Browse by: "2015"

This paper presents the findings based on case studies of the educational systems of England and of the Canadian province of Ontario, as part of a research project funded by the Thomas J. Alexander Fellowship Programme.1 This research project aims to provide inputs to policymakers and school leaders, especially in Latin America, to support teachers and schools with student behaviour issues and improve classroom and school climate. The purpose of these case studies is to investigate how system-level policies in four main areas (initial teacher education, professional development, professional collaboration and participation among stakeholders) and other types of system-level initiatives (such as student behaviour policies) have been implemented in order to improve disciplinary climate and help teachers to deal with student behaviour issues. It also aims to identify the conditions in which teaching and classroom practices take place, in order to understand the context of student behaviour and disciplinary climate in these educational systems.

The tourism sector is highly dependent on quality human resources to develop and deliver a competitive tourism offering. This report examines approaches to encourage the creation of more and better tourism jobs, with a particular emphasis on enhancing the skills and career development opportunities of people employed in tourism SMEs. The contribution quality jobs can make to building a competitive and sustainable tourism sector is discussed. This is followed by analysis of the sector's labour intensity and labour market characteristics, and the implications for attracting, retaining and developing a skilled workforce. Policies and programmes introduced to respond to these challenges and boost workforce development in tourism SMEs are examined and a number of key policy considerations highlighted. The report was reviewed and approved by the OECD Tourism Committee on the 14 January 2015.

In many countries, less experienced teachers (those with less than five years’ teaching experience) are more likely to work in challenging schools and less likely to report confidence in their teaching abilities than more experienced teachers. Most countries have activities in place aimed at preparing teachers for work, such as induction and mentoring programmes. Approximately 44% of teachers work in schools where principals report that all new teachers have access to formal induction programmes; 76% work in schools with access to informal induction; and 22% work in schools that only have programmes for teachers new to teaching. Fewer teachers report participation in induction and mentoring programmes than principals report the existence of such programmes.

This paper provides an update of the indicators that measure the tax autonomy of sub-central governments in OECD countries. Over the last decade, tax autonomy at the state level increased, while it hardly changed at the local level. The OECD now has tax autonomy indicators for the years 1995, 2002, 2005, 2008 and 2011.

Teachers in Brazil, Chile and Mexico report having high percentages of students with behavioural problems in their classes. Especially in Brazil, teachers report spending large amounts of time keeping order in the classroom. Besides potentially significantly reducing instructional time and students’ opportunities to lean, student misbehaviour can also influence attracting and retaining teachers. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate factors associated with time that lower secondary teachers report spending keeping order in the classroom and factors associated with these teachers’ reports of student behavioural problems in their class. It is based on in-depth analyses from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS 2013) data from Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Some of the major findings show that aspects of initial teacher education, professional development and teacher professional collaboration are associated with the time that lower secondary teachers report spending keeping order in the classroom, while participation among stakeholders in schools is negatively associated with student behavioural problems in the classroom.

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the effects of structural policies on household disposable incomes at different income levels. More specifically, it investigates the extent to which structural policies have differential long-run impacts on GDP per capita and on household incomes at different points of the distribution. One aim is to verify whether policy decisions may face tradeoffs between objectives of economic efficiency and equity. Many growth enhancing structural reforms are found to deliver stronger income gains for households at the lower end of the distribution compared with the average household, an indication that they may reduce inequality in disposable incomes. Such is the case of reducing regulatory barriers to domestic competition as well as to trade and FDI; stepping-up job-search support and activation programmes. Conversely, other reforms involve trade-offs between the efficiency and equity objective. This is the case of the tightening of unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed, which is found to lift GDP per capita and average household incomes, but also to reduce disposable incomes at the lower end of the distribution.

This paper provides empirical evidence on links between the productivity of Portuguese firms and a number of policy variables in Portugal. The analysis is based on a census of Portuguese manufacturing companies, covering more than 40,000 firms between 2006 and 2011. The results suggest that a number of these variables matter for firm performance, including the number of procedures required to start a business, a more extensive coverage of collective wage bargaining agreements, the tax burden, tax compliance costs and the number of procedures required to enforce a contract.

The education system has reacted slowly to changes in labour market needs, leading to an increasing number of school leavers without sufficient qualification. In addition, declining PISA scores and a rising share of low achievers are raising concerns about the quality of the future labour force. These factors play a role in the stalled income convergence process. Indeed, practices such as early tracking, streaming and low transferability between academic tracks hamper employability, human capital accumulation and social mobility. In the vocational education and training system, resources continue to be allocated on a historical basis. A more endogenous adjustment of the system to better align students’ qualifications with labour market needs requires active participation of social partners, students and education institutions. The rapid expansion of tertiary education without a corresponding increase in resources has led to fears about declining quality. Quality in tertiary education can be fostered by modifying the accreditation system, introducing student fees, strengthening the links with the private sector and foreign research networks and publicising information on labour market outcomes by field of study and higher education institution. Measures to better balance family and work lives can improve career options for women and therefore reduce the current tensions between having children and full time labour market participation of younger women. This could also ease the coming labour shortages associated with population ageing. This Working Paper relates to the 2014 OECD Economic Review of the Czech Republic (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-czech-republic.htm).

This report aims to identify the main constraints that limit smallholders in emerging countries from accessing markets. It does this first through a literature review of economic development theory and findings from past empirical studies. It then looks at different policy instruments currently used in five countries: Brazil, Chile, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa. The results suggest that the focus of agricultural policies in these five countries has been on input use subsidies, whether these are for variable input use, fixed capital formation, or on-farm services. Agricultural policies that strengthen the broader enabling environment (general services or public goods) are very limited in most countries covered in this report. Empirical evidence suggests that policies that best support the integration of smallholders into markets include investments in general services for the sector, as well as policies that reinforce land tenure systems or those that promote farmer associations.

Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) produced a negotiating text in February 2015, which forms the basis for negotiations toward a climate change agreement scheduled for adoption at the 21st Conference of the Parties in December 2015. This document aims to better understand proposals in the Geneva negotiating text related to the notion of strengthening nationally determined contributions (NDCs) over time, contained under the headings “strategic review of implementation”, “aggregate ambition assessment” and “enhanced ambition mechanism”. This paper focuses on how key elements of these proposals might apply to mitigation contributions or the mitigation component of NDCs: The document examines the main proposals in terms of their relevance, coherence, assumptions, scope, and feasibility, in the context of a cycle of mitigation contributions that seek to become more ambitious over time. It also explores whether the proposals are likely to be effective in achieving their foreseen outcomes, the majority of which involve changes to NDCs. In general, it finds that there is significant overlap between proposals for various “review” processes in different parts of the Geneva negotiating text, as well as overlap with monitoring, reporting and verification processes under the UNFCCC. The document also presents some broad messages on the subject of “strategic review” expressed during the CCXG Global Forum in March 2015. It is currently unclear what a review or assessment process would comprise, largely because it relates to an overarching process – a cycle of contributions – for which there is not yet an agreed vision or scope.

This report aims to provide an overview of business integrity and anti-bribery legislation, policies and practices applicable to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) operating across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. Part 1 provides a rationale for considering the impact that corruption-prevention and business integrity measures have had in some jurisdictions, based on available academic literature on this subject. Part 2 summarises the framework in seven SADC countries for combating corruption and for encouraging responsible business practices. It also focuses on the application of this framework to SOEs by governments, as well as measures taken by SOEs to limit their exposure to the risks of corruption. The report was undertaken on behalf of the OECD Network on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises in Southern Africa and is based on voluntary responses to a questionnaire and supplemented with desk research.

Regional inequality in Slovakia is among the highest in the OECD and is increasing. The main reason for regional disparity is the combination of low economic growth and job creation in the eastern and central part of the country and insufficient labour mobility to the west, in particular by low-skilled workers. As a result, jobs shortage and lack of technological capacities in the central and eastern regions persist alongside skills shortages in the Bratislava regions. Boosting convergence requires a multi-pronged approach involving innovation, labour market and educational policies. Completing the transport infrastructure network in Slovakia will be both important for removing expansion bottlenecks in the Bratislava region and reducing obstacles for job creation in the central and eastern regions.

This policy paper on social impact measurement for social enterprises was produced by the OECD and the European Commission. It presents the issues and ongoing debates surrounding social impact measurement and provides concrete examples of measurement methods. It highlights the concept of proportional measurement, in other words balancing up the costs and benefits of the measuring process. The policy brief also looks at guidance and resources for use by social enterprises and how to create a more widespread culture of measurement among stakeholders despite their often limited human and financial resources.

Both educational attainment and skills, as measured in the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), are high in Sweden. They are not perfect substitutes, but both are to some degree necessary for successfully integrating in the Swedish labour market. This paper describes the distribution of proficiency in literacy in the population and explores its determinants, and uncovers a strong relationship between literacy and the likelihood of being employed. The relationship between proficiency in literacy and the likelihood of participating in adult education is also explored. Lower employment prospects for immigrants are well explained by lower literacy proficiency, lower education and less favourable socio-economic backgrounds. This Working Paper relates to the 2015 OECD Economic Survey of Sweden www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-sweden.htm

This paper exploits data from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) to shed light on the link between measured cognitive skills (proficiency), (formal) educational attainment and labour market outcomes. After presenting descriptive statistics on the degree of dispersion in the distributions of proficiency and wages, the paper shows that the cross-country correlation between these two dimensions of inequality is very low and, if anything, negative. As a next step, the paper provides estimates of the impact of both proficiency and formal education at different parts of the distribution of earnings. Formal education is found to have a larger impact on inequality, given that returns to education are in general much higher at the top than at the bottom of the distribution. The profile of returns to proficiency, by contrary, is much flatter. This is consistent with the idea that PIAAC measures rather general skills, while at the top end of the distribution the labour market rewards specialised knowledge that is necessarily acquired through tertiary and graduate education. Finally, a decomposition exercise shows that composition effects are able to explain a very limited amount of the observed cross-country differences in wage inequality. This suggests that economic institutions, by shaping the way personal characteristics are rewarded in the labour market, are the main determinants of wage inequality.

A highly skilled workforce is crucial to sustain competitiveness and contain the rise in income inequality. Recent surveys of adult skills and educational performance suggest that younger cohorts are doing less well than their predecessors. Many immigrants struggle both in school and in the labour market partly because of low skills and language difficulties. Educational outcomes could be improved through raising the attractiveness of the teacher profession, improving teacher education and increasing support for struggling students. A more flexible labour market would facilitate access to jobs for youth with low qualifications and immigrants. This Working Paper relates to the 2015 OECD Economic Survey of Sweden www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-sweden.htm

This paper explores the relationship between skill mismatch and public policies using micro data for 22 OECD countries from the recent OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). Results suggest that differences in skill mismatch across countries are related to differences in public policies. After controlling for individual and job characteristics, well-designed product and labour markets and bankruptcy laws that do not overly penalise business failure are associated with lower skill mismatch. Given the negative relationship between skill mismatch and labour productivity, reducing skill mismatch emerges as a new channel through which well-designed framework policies can boost labour productivity. Skill mismatch is also lower in countries with housing policies that do not impede residential mobility (e.g. transaction costs on buying property and stringent planning regulations). Greater flexibility in wage negotiations and higher participation in lifelong learning as well higher managerial quality are also associated with a better matching of skills to jobs.

Private motorised vehicles account today for 90% of total surface transport1 CO2 emissions. Car fleets are growing rapidly in many cities in the developing world, where population and income growth will be concentrated in the coming decades. For example, whilst urban agglomerations with more than 500 000 inhabitants in Latin America, India and China currently account for only about 9% of total global CO2 emissions from motorised passenger surface transport, this share is likely to grow to 20% in the next 40 years. This means that 40% of the total global growth in CO2 emissions related to surface passenger transport will be generated in these cities (ITF, 2015).

In 2013 the Mexican government embarked on a major reform agenda which, if fully implemented and pushed forward, will help Mexico break out from a recent history of economic stagnation and high levels of poverty and inequality that has hampered the quality of life of its citizens. Indeed, compared with other OECD countries, Mexico performs poorly in indicators that are essential to a good life, often resulting in traps that hinder growth and well-being. The government has introduced major structural reforms to fight poverty, improve the quality of education, create more jobs in the formal sector and move towards a universal social security system. This is a substantial accomplishment. However, Mexico needs to build a more inclusive state. This implies raising more tax revenue (without necessarily increasing tax rates) to expand social protection. It also means promoting an inclusive labour market to reduce informality and increase female labour market participation; inclusive schools to reduce educational gaps; inclusive health systems so that health care quality no longer depends on employment status; and inclusive cities to reduce geographical segregation. This Working Paper relates to the 2015 OECD Economic Survey of Mexico (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-mexico.htm).