Browse by: "2013"

Investor confidence in financial markets depends in large part on the existence of an accurate disclosure regime that provides transparency in the beneficial ownership and control structures of publicly listed companies. This is particularly true for corporate governance systems that are characterised by concentrated ownership. On the one hand, large investors with significant voting and cash-flow rights may encourage long-term growth and firm performance. On the other hand, however, controlling beneficial owners with large voting blocks may have incentives to divert corporate assets and opportunities for personal gain at the expense of minority investors.

The paper focuses particularly on the misuse of corporate vehicles, which arguably poses a major challenge to good corporate governance. Stakeholder rights (e.g. employees and creditors) cannot be properly exercised if ultimate decision- be identified. The accountability of the board may also be seriously endangered if stakeholders and the general public are unaware of decision-making and ultimate control structures. Finally, regulators and supervisory agencies have a strong interest in knowing beneficial owners – in order to determine the origin of investment flows, to prevent money laundering and tax evasion and to settle issues of corporate accountability.

This report examines the development of smart networks and services with particular attention to the implications for communication policy and regulation. The word “smart” has become a term that is frequently affixed to an area where the introduction of networked information and communication technologies (ICTs) is expected to have significant implications for economic and social development. In this document it is defined as: an application or service that is able to learn from previous situations and to communicate the results of these situations to other devices and users. Collection of data will be enabled by the expansion of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications. Large scale processing will be delivered by “cloud computing” services. Analysis of these data will be undertaken around a process frequently called “big data”. These phenomenona together form the “building blocks of smart networks”. Each distinguishes itself from previous similar developments because the size of numbers of devices, data and elements is orders of magnitude larger than that of previous periods.

This paper summarizes and discusses results from a survey conducted by the Department of Finance Canada and the Bank of Canada in July 2012 regarding an overview of investor relations (IR) and communications practices of members of the OECD Working Party on Debt Management (WPDM). The survey contained both quantitative and qualitative questions pertaining to IR, grouped into three themes: Definition and Development; Communications Strategy and Relationship Management; and Governance and Sustainability. Survey responses from 26 countries were collected and analyzed under these themes. While the extent of formalization and governance varies, all respondents with outstanding debt indicated that they perform IR activities; comments received suggest a general expansion of IR activities as the function evolves, both as a best practice and for directed, strategic purposes. Responses were collected regarding the most useful IR activities and communication methods conducted by countries, key stakeholder relationships relative to the IR function, and key challenges that include the difficulty in measuring the value of IR, particularly under changing circumstances. Despite the challenges, on-going IR is viewed as an important and effective component of the overall debt management function.

As the need to address the impacts of climate change becomes more urgent and the subsequent green momentum continues to gather pace, individual governments and companies are transitioning to a low-carbon economy. This transition to a low-carbon economic and industrial future is taking place in a highly uncertain and competitive marketplace. With many countries and cities seeking to give their own domestic companies a head start as closer attention is paid to this low carbon transition, indicators are becoming increasingly important as a mechanism to inform the development of programmes designed to generate green economic growth. This paper presents, for the first time a local ‘green growth’ indicator framework. This indicator framework was developed from the OECD ‘green growth’ strategy at the national level, but modified to highlight issues of transition that are most relevant for local areas. This working paper is the first trialling of this approach, along with an indicator visualisation tool – or dashboard. The dashboard allows easy assessment of the progress of a particular local area in a number of indicator variables. The paper discussed results for the analysis of Copenhagen and its cleantech cluster.

The global crisis led to a smaller increase in the unemployment rate than in most other OECD countries as employment has been sustained through intensive use of reduced working time schemes. These schemes have mostly benefited workers with permanent contracts while the higher unemployment mostly affected workers with weaker labour market attachment. A main challenge for policy makers is therefore to avoid that the increase in labour market segmentation between insiders and outsiders that would hurt the most vulnerable. Over the medium term, labour market policies need to respond to the ageing of the labour force, which implies that an increasing number of workers with permanent contracts will retire. Thus, policies must focus on enabling the current labour market outsiders to get a stronger foothold on the labour market as well as to mobilize under-utilised labour resources. The wage determination system has allowed wages to increase faster than the main competitors and faster than productivity, leading to a gradual loss of cost competitiveness. Minimum wages are high by international standards, hampering entry to the labour market for many low-skilled workers. Unemployment benefits are relatively generous, and particularly for long-term unemployed. A complicated tax-benefit system has created high effective marginal tax rates and numerous labour market traps. This Working Paper relates to the 2011 OECD Economic Survey of Belgium (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/Belgium).

The Netherlands has strongly benefited from globalisation, which boosted international trade, cross-border investment and economic growth over the latest decades. Looking ahead, the Netherlands needs to shift the trade and investment orientation from traditional slow-growing markets to faster growing emerging economies, in order to keep reaping the benefits from globalisation. In addition, the ongoing globalisation will push companies to become more innovative and search for new activities. Against this backdrop, the government is reforming its policies for the business sector. This includes a targeted approach, where the government is attempting to strengthen key sectors to become even stronger players on the international scene. This approach, however, carries some of the risks of more traditional industrial policy, making careful policy design and evaluation important elements for successful implementation. The other building block of the new policies is a strengthening of framework conditions, which promises a more market-based development of comparative advantages, and which could be further strengthened by broadening the approach to include other policies, such as competition policies. This Working Paper relates to the 2012 OECD Economic Survey of the Netherlands (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/netherlands).

This study looks into the use of fixed term contracts and agency work in Russia during and shortly after the crisis 2009-10 with the help of an enterprise survey. The results of variance analysis show that the use of fixed-term or agency work contracts is not uniform across sectors, size and skill requirements. Probit analysis reveals that the use of fixed term contracts also in-creases the likelihood of using agency work, but not the other way around. The increase of tem-porary and agency work contracts increases the turnover on the labour market and contributes to an increase in dualisation, but may also help to prevent a larger increase in unemployment during crisis periods.

The well performing labour market has delivered low unemployment and relatively stable wage developments. However, it is divided into a small flexible segment and a large more rigid segment, where the adjustment burden of external shocks falls disproportionally on the first group. At the same time, labour utilisation is relatively low, despite a relatively high overall participation rate, due to a high frequency of part-time employment, a low effective retirement age and a high use of disability benefits. Looking ahead, it is unlikely that the organisation of the labour market will allow the economy to continue reaping fully the benefits of globalisation. That would require a labour market that facilitates the allocation of increasingly scarce labour resources to their best use and mobilises underutilised labour resources to counter the ageing related contraction of the labour force.). This Working Paper relates to the 2012 OECD Economic Survey of the Netherlands (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/netherlands

Previous research has shown that fathers taking some time off work around childbirth, especially periods of leave of 2 or more weeks, are more likely to be involved in childcare related activities than fathers who do not do so. Furthermore, evidence suggests that children with fathers who are ‘more involved’ perform better during the early years than their peers with less involved fathers. This paper analyses data of four OECD countries — Australia; Denmark; United Kingdom; United States — to describe how leave policies may influence father’s behaviours when children are young and whether their involvement translates into positive child cognitive and behavioural outcomes. This analysis shows that fathers’ leave, father’s involvement and child development are related. Fathers who take leave, especially those taking two weeks or more, are more likely to carry out childcare related activities when children are young. This study finds some evidence that children with highly involved fathers tend to perform better in terms of cognitive test scores. Evidence on the association between fathers’ involvement and behavioural outcomes was however weak. When data on different types of childcare activities was available, results suggest that the kind of involvement matters. These results suggest that what matters is the quality and not the quantity of father-child interactions.

In several OECD countries, ongoing fiscal consolidation might have a negative impact on the static income distribution. However, this conclusion should be treated only as an approximate first step in the analysis. A full assessment of distributional effects of consolidation packages would need to consider dynamic measures, such as life-time income distribution and the equality of opportunity, along with behavioural responses and interactions with other policies. In any case, there is scope to balance current consolidation efforts in favour of more equity with only limited adverse impact on potential growth. In particular, relatively little weight has been given to reducing tax expenditures and raising taxes on immovable property. A number of consolidation instruments are consistent with equity goals while doing little or no harm to potential growth: increases in the effective retirement age, raising efficiency in the education and health care systems, cutting certain tax expenditures, hiking taxes on immovable property and broadly-based consumption taxes. Increases in capital income taxes would also be equitable but need to be well designed to avoid being distortive. Calculations based on simplifying assumptions indicate that increasing household direct taxes would reduce income inequality, while cutting transfers by the same amount would have a larger and opposite effect on inequality. However, raising progressive labour income taxes could have adverse effects on long-run growth. Cuts in government wages and employment can yield fast consolidation gains but need to be accompanied by increases in efficiency of service delivery to avoid that reductions in public services mainly hit the poor. Cuts in unemployment-related and disability benefits will likely hit poorer people in the first place but may have less adverse effects on inequality in the long run once employment increases in response to a better incentive structure.

The Netherlands, as other OECD countries, faces the challenge of providing high quality health and long-term care services to an ageing population in a cost-efficient manner. In the health care sector, reforms have aimed at introducing more competition. Despite major changes and some positive effects, the reforms run the risk of getting stuck in the middle between a centralised system of state-controlled supply and prices and a decentralised system based on regulated competition, providing insufficient incentives for provision of quality services and expenditure control. The main challenges are to complete the transition to regulated competition in health care provision, to strengthen the role of health insurers as purchasing agents and to secure cost containment in an increasingly demand-driven health care sector. In 2012, reforms expanded the role of the market in the hospital sector and reinforced budget controls. Both measures are not consistent and may jeopardize both objectives. More competitive markets require, at least, provision of good quality information, appropriate financing and better efficiency incentives. In view of population ageing, current policies mean that the cost of long-term care is set to more than double over the coming decades. Insufficient incentives for cost-efficient purchasing of long-term care should be addressed. However, the government?s plan to transfer long-term care purchasing to health insurers is unpromising unless additional measures ensure that insurers bear the associated financial risks. In addition, home care should be further encouraged at the expense of institutional care, while screening and targeting should be improved. This Working Paper relates to the 2012 OECD Economic Survey of the Netherlands (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/Netherlands.

This paper considers how entitlements to paid leave after the birth of children affect female labour market outcomes across countries. Such entitlements are granted for various lengths of time and paid at different rates, reflecting the influence of different objectives including: enhancing children’s wellbeing, promoting labour supply, furthering gender equality in labour market outcomes, as well as budget constraints. Although parental care is beneficial for children, there are concerns about the consequences of prolonged periods of leave for labour market outcomes and gender equality. This paper therefore looks at the long-run consequences of extended paid leave on female, male, and gender differences in prime-age (25-54) employment rates, average working hours, and earnings in 30 OECD countries from 1970 to 2010.

It finds that extensions of paid leave lengths have a positive, albeit small, influence on female employment rates and on the gender ratio of employment, as long as the total period of paid leave is no longer than approximately two years. Additional weeks of leave, however, exert a negative effect on female employment and the gender employment gap. This paper also finds that weeks of paid leave positively affect the average number of hours worked by women relative to men, though on condition – once again – that the total duration of leave does not exceed certain limits. By contrast, the provision of paid leave widens the earnings gender gap among full-time employees.

Creativity is widely accepted as being an important outcome of schooling. Yet there are many different views about what it is, how best it can be cultivated in young people and whether or how it should be assessed. And in many national curricula creativity is only implicitly acknowledged and seldom precisely defined. This paper offers a five dimensional definition of creativity which has been trialled by teachers in two field trials in schools in England. The paper suggests a theoretical underpinning for defining and assessing creativity along with a number of practical suggestions as to how creativity can be developed and tracked in schools. Two clear benefits of assessing progress in the development of creativity are identified: 1) teachers are able to be more precise and confident in developing young people’s creativity, and 2) learners are better able to understand what it is to be creative (and to use this understanding to record evidence of their progress). The result would seem to be a greater likelihood that learners can display the full range of their creative dispositions in a wide variety of contexts.

• La plupart des élèves pensent que ce qu’ils apprennent à l’école est utile pour eux-mêmes et pour leur avenir.
• Les attitudes des élèves envers l’école présentent une corrélation avec leurs compétences en compréhension de l’écrit.
• Les élèves qui déclarent que l’environnement de leur établissement est propice à l’apprentissage ont tendance à faire état d’attitudes plus positives envers l’école.

• Most students think that what they learned in school is useful for them or their future.
• Students’ attitudes towards school are associated with their reading skills.
• Students who report that the climate at their school is conducive to learning tend to have more positive attitudes towards school.

• On average across 15 OECD countries, a 30-year-old male tertiary graduate can expect to live another 51 years, while a 30 year-old man who has not completed upper secondary education can expect to live an additional 43 years. A similar comparison between women in the two educational groups reveals less of a difference than that among men.
• In 27 OECD countries, on average, 80% of young tertiary graduates say they vote, while only 54% of young adults who have not completed upper secondary education do so. The difference in voting rates by level of education is much smaller among older age groups.
• Education can bring significant benefits to society, not only through higher employment opportunities and income but also via enhanced skills, improved social status and access to networks. By fully recognising the power of education, policy makers could better address diverse societal challenges.

Fragile states contributed 18 million migrants and 8 million refugees in 2000. More than 20% of these migrants and more than half of the refugees settle in other fragile states. Thus, migration is likely to be both a consequence and a possible cause of conflict and fragility. This paper asks why people from fragile states would want to move to another fragile state. Is it simply a question of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire – that migrants from fragile states have no other options than to settle in another fragile state? To investigate this question I analyse a new set of global data on the sources and destinations of migrants. This analysis generates genuinely new research for INCAF, and reveals that economic factors, such as the pull of higher incomes in destination countries, are important. The paper concludes by discussing how migration from fragile states in search of higher incomes and greater wellbeing is an important development strategy that should be supported. The research suggests that a new concept of development may be needed which looks beyond national borders to the countries where the migrants end up. This will require policies to ensure public acceptability in the host countries, however, such as bilateral agreements, temporary status for immigrants and restricting immigration to specific jobs or perhaps regions.

• Selon la moyenne calculée sur la base de 15 pays de l’OCDE, un homme de 30 ans peut espérer vivre 51 ans de plus s’il est diplômé de l’enseignement tertiaire, mais seulement 43 ans de plus s’il n’est pas diplômé du deuxième cycle du secondaire. Chez les femmes, la différence d’espérance de vie en fonction de ces deux niveaux de formation est moins marquée.
• Selon la moyenne calculée sur la base de 27 pays de l’OCDE, 80 % des jeunes diplômés de l’enseignement tertiaire déclarent voter, contre seulement 54 % des jeunes non diplômés du deuxième cycle du secondaire. La différence de taux de participation électorale en fonction du niveau de formation est bien moins importante dans les groupes d’âges supérieurs.
• L’éducation peut apporter d’importants bienfaits à la société, non seulement en améliorant les perspectives d’emploi et les revenus, mais également en renforçant les compétences et en améliorant le statut social et l’accès aux réseaux. S’ils prenaient la pleine mesure de l’impact de l’éducation, les décideurs seraient mieux à même de faire face à tout un ensemble d’enjeux sociaux.