Browse by: "2015"

• Greater anxiety towards mathematics is associated with lower scores in mathematics, both between and within countries.
• The better a student’s schoolmates perform in mathematics, the greater the student’s anxiety towards mathematics.
• Teachers’ use of formative assessment practices is associated with lower levels of mathematics anxiety in 39 countries and economies.

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.

Economic participation of women in the labour force or as entrepreneurs is low compared to peers and has declined over the past decades despite strong growth. The gap with men is over 50%--the largest among key emerging markets. Participation declines with higher education achievements and family incomes. The reasons are complex: socioeconomic and cultural factors are important - family status increases if women stay home, house work has become more attractive than poorly paid market work as husband’s incomes have risen; and safety concerns and poor infrastructure keep women from market work. Nevertheless, high unemployment among educated women and revealed preference for work in surveys indicate that many women would work if conditions improved. Availability of jobs is also an issue as the high growth has not created enough jobs for men and especially for women.

Specific gender policies will be needed to enlarge economic opportunities for women and to overcome socioeconomic and cultural barriers. This paper analyses the determinants of low female economic participation and recommends policies for raising it. The paper also estimates long-term growth effects of raising participation with selected policies. More and better jobs for women in India could raise growth by about 2 percentage points a year over time. This Working Paper relates to the 2014 OECD Economic Survey of India (http://www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-india.htm).

Growing international migration and diverse characteristics of migrant populations make internationally comparable high-quality data on migrants essential. Regular update of these data is crucial to capture the changes in size and composition of migrant populations. This document presents the first results of the update of the Database on Immigrants in OECD Countries (DIOC) for 2010/11. It describes immigrant and emigrant populations by socio-demographic characteristics and labour market outcomes in the OECD, and shows their evolution in the past decade. It also provides updated emigration rates and brain drain figures...

The manufacturing sector has contributed little to income growth and its share in total merchandise exports has been declining. Manufacturing has not brought much new employment, and most of the recent rise in manufacturing employment has been in the informal sector, where workers are not covered by social security arrangements.

Productivity of the manufacturing sector is low, partly because the relatively small size of manufacturing firms makes it difficult to exploit economies of scale. Despite abundant, low-skilled and relatively cheap labour, Indian manufacturing is surprisingly capital and skill intensive. Furthermore, firms have little incentive to grow, since by staying small they can avoid taxes and complex labour regulations. Land acquisition is slow, companies face frequent power outages and transport infrastructure is below par. This is especially harmful as manufacturing is highly reliant on well-functioning infrastructure.

Stronger manufacturing would increase productivity and make growth more inclusive, while contributing to improved current account balance. In particular, India should aim for more formal jobs, as these tend to be the most secure and of highest productivity.

This paper presents the scoring and weighting methodology for calculation of the services trade restrictiveness indices (STRIs) for 18 sectors. The STRIs are composite indices taking values between zero and one, zero representing an open market and one a market completely closed to foreign services providers. The scoring system is based on binary scoring. To reconcile the complexity of services trade restrictions with binary scoring, non-binary measures are broken down to multiple thresholds; complementary measures are grouped and scored as zero only if all measures in the bundle are not restrictive. Finally in cases where one restriction renders others irrelevant, those measures that are rendered irrelevant are automatically scored one. The paper presents the general methodology that applies to the core measures found in all sectors as well as sector-specific scoring where relevant.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ).

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.