Browse by: "2015"

Every three years, when PISA results are published, the world’s media focuses on countries’ rankings in mathematics, reading and science performance. Often, what is lost in the subsequent national-level soulsearching about how to improve student performance is the fact that many countries have raised their game significantly since the first PISA test was conducted in 2000. In fact, half of the countries and economies that have participated in at least three PISA cycles have improved significantly in reading performance since 2000, a third have improved in mathematics performance since 2003, and almost a third have improved in science performance since 2006.

• Entre 2000 et 2012, le pourcentage de jeunes adultes (25-34 ans) diplômés de l’enseignement tertiaire a augmenté de plus de 3 % par an, en moyenne, dans les pays de l’OCDE.
• En moyenne, dans les 24 entités nationales et infranationales ayant pris part à l’Évaluation des compétences des adultes de l’OCDE, 39 % des adultes ont atteint un niveau de formation supérieur à celui de leurs parents.
• Un jeune âgé de 20 à 34 ans dont les parents sont diplômés de l’enseignement tertiaire est 4.5 fois plus susceptible de suivre une formation de niveau tertiaire qu’un jeune adulte dont les parents ne sont pas diplômés de ce niveau d’enseignement.

• Between 2000 and 2012, the proportion of young adults (25-34 year-olds) with a tertiary qualification has grown by more than 3% per year on average in OECD countries.
• On average across 24 national and sub-national entities participating in the OECD Survey of Adult Skills, 39% of adults have achieved a higher level of education than their parents.
• A 20-34 year-old with tertiary educated parents is 4.5 times more likely to participate in tertiary education than a young adult whose parents did not have a tertiary qualification.

The stepwise liberalisation of the EU internal aviation market resulted in 1993 in an open internal market that generated a series of supply side responses, which are partly comparable with the changes demonstrated in the deregulated US domestic air transport market. However, the starting point was quite different between these two markets. For example, until the deregulation in 1978, US legacy carriers operated a domestic crisscross network whereas the two flag carriers, Pan Am and TWA operated at various US gateways in stand-alone international networks based on the bilateral air service agreements concluded between the US and other states. After the deregulation, domestic major carriers transformed their crisscross domestic networks into radial hub and spoke networks (except the Delta hub at Atlanta that already existed before the deregulation). The domestic hubs in these networks also became the launching platforms for international operations when these domestic major carriers started to use their domestic feed for international operations. All in all, the former domestic major carriers became the new flag carriers in international markets, whereas the former two flag carriers went bankrupt due to the lack of domestic feed in order to adequately compete with these new internationally operating airlines.

• Almost one in three teachers across countries participating in the 2013 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) reports having more than 10% of potentially disruptive students with behaviour problems in their classes.
• Teachers with more than one in ten students with behaviour problems spend almost twice as much time keeping order in the classroom than their peers with less than 10% of such students in their class.
• Behaviour issues such as intimidation or verbal abuse among students are associated with student absenteeism.
• Schools that promote participation of students, teachers and parents in school decisions, combined with a culture of shared responsibility and mutual support, tend to have lower incidence of student misbehaviour.

Italian ports handled approximately 460 million tonnes of cargo in 2012 according to the last statistical report of the Italian Association of Port Authorities1 (Assoporti, 2014). This is more or less the same amount as the port of Rotterdam alone. The cargo handled at the port of Antwerp – the second largest port in Europe – was equivalent to the amount of the biggest five Italian ports. This picture is illustrative of the current Italian port situation in which 24 Port Authorities (PAs), established by the port law (nr. 84/1994), are considered main national gateways even if most of them are only small ports compared to the main international competitors. Only four out of the 24 PAs surpassed the 30 million tonnes in 2012 and only 2 of them (Genoa and Trieste) have frequently handled more than 50 million tonnes in the last years. On the other hand, in 2012 passenger transit accounted for almost 40 million passengers, due to the role of home ports of some harbours in the cruise sector and few ferry terminals – mainly involved in the traffic to/from the islands – that make the National passenger statistics comparable with the main European competitors. Figure 1 shows the location of the Italian Port Authorities.

• L’amélioration de la performance d’un pays dans l’enquête PISA n’est liée ni à sa situation géographique, ni à son niveau de richesse nationale, ni à sa culture.
• Dans la plupart des cas, les pays qui ont enregistré une amélioration marquée de leur performance dans l’enquête PISA – à savoir l’Allemagne, le Brésil, la Grèce, l’Italie, le Mexique, la Tunisie et la Turquie – sont ceux qui sont parvenus à réduire leur pourcentage d’élèves peu performants.
• Même au fil du temps, l’excellence et l’équité ne constituent pas deux objectifs incompatibles, comme en attestent les progrès observés en Allemagne, en Italie, au Mexique, en Tunisie et en Turquie.

In February 2014, transport officials from the European Union (E.U.) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met on the sidelines of the Singapore Airshow to discuss a possible comprehensive air transport agreement between both sides. At the meeting’s conclusion, the ASEAN states invited the European Commission to launch the internal processes necessary to secure a mandate to commence negotiations on an agreement. In particular, ASEAN welcomed Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Transport Siim Kallas’ statement that he would propose to the Commission to seek authorization from the Council of the European Union to start negotiations (E.U.-ASEAN Joint Declaration, 2014).

Numerous studies on the aviation industry have confirmed that significant benefits can be brought by liberalizing the international market. After a comprehensive review of the recent studies on this issue, Fu and Oum (2014) concluded that there is strong evidence that liberalisation introduces substantial economic benefits to the countries involved. In the airline industry, liberalisation has led to increased airline competition, decreased average fares, increased frequency, improved load factor and airline productivity, increased traffic volumes and new route services. These changes not only lead to higher employment and economic output in the aviation industry, but also provide better inputs to other related sectors such as tourism, trade and logistics. Yet despite such well recognized benefits, mostly developed countries have liberalised their air service agreements, notably the United States followed by the EU. As of 2003, 57 liberalisation agreements out of 87 involved the U.S. As of October 2012, over 400 liberalized agreements were reached among 145 economies, among which more than 100 were U.S. open-skies agreements (ICAO 2013). In most other markets, air liberalisation has made limited progress over the past decades, even in regions characterized with strong economic and international trade growth.

Gravity models are used to explore the determinants of trade, making use of fixed effect linear estimators and a Poisson estimator (as in Santos Silva and Tenreyro, 2006) with fixed effects. Beyond usual determinants of trade such as GDP, distance, contiguity, free trade areas and language, this analysis mainly focuses on the role of product market regulation stringency and heterogeneity, and on the role of employment protection. The Single Market has a large positive impact on trade. A broad reform package that would align Product Market Regulation (PMR) indicators to the average of the top half of the best performers and would cut regulatory heterogeneity by one fifth could increase trade intensity within the EU by more than 10%. This analysis also makes use of subcomponents of the PMR indicator (by field of regulation) and the OECD Energy, Transport and Communications Regulation (ETCR) indicator (by sector) to focus on elements on the regulatory issues that matter most for trade. In particular, the stringency of airline and telecom regulations has an adverse effect on trade intensity. Empirical findings on the impact of employment protection legislation on trade intensity are somewhat mixed. This Working Paper relates to the 2014 OECD Economic Survey of the European Union (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-european-union.htm).

This paper is making use of the OECD product market regulation (PMR) database to measure the heterogeneity of product market regulation across countries for the whole economy, for the main subcomponents of the PMR indicator and for the internet economy. The heterogeneity within EU countries is quite close to the heterogeneity between EU and non-EU countries. Reforms are associated in a majority of cases with a reduction of heterogeneity, and heterogeneity in countries has diminished more the farther they were from common practices. This Working Paper relates to the 2014 OECD Economic Survey of the European Union (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-european-union.htm ).

Means-tested Social Assistance (SA) benefits play an important role as social protection floors sup-porting households in financial difficulties. This paper presents evidence on the patterns of SA benefit re-ceipt in a selection of OECD and EU countries. It provides an overview of the role of SA benefits in social protection systems and assesses the generosity of benefit payments. It then studies the dynamics of SA benefit receipt based on micro-level data describing trends in aggregate receipt and transition rates and presenting new evidence on spell durations and repeat spells. The final part of the paper summarizes recent empirical evidence on state dependence (or ‘scarring effects’) in benefit receipt and discusses its possible sources and policy implications.

With India’s low life expectancy largely reflecting deaths from preventable diseases, the most significant gains in health would come from population-wide preventive measures. Access to public health care services varies substantially, resulting in many people turning to private-sector providers who mainly serve those who can pay. While government has scaled up public health services, more health professionals and public health care spending will be needed to ensure broad and adequate health-care coverage. Priority should be given to high impact primary health care services. For more resources to translate into better services, the management of public health care services needs to improve. The private sector can be drawn upon more extensively, but should also be obliged to meet basic quality standards.

This working paper describes the potential of the proliferation of new sources of large volumes of data, sometimes also referred to as “big data”, for informing policy making in several areas. It also outlines the challenges that the proliferation of data raises for the production of official statistics and for statistical policies.

Government-controlled investors, including state-owned enterprises and sovereign wealth funds, have greatly expanded their international activities in recent years. This paper describes the existing policy landscape of international investments by government-controlled investors under both national and international frameworks.

The paper first examines host countries’ regulatory provisions dealing with inward investments by foreign government-controlled investors. The paper then documents international investment treaty practice in relation to government-controlled investors by examining, in particular, whether they are explicitly dealt with in investment treaties and, if so, how they are handled in the treaties. Finally, the paper presents other international agreements including the OECD instruments in relation to state ownership.

En 2009, le Comité de la politique à l’égard des consommateurs de l’OCDE a entrepris la révision des Lignes directrices de 1999 régissant la protection des consommateurs dans le contexte du commerce électronique. Dans le cadre de cet examen, il a exploré, dans un rapport analytique, les avantages et les difficultés, pour les consommateurs, d’acquérir des produits de contenu numérique intangibles. À la lumière de l’analyse réalisée, le Comité a mis au point les présentes orientations, qu’il a adoptées le 15 septembre 2014 et qu’il a recommandé de porter à la connaissance du public.

Investment treaty law reflects a permanent tension between stability and flexibility. Stability nurtures predictability, while flexibility helps legal systems stay in alignment with changing circumstances and evolving needs. This paper establishes an inventory of the mechanisms in investment treaty law that provide flexibility and surveys relevant treaty practice.

The paper: analyses the drivers of change in investment treaty law; provides an inventory of countries’ options – and limits – to alter their positioning vis-à-vis investment treaty law through ‘exit’ and ‘voice’; and analyses treaty provisions on, and States’ use of, flexibility in investment treaty law.

The paper finds that most treaties provide for little or no mechanism for countries to influence the use and interpretation of investment treaty law. The paper further finds that treaty provisions for ‘exit’ are likewise geared to provide stability rather than flexibility. Analysis of State practice presented in the paper shows that States rarely make use of the mechanisms available to them to influence treaty use and interpretation and that ‘exit’ from the system has likewise been rare so far.

This working paper sums up the main findings of an OECD project aiming to provide an evidence basis for focusing efforts to improve the measurement of technological and non-technological forms of business innovation, with particular focus on the role of design. It reviews a broad range of novel design-related measures, indicating their advantages and limitations in terms of policy relevance and insights. The analysis of design provides a valuable test-case for assessing the robustness of the overall framework for measuring innovation as proposed in the OECD/Eurostat Oslo Manual. It identifies a number of areas for potential development in a future revision, focused on the role of users and the implementation of the definition of innovation and innovation activities. It also identifies a range of design concepts based on an informal consultation with the design expert community.

The paper also illustrates a number of findings arising from the first-time use of a set of experimental and optional questions on design implementing a “ladder-type” model of design which describes levels of sophistication and integration of the design function within the firm. Cognitive testing and analysis of the microdata from a large and representative sample of Danish firms shows a high degree of respondent acceptance of the experimental questions and supports their predictive validity vis-à-vis a number of hypotheses on the use of design and a series of innovation and economic outcomes potentially associated to it.

Kosovo is facing crucial challenges in developing a competitive economy, providing a decent level of public service and moving closer to the EU. Developing national policies to meet these objectives will require a functional policy co-ordination, planning and development system. This review is the second in a series of SIGMA policy making reviews, looking into the required legal framework, the policy making arrangements and the capacities of Kosovo. Covering the Government, including the centre of the government and ministries, and also the Assembly, the review provides an in-depth analysis of the key aspects of Kosovo’s public governance capacities in policy making and co-ordination. Kosovo has made remarkable progress in the last decade, however many challenges still remain. The review also includes proposals to further enhance the policy making system.