Browse by: "2012"

The paper explores issues with assessing wellbeing in OECD countries based on self-reported life satisfaction surveys in a pooled regression over time and countries, at the country level and the OECD average. The results, which are in line with previous studies of subjective wellbeing, show that, apart from income, the state of health, not being unemployed, and social relationships are particularly important for wellbeing with only some differences across countries. The results also show that cultural differences are not major drivers of differences in life satisfaction. Correlations between the rankings of measures of life satisfaction and other indicators of wellbeing such as the Human Development Index and Better Life Index are also relatively high. Measures of subjective wellbeing can play an important part in informing policy makers of progress with wellbeing in general, or what seems to matter for wellbeing— health, being employed and social contacts-- beyond income.

Tout le monde s’accorde à penser qu’aujourd’hui, détenir un diplôme de l’enseignement supérieur est plus important que jamais pour construire un futur économique et renforcer les économies du savoir des pays. Pourtant, comme on le constate dans ce deuxième numéro de la nouvelle série de synthèses de l’OCDE Les indicateurs de l’éducation à la loupe, les pays de l’OCDE ont opté pour des stratégies très variées afin d’accroître l’accès à l’enseignement supérieur, à la fois en termes de financement de l’enseignement supérieur mais aussi de niveau d’aides financières qu’ils offrent aux individus désireux d’obtenir un diplôme de niveau supérieur.

This issue will show that strong performers do not invest scarce resources in smaller classes, but in higher teachers' salaries. They are neither the countries that spend the most on education, nor are they the wealthiest countries; rather they are the countries that are committed to providing high-quality education to all students in the belief that all students can achieve at high levels.

Ce numéro montre que les pays les plus performants préfèrent investir les ressources limitées dont ils disposent dans la valorisation des salaires des enseignants plutôt que dans la réduction des effectifs en classe. Ce ne sont ni les pays qui réalisent les dépenses d'éducation les plus importantes, ni les pays les plus riches ; il s'agit plutôt des pays qui s'engagent à offrir à l'ensemble de leurs élèves une éducation de qualité, forts de la conviction que la réussite est à la portée de tous.

Few would dispute that having a higher education is more important than ever to help people build positive economic futures and strengthen the knowledge economies of countries. Yet as the second issue of the OECD’s new brief series Education Indicators in Focus explains, OECD countries have adopted dramatically different strategies for increasing higher education access – both in terms of how higher education is financed, and in the level of financial support they provide to individuals seeking a degree.

Switzerland is among the OECD countries with the largest immigrant populations – 27% of the working-age population are foreign-born – and the issue of immigration is high on both the policy agenda and in the public debate. Given the numerous debates around this issue in Switzerland, one could be tempted to think that immigrants are less well integrated than in other countries...

La Suisse est, parmi les pays de l’OCDE, l’un de ceux où il y a la plus forte proportion d’immigrés – 27 % des personnes en âge de travailler sont nées à l’étranger – et la question de l’immigration occupe une place importante, tant dans l’agenda politique que dans le débat public. Compte tenu des nombreux débats que la question suscite dans le pays, on pourrait être tenté de penser que les immigrés sont moins bien intégrés en Suisse que dans d’autres pays.

Les faits montrent cependant que, dans l’ensemble, l’intégration fonctionne plutôt bien en Suisse. La situation sur le marché du travail de la population immigrée dans son ensemble est largement favorable au regard de ce qu’on observe dans d’autres pays. Pour les hommes comme pour les femmes, le taux d’emploi des immigrés est plus élevé que dans les autres pays de l’OCDE...

Using empirical evidence from panel analysis of current account dynamics and of bilateral trade balances, the paper argues that the large German current account surplus during the 2000s can be explained by an increasing gap between productivity growth in manufacturing vis-à-vis services. Such a gap is due not only to improvements in the manufacturing sector but also to a significant slowdown of productivity growth in services. Therefore, despite the success in export markets, the German surplus may signal long-run weaknesses associated with constraints on service sector productivity growth and the inability of productivity growth in manufacturing to create positive spill-over effects on services. Persistence of barriers to liberalisation in services as well as the dominant type of technological progress in manufacturing, based on improving the efficiency of existing products, may partly explain these phenomena. A key factor behind these sectoral differences is the education system, which relies on highly specialised vocational schools, generating high returns for on the job training and creating incentives for efficiency gains in existing products and sectors. The paper concludes that there is room for comprehensive structural policies consistent with an equilibrium reduction in the current account surplus, accompanied by higher and more balanced growth.

To facilitate individuals to adjust their skills to changes in market demands, Sweden has a relatively generous policy to stimulate formal adult education at the compulsory, upper secondary and tertiary levels. This paper provides an overview of what research has reported to assess if and/or how it may be an efficient use of tax payers’ money. Some institutional factors are also briefly presented to discuss what is likely to be required for such a policy to exist in a particular country.

This paper studies the impact of recent changes in second pension pillars of three Central and Eastern European Countries on the deficit and implicit debt of their full pension systems. The paper seeks to answer the following questions: i) what is the impact on the sustainability of Poland’s pension system of the decrease in the pension contribution going to the second pension pillar from 7.3% to 2.3% in 2011; ii) what are the implications of the recent changes on gross replacement rates; iii) does the weakening of the Polish second pension system have a different impact on pension system sustainability than a similar move in a Hungarian-style pension system with a defined-benefit first pillar and iv) how does Estonia’s temporary decrease in pension contributions compensated by temporarily higher future rates affect pension sustainability in that country. The simulation results show that in our baseline scenario the Polish move would permanently lower future pension-system debt, chiefly as a result of a cut in replacement rates. But using a combination of pessimistic assumptions including strong population ageing, low real wage growth and a high indexation of existing pension benefits, coupled with bringing in tax expenditures related to the third voluntary pension pillar and an increase in the share of minimum pensions leads to higher pension system deficits and eventually more public debt at a very long horizon. The simulations also suggest that the Hungarian pension reversal reduces deficit and debt only temporarily, mainly because of Hungary’s costly defined-benefit first pension pillar: the weakening of the second pillar is tantamount to swapping low current replacement rates (in the defined-contribution second pillar) against high future replacement rates in the defined-benefit first pension pillar. Finally, results show that the Estonian move will increase public debt only very moderately in the long run, even though this result is sensitive to the effective interest rate on public debt.

Governments in all OECD countries are facing the challenge of governing increasingly complex education systems. There is a growing need for governance structures that can handle this complexity and which can provide actors with the knowledge they need to make decisions. This working paper asks the question: How do governance and knowledge mutually constitute and impact on each other in complex education systems? It provides an answer through a state of the art literature review and original theoretical argumentation. It breaks new ground by combining different schools of academic and policy thinking which traditionally look at various aspects of the relationship between governance and knowledge separately. Research in public management, political science and public policy, sociology, institutional economics, and organisational management (particularly the knowledge transfer literature) is augmented with work from education and other social sciences, including healthcare, law, and social justice. This working paper argues that just as knowledge is crucial for governance, governance is indispensible for knowledge creation and dissemination. It proposes an analytical framework that combines models of governance with modes of learning and types of knowledge, and provides preliminary empirical examples to support this framework. In the context of diverse social, economic and political environments of OECD countries, the interaction between these two focal points – models of governance and types of knowledge – has become increasingly relevant to researchers, policy makers, and education stakeholders more generally.

Chile has made good progress in improving housing conditions, but still around 10% of the population lives in either overcrowded houses, or of inadequate quality and/or with poor access to basic services. Improving further housing conditions of the poor is important for curbing poverty and reducing inequality. First, better targeting of housing subsidies will be essential to free resources for those truly in need. The government should also rethink subsidies, which are currently directed exclusively at ownership. Means-tested rental cash allowances coupled with more balanced tenant-landlord regulations would strengthen the rental market, thus enhancing residential mobility and potentially reducing segregation. Second, better enforcement of social housing quotas for new building projects coupled with investments in urban renewal and social services in poorer neighbourhoods and developing unused land in urban areas could also help to reduce inequalities. Third, effective thermal and energy standards for buildings would improve the quality of the housing stock, protect public health and reduce air pollution. Limiting construction in fault lines and risky coastal areas could also increase Chile’s resilience to natural disasters. Fourth, taxing housing so owing is not favoured over renting would reduce distortions and make the tax system less regressive. Finally, enhancing the responsiveness of housing supply to demand would ensure there is a good match between housing construction and demand, and avoid that public support gets capitalised into housing prices.

This working paper was prepared as part of the OECD thematic review Overcoming School Failure: Policies that Work, www.oecd.org/edu/equity. The project provides evidence on the policies that are effective to reduce school failure by improving low attainment and reducing dropout, and proactively supports countries in promoting reform. The project builds on the conceptual framework developed in the OECD’s No More Failures: Ten Steps to Equity in Education (2007). Austria, Canada (Manitoba, Ontario, Québec and Yukon), Czech Republic, France, Greece, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain and Sweden took part in this project. This working paper is part of a series of papers prepared for the thematic review Overcoming School Failure: Policies that Work covering the topics of policies to reduce dropout and in-school practices to reduce school failure. These report have been used as background material for the final comparative report Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Schools and Students (OECD, 2012), which gives evidence on the policy levers that can help overcome school failure and reduce inequities in OECD education systems. It focuses on the reasons why investing in overcoming school failure -early and up to upper secondary- pays off, on alternatives to specific system level policies that are currently hindering equity, and on the actions to be taken at school level, in particular in low performing disadvantaged schools.

Ce document examine brièvement la question de la coordination intermodale des services de transport du point de vue de ce que l’on peut appeler une « politique de la mobilité fondée sur la diversité ». Il analyse les conditions générales de la concurrence et de la coordination intermodales dans l’optique de l’élaboration de politiques de transport qui tiennent compte à la fois de la grande diversité des besoins et aspirations à la mobilité qui existent au sein des économies de marché et du coût d’opportunité pour la société de méthodes nouvelles aptes à répondre à la demande de mobilité…

This study examines the feasibility of reporting scores of a test based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000 instrument that was administered to a sample of 25-year-old Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) respondents on the PISA scale. Each of these respondents also participated in PISA 2000. The study examines the considerations for estimating proficiency estimates for the YITS 2010 sample and describes the methods recommended for analyzing the data. The results indicate that, despite much higher performance, there is no ceiling effect in the YITS 2010 sample for the PISA items. Although the estimated scores for the YITS 2010 sample should not be misconstrued as true =PISA results,‘ there is no technical impediment to reporting them on the PISA scale and examining the differences between these results and the PISA 2000 results.

This paper is the first IEA analysis that focuses on country-specific trends, opportunities and challenges for carbon capture and storage (CCS). It follows previous IEA publications on CCS and studies on cleaner coal and advanced coal technologies. The paper benefitted from significant contributions and support from the China Coal Information Institute (CCII) of the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS), and The Climate Group China. According to IEA analysis, if there are no major policy changes, carbon-intensive coal and other fossil fuels will continue to play a significant role in meeting future energy needs, both in China and globally. CCS is one technological option available to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the use of fossil fuels. CCS offers the opportunity to meet climate change objectives while providing energy security, as part of a portfolio of options including energy efficiency, renewable energy, nuclear energy, more efficient coal technologies and fuel switching from coal to gas. To meet global energy challenges associated with CO2 emissions, development and deployment of all available technologies will be necessary to achieve a more sustainable future. This paper discusses the status of CCS in China, providing updates on past activities in research and development (R&D), on current projects underway, and an overview of potential and challenges for CCS development in China. By exploring China’s energy and emission trends and pathways, this paper analyses China’s current CCS-related activities and policies, and options for financing CCS. The paper also provides perspectives on CCS from various Chinese stakeholders, and examples of key CCS activities with details on specific projects, and information on the regulatory and policy environment, as well as international co-operation related to CCS in China.

This working paper is one in a series of OECD Working Papers on Regional Development of the OECD Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate, conducted under the responsibility of Joaquim Oliveira Martins, Head of the OECD Regional Competitiveness and Governance Division (www.oecd.org/regionaldevelopment).

This paper provides an analysis of large and sustained fiscal consolidation episodes in OECD countries implemented between 1980 and 2000. It reviews how fiscal policy variables evolved during these episodes, how consolidation was influenced by the wider economic environment, and how the political economy side helped trigger and sustain consolidation efforts. Results suggest that successful consolidation – as measured by deficit reduction and debt stabilisation or decline – was driven by spending cuts and to a lesser extent by revenue increases. Most episodes started on a basis of improving competitiveness following currency depreciation and, in turn, favourable growth prospects, closing output gaps and – with some lag – falling unemployment. Interest rates started to decline two years after consolidation had started, suggesting that it took some time to earn credibility. With regard to political economy, most consolidation episodes were implemented shortly after an election. More than half of the governments that had started consolidation were re-elected, and some even strengthened consolidation efforts after then. In some cases, an incoming government of a different political colour pursued consolidation.

This paper examines the analytical underpinnings of the standard micro portfolio approach to public debt management (PDM) that aims at minimising longer-term cash-flow based borrowing costs at an acceptable level of risk. The study concludes that two technical key assumptions need to hold for the standard micro portfolio approach to yield optimal (i.e. cost-minimising) results. We argue that these assumptions do not hold in the current borrowing environment characterized by fiscal dominance with complex links between PDM and monetary policy (MP). By using the principles of portfolio theory we demonstrate that in this borrowing environment, cost-risk optimality requires the use of a broader cost concept than employed in the standard micro portfolio approach. This new concept (referred to as effective borrowing costs) incorporates not only the cash flows of the debt portfolio itself, but also those related to primary borrowing requirements. The resulting broader cost measure includes therefore the interactions with the budget. Finally, the paper demonstrates that the standard cost-risk framework of the micro portfolio approach is nested within this new, broader cost concept.

This paper argues that serious fiscal vulnerabilities arising from many years of high government debt will create new and complex interactions between public debt management (PDM) and monetary policy (MP). The paper notes that, although their formal mandates have not changed, recent balance sheet policies of many Central Banks (CBs) have tended to blur the separation of their policies from fiscal policy (FP). The mandates of debt management offices (DMOs) have usually had a microeconomic focus (viz, keeping government debt markets liquid, limiting refunding risks etc). Such mandates have usually eschewed any macroeconomic policy dimension. For these reasons, all clashes in policy mandate between CBs and DMOs have been latent and not overt.