Browse by: "2011"

While the econometric literature on the impact of immigration on labour markets is well developed, there is a striking gap with regards to the impact of emigration on sending countries. Building on the established literature measuring the impact of immigration, this paper attempts to narrow that gap by investigating whether the short but intense emigration period from Honduras from 2001 to 2007 to the U.S. increased wages in Honduras. It notably exploits the variation of labour supply by skill group in the labour market in the years following Hurricane Mitch. Relying on individual cross-sectional data and an instrumental variable approach, the estimates show that a 10% increase in emigration from Honduras increased wages in Honduras by around 10%, an increase which is higher than previous findings in other countries – but diminishing over time. It also provides evidence on implications in terms of redistribution by gender, rural/urban households and private sector workers.

This article provides an overview of the “Schools of the Future” initiative introduced in California in January 2011 by the newly elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson. Its objective is to focus on the reform of the state school facility programme and to design highperforming, “greener” schools.

This Statistics Working Paper includes the documents that were presented during the various sessions of the Workshop on Securitisation, held in Madrid on 27-28 May 2010, as well as summaries at the beginning of each section. The Workshop brought together regular members of the Working Party on Financial Statistics (WPFS), statisticians, analysts, supervisors, experts from accounting standard-setting institutions and from International Organisations, and representatives from the industry and from international associations. It aimed at exchanging views so as to better understand securitisation from various angles and to help improve the completeness and the usefulness of future statistics...

This paper provides an account of the main approaches, debates and evidence in the literature on the role of workforce skills in the innovation process in developed economies. It draws on multiple sources including the innovation studies discipline, neoclassical Human Capital theory, institutionalist labour market studies and the work organisation discipline. Extensive use is also made of official survey data to describe and quantify the diversity of skills and occupations involved in specific types of innovation activities.

This paper provides an account of the main approaches, debates and evidence in the literature on the role of workforce skills in the innovation process in developed economies. It draws on multiple sources including the innovation studies discipline, neoclassical Human Capital theory, institutionalist labour market studies and the work organisation discipline. Extensive use is also made of official survey data to describe and quantify the diversity of skills and occupations involved in specific types of innovation activities.

The EU Public Procurement Directives cover three main types of contract: works, supplies and services including design contests. Some contracts will often contain elements of one or more of the 3 types of contract. The Directives contain specific rules that are used to classify these mixed contracts. A number of contracts are entirely excluded from the scope of the Directives, either because of their nature or because they are the subject of different systems of regulation or administration. Even if not excluded, contracts will only be subject to the provisions of the Directives where their value exceeds the relevant EU financial threshold. SIGMA Brief 4 gives an overview of the different types of contract, on contract classification as well as exemptions from the scope of the Directives.

School systems handle the challenges of diverse student populations in different ways. Some countries have non-selective and comprehensive school systems that seek to provide all students with similar opportunities, leaving it to individual schools and teachers to meet the particular needs of every student. Other countries group students, whether in different schools or in different classes within schools, with the aim of serving students according to their particular academic potential, interests and/or behaviour. Having underperforming students repeat grades or transferring struggling or disruptive students to other schools are two common policies used to group students for this reason...

The public procurement Directives only apply if a body is a contracting authority (contracting entity in the Utilities sector) within the definition of the Directives. SIGMA Brief 3 gives guidance on the notion of a contracting authority/entity under the directives (especially the concept of “a body governed by public law”). It also analyses whether a contracting authority can participate in joint purchasing or central purchasing.

This paper considers how tax policy and administration impact on an economy’s competitiveness and reviews various measures of ‘tax competitiveness’.

The basic presumption in public procurement is that contracts of a specified type and value will be awarded using an advertised, competitive procedure that is open, fair and transparent, ensuring equality of opportunity and treatment for all candidates and tenderers. There are only limited circumstances where a procedure without advertised competition is permitted. SIGMA Brief 10 gives an overview of the main competitive procedures available for contracting authorities under EU law. The Brief gives guidance on choosing which procedure to use, presenting good practises and examples as well. Finally, it gives a summary on the derogations from the obligation to publish a contract notice and use a competitive process.

This paper investigates the dynamic effects of health shocks on labour market transitions to disability, employment and other non-employment pathways. It uses longitudinal data to estimate time discrete duration models for three countries: Australia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Both current and lagged health status are important predictors of exit to disability benefits and the effect of health problems varies by age group, education and income across countries. The results are robust to the inclusion of different socio-demographic variables and to instrumenting health status.

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of inflation in the United States, Japan, the euro area and the United Kingdom, focusing on the role of resource utilisation, inflation expectations, inflation persistence and imported inflation. It also includes a cross-sectional analysis that focuses on inflation dynamics over episodes of persistent large slack and low inflation. The main findings of this analysis are as follows: i) During the crisis, the stability of inflation expectations has held up actual inflation, so far preventing the huge slack in resource utilisation from leading to a disinflationary spiral; ii) Disinflationary pressures also seem to have been moderated by the flattening of the Phillips curve in an environment of persistent large economic slack and low inflation; iii) The link between long-term inflation expectations and past inflation outcomes has become weaker over time and appears to have almost disappeared recently; iv) The estimated Phillips curves coupled with the November 2010 projection of explanatory variables presented in the OECD Economic Outlook No. 88 and excluding the recent period of strong commodity prices point to inflation remaining low but positive, except in Japan where deflation is expected to continue past end-2012; v) The inflation outlook and associated risks argue for withdrawing monetary policy accommodation gradually in the short term, while being vigilant about the build up of broad-based inflationary pressures over the medium term.

“Green growth” is an emerging paradigm that integrates several policy aspirations, including the durability of economic activity, reduced environmental impacts, and sustained growth in high-quality employment in such a way as to foster coherent, cross-sectoral policy design. Focusing on “green growth” highlights the need for governments to assess policies on their long-term economic, environmental and social impacts, recognizing that there can be synergies but also tradeoffs among the broad policy aims. As we hope to show in this paper, an examination of “green growth” policies in the transport sector provides an interesting case in point. Reducing emissions comes at a cost to consumers and taxpayers and if fuel tax revenues decline strongly it may be necessary to review the way the transport sector is taxed and contributes to aggregate tax revenue.

Most parents know, instinctively, that spending more time with their children and being actively involved in their education will give their children a good head-start in life. But as many parents have to juggle competing demands at work and at home, there never seems to be enough time. Often, too, parents are reluctant to offer to help their children with school work because they feel they lack some of the skills that would make a difference to their children’s success in school...

What is the impact of school infrastructure on the well-being of students in Flemish secondary schools? A study, commissioned by AGIOn (the Flemish agency that subsidises school buildings), investigated the impact of educational spaces on their users and set out to identify empirical evidence supporting the importance of school infrastructure on the well-being of students in secondary schools.

Electric motor-driven system (EMDS) accounts for more than 40% of global electricity consumption. This paper sets out an ambitious but achievable target with the global work plan to improve the energy efficiency of EMDS by 10% to 15% based on findings from the working paper ‘Energy Efficiency Policy Opportunities for Electric Motor-Driven System (Waide et al., 2011)’. If governments commit to the proposed work plan immediately, and maintain resourcing levels, the target could be achieved by 2030 and would be equivalent to reducing total global electricity use by around 5%. The proposed work plan of this paper is to align regulatory settings within a globally applicable scheme. The IEA believes its target can only be achieved through global co-operation leading to aligned national policy settings.

The tax burden on labour and its evolution over time are issues that feature prominently in the political debate. Averaged across the OECD, personal income taxes, social security contributions and payroll taxes together account for more than 51% of total government revenues in 2008 (OECD, 2010). With tax burdens differentiated by earnings level and family situation, they serve a central role as redistribution policies. Importantly, by shaping both work incentives and the cost of labour, the level and structure of these taxes are major influences on the functioning of labour markets...

The relationship between trade and wages has been subject to intense scrutiny in the academic literature with no clear consensus emerging. This paper adds to this body of research by moving beyond the single country analysis level to a panel including developed and developing countries and data through the mid 2000.s. First we examine the relationship between wages and trade using the approach of Feenstra and Hanson to calculate mandated wage changes for our dataset. We find that imports have a significant and positive impact on wages while the sign on tariffs is negative and significant. We also look at the relationship of wage differentials at the occupation level between partner countries. We find that the difference in occupation wage is smaller for large trade partners. Finally, we discuss the potential role of NTMs in influencing the wage and trade relationship.

Virtual worlds are increasingly evolving into Internet-mediated “spaces”, where large groups of people meet and interact in real-time while experiencing a shared sensation of being there together. This enables richer and more dynamic social interaction and collaboration across national and cultural boundaries over the Internet compared to other traditional ICT-based collaboration environments.