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Over the last decade, more and more public and private stakeholders, in developed and developing countries, have been supporting 1:1 initiatives in education (i.e. every child receives her/his own personal computing device). These 1:1 initiatives represent a qualitative move forward from previous educational experiences with ICT, inasmuch as every child is equipped with ubiquitous access to a personal device (usually laptops, netbooks or handhelds). The paper tries to systematise the most salient evidence about 1:1 initiatives in education drawing on official websites, program evaluations and academic meta-reviews. Information is provided about the policy expectations, program designs and the challenges for an effective implementation of 1:1 initiatives in education. Given the limited body of evidence, the paper raises unsolved questions about the cost-effectiveness and educational impacts of 1:1 computing in education.
Developing countries differ greatly in their potential for development and in the challenges they face. In one respect, however, many share a common problem: too little aid from too many donors. This report traces up to 3 700 aid relationships between all 151 aid recipient countries and the 46 largest donors, covering all members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the largest multilateral agencies. This complex reality is often referred to as fragmentation of aid. This 2009 report examines the concept of aid fragmentation across countries, and what has happened since the adoption of the Paris Declaration. It also proposes measures for concentration and fragmentation, and options for tackling excessive fragmentation. Where a donor-partner aid relation is not considered non-significant from either the donor’s or the recipient’s point of view, there is an opportunity for some rationalisation. This report shows that a decrease of 23% in the number of relationships is possible when only 4% of aid is reorganised. This reorganisation, in turn, would lead to an increase in the volume of the average donor-partner aid relation of 30%.
Housing markets have played a prominent role in macroeconomic developments over recent years. For a great part of the 2000s, buoyant housing markets have contributed to sustained economic activity in most OECD countries. But many markets overheated and the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market has been at the epicentre of a deep financial and economic crisis. Against this background, this paper: i) documents housing market developments in 18 OECD countries since the 1970s, putting recent evolutions into historical perspective; ii) examines the drivers of supply and demand for housing; iii) investigates the interactions between housing markets and the wider economy; iv) assesses the responsibilities of housing taxation, monetary policy and financial supervision and regulation in fuelling or amplifying housing booms; v) explores the link between global imbalances and housing booms.
This paper proposes an analytical framework for assessing policies that will contribute to a better integration of environmental externalities in the pursuit of economic efficiency and growth objectives. The framework consists of two parts. The first part lays out principles and criteria for the identification and selection of policies that will benefit both income and the environment or that will boost income at the least cost in terms of the environment (and vice-versa). In general putting a price on a pollution source or on the over-exploitation of a scarce resource is found to be the most efficient single policy to address many environment externalities. However, given that environmental damage often result from several interacting market failures, an appropriate policy response will in many cases involve a mix of complementary instruments. The second part focuses more on issues of structural adjustment related to the transition towards a greener economy. It finds that green growth policies could lead to significant re-allocation of resources within and across broad economic sectors. A policy framework facilitating the re-deployment of labour across firms and sectors, as well as the entry of new firms and the exit of firms in declining industries will thus be important in order for countries to seize the opportunities brought about by green growth policies.
Over the last three decades, a number of frameworks have been developed to promote and measure well-being, quality of life, human development and sustainable development. Some frameworks use a conceptual approach while others employ a consultative approach, and different initiatives to measure progress will require different frameworks. The aim of this paper is to present a proposed framework for measuring the progress of societies, and to compare it with other progress frameworks that are currently in use around the world. The framework does not aim to be definitive, but rather to suggest a common starting point that the authors believe is broad-based and flexible enough to be applied in many situations around the world. It is also the intention that the framework could be used to identify gaps in existing statistical standards and to guide work to fill these gaps.
In recent years, policymaking in China has put increasing emphasis on stemming the growth in inequality, which had been fairly steep since the 1980s. Policy action has taken the form of regional development measures and of reforms of various aspects of the social safety net broadly defined. The Western Development Plan has aimed at narrowing the income gap between the sparsely populated and under-developed West and the more prosperous and faster-growing East. The bulk of the expenditure, however, has been on large capital-intensive projects rather than on education and other social spending. More emphasis on education would help reduce the income gap, since human capital is a key determinant of income. Government policies to improve conditions in rural areas nationwide have involved a substantial reduction in the burden of regressive taxes and fees. Welfare assistance has also evolved: a minimum living allowance has been introduced in urban and more recently in rural areas, but it has not reduced poverty that much, not least because of how it is administered. Moreover, the financing of this allowance ought to rely more on national solidarity and its delivery needs to be better co-ordinated with that of other social benefits. A set of new indicators of nationwide inequality, based on household survey data, suggests that overall inequality has ceased to increase in recent years, and may even have inched down. Alternative measures of income inequality across provinces show that, if migration is taken into account, disparities are markedly less, and have tended to decline somewhat in recent years. Even so, geographical inequality remains very high by international standards. It reflects intra- more than inter-provincial differences, pointing to persistent, if diminishing, labour market segmentation.
A new and novel approach to controlling regulatory costs is the concept of the regulatory budget. This concept would require that governments account for regulatory expenditures in a similar way to fiscal expenditures. This article argues that there are analogies between fiscal and regulatory budgets as they both divert resources from the private sector, albeit by different policy instruments. Given that budgeting is universally used to manage fiscal resources, the article outlines the pros and cons of developing regulatory budgets to manage regulatory resources. JEL classification: H300, H610.
This report collects five case studies of regional economic development models that have been considered of interest to Wales and similar regions. For each of the five strategies the aim has been to analyse rationale and conceptual framework, policy pillars, delivery mechanisms and potential transferability to Wales. The case studies have been prepared following a qualitative approach that has consisted of desk reviews of existing policy documents and interviews with regional policymakers and other relevant local development stakeholders.
This Review of Local Economic and Employment Development Policy Approaches in OECD Countries has been carried out by the OECD LEED Programme in collaboration with the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG). The aim of the review is to identify successful and/or innovative policy initiatives that could be relevant to Wales and regional economic development models that could inspire Wales's future strategy-making. Given the large volume of material already available on Welsh economic challenges and policies, the focus was not on "looking in" but on "looking out" at initiatives that could inspire Wales from other OECD regions, based on existing understanding of the challenges. The two main objectives of the review have therefore been: a) identify and analyse innovative and/or successful single policy tools that could potentially be applied in Wales; b) identify and analyse some broader regional economic strategies and their delivery arrangements that could inspire the overall economic development approach of Wales.
This section introduces the first of the three 'learning tools' (i.e. policy audits, transferability papers, regional case studies) envisaged by the 'OECD-WAG Review of Local Economic and Employment Development Approaches in OECD Countries' and covers four areas: the nature of the policy audits; the selection process; an overview of the lessons learned; some general conclusions.
This paper is written in the context of a coalition government in the Welsh Assembly which is committed to full employment (defined as an employment rate of 80%) based on quality jobs. At the outset it should be noted that not all activities relevant to the subject matter of this report have been devolved to the Welsh Assembly. Though the Assembly has powers relating to education and training it does not have responsibility for employment issues. It should also be emphasised that the Welsh Assembly has introduced many new policies and strategies and has recently integrated bodies such as Education and Learning Wales (ELWa) and the Welsh Development Agency into Government Departments. This report considers the transferability of ten policy audits focusing on specific policy interventions in different OECD countries in the fields of labour market participation, skills development and economic and physical regeneration. First, it considers the main policy challenges for Wales in relation to the labour market. It then examines evidence of policy gaps in the current approach of the Welsh Assembly Government. This leads on to an assessment of the policy options that might be considered in relation to the challenges facing Wales. The next section attempts to consider the potential role of the reviewed initiatives in filling these gaps. A final section draws conclusions and makes some policy recommendations.
This paper uses a simple dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to explore the qualitative impact of productivity shocks on current account positions via their impact on the saving behaviour of households. The analysis shows that the direction of the impact is ambiguous from a theoretical point of view. This impact depends in particular on consumer’s willingness to shift consumption over time relative to their willingness to shift consumption between different types of goods, on whether they believe the shock to be temporary or permanent, and on the sector in which the shock occurs.
This paper presents a simulation model of the main budget aggregates of federal, provincial and territorial governments in Canada. The general approach is to use a cyclical indicator (output gap), estimate the sensitivity of government revenue and expenditure to this cyclical indicator using historical data, and use projections of the cyclical indicator to simulate budgetary outcomes under various economic scenarios. Provincial/territorial annual output gaps are estimated going back to 1984. These are used to jointly estimate for all governments the historical sensitivities of the main revenue and expenditure categories to provincial/territorial economic cycles using Seemingly Unrelated Regressions. Projections of potential output by province and territory are then made to 2020 and a multitude of paths for the evolution of provincial/territorial output gaps are generated to 2020. These output gap paths serve as bases for simulating medium-term fiscal outcomes under a variety of possible economic scenarios, allowing the construction of probability densities for fiscal outcomes. The paper also contains an analysis of the cyclicality of Canadian governments’ fiscal policies between 1984 and 2007. Several jurisdictions are found to have had pro-cyclical fiscal policies over this period.
As part of its Borrowing Outlook, the OECD estimates gross short– term government borrowing requirements. The article concludes that all methods for measuring short-term borrowing needs studied here – except one – provide either significantly underestimated or substantially overestimated measures. The article therefore suggests adopting the following measure: Gross Short-Term Marketable Borrowing Requirements is equal to Net Short-Term Borrowing Requirements plus the outstanding amount of the stock of short-term instruments. This new measure (referred to as Method 2 in the study) yields, in principle, meaningful estimates, comparable across different countries. JEL Classification: G15, G18, H63, H68. Keywords: measuring gross short-term borrowing requirements, debt
The Japanese labour market is characterised by high employment rates for men and older workers, and a low unemployment rate. Over the past two decades, female participation has risen, while disparities in the labour market conditions of workers have grown. Further efforts are needed to promote increases in female and older-worker employment rates so as to combat the trend decline in the working-age population, and to reduce dualism in the labour market.
This report examines the performance of public employment services and the effectiveness of activation strategies in Switzerland. It covers the role of the key actors in labour market policy, the placement function of the Public Employment Service (PES), the structure of out-of-work benefits and the related incentives and disincentives for taking up work, and discusses the main features of active labour market programmes (ALMPs)...
This paper presents in summary form the findings that emerge from a study of 20 structural reform episodes in 10 OECD countries. The study’s principal messages may be summarised as follows. First, it pays to have an electoral mandate for reform. Secondly, major reforms should be accompanied by consistent co-ordinated efforts to persuade voters and stakeholders of the need for reform and, in particular, to communicate the costs of non-reform. This communications challenge points to the need for policy design to be underpinned by solid research and analysis, which serves both to improve the quality of policy and to enhance prospects for reform adoption. Partly for these reasons, many of the least successful reform attempts were undertaken in haste, often in response to immediate pressures. The cohesion of the government is also critical: if the government is not united around the policy, it will send out mixed messages, and opponents will exploit its divisions. Finally, while much of the political economy literature focuses on agency and the interplay of interests, the condition of the policy regime to be reformed also matters. This paper relates to The Political Economy of Reform: Lessons from Pensions, Product Markets and Labour Markets in Ten OECD Countries, OECD, Paris, 2009, www.oecd.org/document/18/0,3343,en_2649_33733_43756114_1_1_1_1,00.html
Turkey is recovering from a severe recession. Once growth gains full speed, the authorities will likely face the challenge of widening external imbalances and of ensuring a smooth functioning of the financial markets. The former will require improving competitiveness, raising domestic saving, attracting more FDI inflows and reducing energy import dependency. Improvements in many of these areas will depend on structural reforms in the labour and product markets. Financial market stability calls for adopting international standards of prudential regulations and reacting pre-emptively to new developments in the financial markets. Mitigating risks of macroeconomic instability will be crucial for embarking on a stable and strong growth path to generate sustainable convergence with the OECD average income level. This paper relates to the 2010 OECD Economic Review of Turkey (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/turkey).
Past consolidation has allowed the automatic stabilisers to operate fully during the crisis. Further fiscal easing in late 2008 and early 2009 contributed to a markedly widening fiscal deficit in 2010. A newly enacted fiscal rule, which limits the structural budget deficit of the federal government to a maximum of 0.35% of GDP and requires balanced structural budgets for the Länder, will help bring public finances back to a sustainable path. However, some elements of the new rule may need to be fine tuned in order for it to be more effective. To comply with the transition requirements of the new rule, consolidation beyond a mere phasing-out of the stimulus packages will be needed between 2011 and 2016. Priority should be given to reducing public expenditure, notably by improving public sector efficiency and by cutting back on grants and government consumption, and to phasing out distorting tax concessions. To improve the structure of the tax system, the government should consider raising the share of taxes on property and consumption in total tax revenues. This paper relates to the 2010 OECD Economic Survey of Germany. (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/germany).