in terms of improving conditions in financial markets and stabilising the real economy. In line with the improvement in functioning of financial markets, however, these unconventional measures should be gradually removed. Given the considerable changes in the size and composition of central banks' balance sheets, the exit will likely involve the combination of various tools. More challenging questions surround the decisions of when and how fast the current exceptional amount of stimulus should be reduced and then eliminated. A particularly important goal will be to preserve the hard-won anchoring of inflation expectations and dissipate any hypothetical fears that central banks? greater risk exposure and purchases of bonds issued or backed by governments might have reduced their independence regarding monetary policy decisions.
The world is recovering from the worst crisis since the Great Depression, leaving a strong and lasting impact on Member countries’ public finances. This paper analyses how sub-central governments (SCG) are affected and how fiscal policy has reacted in the first months after the outbreak of the crisis. In general and in line with earlier downturns, SCG’s public finance appear to be less affected than central governments. However, SCGs suffer from a scissors effect of higher spending and lower tax revenue, specially those with a volatile tax base and large social welfare responsibilities. While some SCGs were conducting their own stimulus plans, others cut expenditures and raised taxes, potentially undermining national government’s recovery programmes. Most national governments are helping SCGs to cope with the crisis, by disbursing additional grants and supporting investment programmes, by easing centrally-imposed fiscal rules, lifting borrowing constraints or by temporarily raising the sub-central tax share. The crisis also showed the need for better coordination in intergovernmental fiscal relations, both for more macroeconomic coherence and for efficiency in public service delivery. Several countries are creating or reinvigorating their institutions for managing relations across levels of government.

Worldwide, economic and other factors are pressing institutions of higher education to assess student learning to insure that graduates acquire the skills and competencies demanded in the 21st century. This paper summarises the status of undergraduate student learning outcomes assessment at accredited colleges and universities in the United States. Three-quarters of institutions have established learning outcomes for all their students, a necessary first step in the assessment cycle. Most schools are using a combination of institution-level and programme-level assessments. Quality assurance requirements in the form of regional and specialised accreditation, along with an institutional commitment to improve, are the primary drivers of assessment. While there is considerable assessment activity going on, it does not appear that many institutions are using the results effectively to inform curricular modifications or otherwise to enhance teaching and learning. The paper closes with recommendations for various groups that can advance the assessment and institutional improvement agenda.

This paper outlines the need for adopting a more scientific approach to specifying and assessing academic standards in higher education. Drawing together insights from large-scale studies in Australia, it advances a definition of academic standards, explores potential indicators of academic quality and looks at approaches for setting standards. As learner outcomes need to be placed at the forefront of work on academic standards, this paper concludes by exploring the implications of this position for student assessment and institutional change.

Bologna reform eulogies and protests tend to focus on the benefits and shortcomings of the new two-tier curricula, their implementation and orientation. In this article, an assessment of the Bologna reforms is made in terms of their larger and less widely discussed systemic and institutional effects - which go far beyond the original reformers’ intentions. Apart from the introduction of new degree structures, the two Bologna reform dimensions which have been most readily adopted and dynamically implemented are the overhaul of Europe’s quality assurance system and the recent reforms of doctoral education. In contrast, the visionary goals of using learning outcomes and competencies as the structuring principle of all curricula in order to ensure greater transparency and reliability, and of promoting student-centred learning, have only been adopted by few countries and institutions. However, the Bologna reforms have also had a range of unintended effects on systems and institutions that often go unnoticed when discussing their impact on European higher education. These include redefining the relationship between institutional profiles, strengthening central institutional leadership and mobilising horizontal communication within institutions.

Sybille Reichert, Reichert Consulting: Policy and Strategy Development in Higher Education, Switzerland

This paper outlines the need for adopting a more scientific approach to specifying and assessing academic standards in higher education. Drawing together insights from large-scale studies in Australia, it advances a definition of academic standards, explores potential indicators of academic quality and looks at approaches for setting standards. As learner outcomes need to be placed at the forefront of work on academic standards, this paper concludes by exploring the implications of this position for student assessment and institutional change.

What are patent families? What is the impact of adopting one definition or another? Are some definitions of patent families better suited than others for certain uses in statistical and economic analysis? The aim of this paper is to provide some answers to these questions, compare the methodologies and outcomes of the most commonly used patent family definitions and provide guidance on how to build families based on raw data from the EPO Worldwide Patent Statistics database (PATSTAT). One of our findings, based on a characterisation of family structures, is that extended patent families and other family definitions, such as equivalents and single-priority families, provide identical outcomes for about 75% of the families with earliest priority dates in the 1990s because they have quite simple structures. Differences across definitions only become apparent for the families with more complex structures, which represent 25% of the families of that period.
Much of the current policy debate on adaptation to climate change has focussed on estimation of adaptation costs, ways to raise and to scale-up funding for adaptation, and the design of the international institutional architecture for adaptation financing. There is however little or no emphasis so far on actual delivery mechanisms to channel these resources at the sub-national level, particularly to target the poor who are also often the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. It is in this context that microfinance merits a closer look. This paper offers the first empirical assessment of the linkages between microfinance supported activities and adaptation to climate change. Specifically, the lending portfolios of the 22 leading microfinance institutions in two climate vulnerable countries – Bangladesh and Nepal - are analysed to assess the synergies and potential conflicts between microfinance and adaptation. The two countries had also been previously examined as part of an earlier OECD report on the links between macro-level Official Development Assistance and adaptation. This analysis provides a complementary “bottom-up” perspective on financing for adaptation. Insights from this analysis also have implications for OECD countries. This is because microfinance is also being increasingly tapped to reduce the vulnerability of the poor in domestic OECD contexts as well and may therefore have the potential to contribute to adaptation. The paper identifies areas of opportunity where microfinance could be harnessed to play a greater role in fostering adaptation, as well as its limitations in this context. It also explores the linkage between the top-down macro-financing for adaptation through international financial mechanisms and the bottom-up activities that can be implemented through microfinance.
This report examines how the competencies acquired by young Canadians at age 15 influence their participation in post secondary studies. These competencies are measured through the PISA results which were obtained through a sample of Canadian students who took the PISA test in 2000 at age 15. The report seeks to answer the following questions: • How do the results of the PISA reading tests influence the choice to go on to post secondary studies? • How do the PISA results influence the choice to go to university or college? • How do the PISA results influence the choice to study different subjects at post secondary level? • How do the PISA results influence the choice to keep students on throughout post secondary studies? • How do the above factors vary between young immigrants and young Canadians by birth and between linguistic minorities (francophones outside of Québec and anglophones from Québec) and other young Canadians (francophones from Québec and anglophones from the rest of Canada).
Over the last decade, Canada has experienced a substantial increase in the number of individuals participating in post-secondary education (PSE). This trend emphasizes the importance of understanding the pathways leading to PSE enrolment and the competencies that are associated with them. This chapter describes a range of possible education and work outcomes at the age of 21, and the pathways that led to them. It describes the wealth of information that is available in the combination of the PISA and YITS databases. This overview provides a useful context in which to consider the complexity and importance of transitioning to postsecondary education and work.
Using data from the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS), this paper provides an up-to-date description of educational and labour market pathways (or transitions) among Canadian youth. It also estimates the effect of academic abilities, measured by PISA math and reading scores, on such transitions. Descriptive statistics show that educational success is positively related to math and reading achievements as well as family background characteristics. Further, working while in high school reduces educational attainment while participation in school organised activities increases the probability of grade progression. The results also indicate that students with low reading achievements are not only less likely to remain in school; they are also less likely to return to school once they have left school. Finally, the risk of entering unemployment after school is inversely related to the level of completed schooling.
The primary purpose of the report is to explore the impact of PISA reading scores on the early labour market outcomes of young Canadians of the Youth in Transition Survey. This inquiry is complicated by two facts. First, family and school characteristics that are positively correlated with PISA scores are also correlated with labour market success, making it difficult to discover the independent effect of those scores. Second, students with higher PISA scores are much more likely to pursue education beyond high school and scores may operate both directly and indirectly through this channel to influence later outcomes. Among females, there is a positive correlation between PISA scores and future earnings, even after controlling for family background and educational attainment. There is no evidence of such a correlation for males. For both genders, the link between PISA scores and unemployment disappears when controls are added. These weak outcomes may be explained by the fact that sufficient time has not elapsed for the YITS respondents to complete schooling and to integrate into the labour market.
This paper provides initial reflections on the impact of the economic crisis on education across the OECD area by analysing the OECD educationtoday crisis survey responses of June 2009. It first looks at the impact of the crisis on education demand and participation, after which the focus turns to the supply side and education financing. The paper suggests that while the education sector appeared to experience increased demand and benefit from growing governmental financing in several OECD countries in June 2009, the crisis may have hidden negative effects particularly on decentralised service delivery and private involvement in education.
GDP per capita in Latin America has been falling behind high-income countries and other benchmarks for decades and the region’s mediocre growth performance is one of the main reasons why poverty reduction, and living standards more generally, in the region is well below that observed in peer countries. In this paper, we explore some of the potential roots of this poor performance by using development accounting techniques. The results point towards total factor productivity as the main culprit for the region’s lack of convergence. In order to investigate what causes the lack of productivity catch-up, we analyse the determinants of technology diffusion, in particular of internet and mobile phone technologies. The empirical results show that institutions, absorption capacity (human capital), and financial constraints are the main explanatory variables of the diffusion gaps in these technologies between the OECD and Latin America. We also explore the performance of the region in terms of health outcomes, reflected in the evolution of life expectancy, and the specific role played by technological innovation and adoption. Finally, a calibration exercise of an endogenous growth model allows us to assess the extent to which the region’s per capita income gap is due to problems in factor accumulation or distortions that reduce the incentives to innovate; the results point to very different situations across countries in the region. While for some countries we find evidence of ‚innovation shortfalls?, other countries’ problems concentrate around low factor accumulation.
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error