Browse by: "2015"

With learning support staff an increasing part of the school workforce that is assuming more and more teaching related responsibilities, attention has grown as to how their skills and practices can have the greatest impact on students. “Learning support staff” are defined as those school staff whose main function is to assist the work of teachers. This paper reviews country approaches to the roles and responsibilities of learning support staff. It discusses the different mechanisms through which learning support staff can have an impact on teachers’ work and student achievement and reviews the related empirical evidence. While the available research provides mixed evidence on the impact of learning support staff on student achievement, it suggests that learning support staff may improve teaching and learning as long as adequate strategies for their training, deployment and use are implemented. There are several ways through which learning support staff may have a positive impact on student attainment. Students receive more individualised help and attention from either the support staff or the teacher; and the learning environment can be made more flexible possibly leading to increased engagement and inclusion of children in classroom activities. Also, teachers receive specialist support and assistance with their administrative and planning tasks, granting them more time for their core responsibilities.

This paper analyses the efficacy of firm-level management practices in incorporating and retaining older workers. The paper notes that there are significant barriers to the integration of older workers into firms, and then outlines specific tools that could be used to enable older workers to contribute to enterprises. The OECD LEED Programme analysed age management practices in workplaces and found that a multi-faceted approach that targets multiple dimensions of the working experience of older workers should be pursued. Preserving flexibility, job training opportunities and mobility for older workers to a similar degree as the broader workforce is also encouraged.

This paper presents the methodology, key results and statistical analysis of the 2015 Indicators for Regulatory Policy Governance (iREG) to complement the OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook 2015. Three composite indicators were constructed corresponding to three key principles of the 2012 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Regulatory Policy and Governance: Regulatory Impact Assessment; stakeholder engagement; and ex post evaluation. This paper explains the process by which the indicators were developed, presents main results, and outcomes of different sensitivity analyses that were performed to test the robustness of the methodology, including principal components analysis, Monte Carlo analysis and weight-sensitivity analysis.

This paper analyses local employment strategies for shrinking and ageing labour markets through the case study of two local initiatives in Marijampolé, Lithuania. Drawing from desk research, quantitative analysis and primary interviews, the paper determines the effectiveness of Marijampolé’s Third Age University and the Petras Kriaučiūnas Public Library in re-training older workers to improve professionalism, entrepreneurialism and skills development, particularly in information and communication technologies. The analysis also draws synergies between national, regional and local strategies to reskill the Lithuanian labour market to outline appropriate strategy and implementation recommendations for policy makers.

This working paper examines the local initiatives in Neath, Port Talbot and Swansea in South West Wales to re-integrate elderly economically inactive workers into the local labour market. The core initiative analysed is the Life Skills for Older People Project, which works with local and regional governments to provide customised education and training for job seekers and the long-term unemployed aged 50 or above. The analysis of the economic impact and the achievements of the project found that custom support and personal development were effective in empowering older workers to re-enter work in the private and voluntary sector. The role of South West Wales’ industrial past in shaping the education and skills profile of older workers is also examined.

This working paper examines the impacts of the Canadian employment strategy, the Targeted Initiative for Older Workers, in the Fort St. James community in north-central British Columbia. The paper notes that older workers are generally well employed at the aggregate level in Canada, but may face specific challenges in local and vulnerable communities. An examination of the design of this project highlights the need for clear objectives, eligibility criteria, local sponsors and group-based support. In the context of the Fort St. James Community, participants and administrators highlighted the efficacy of custom and individual support in creating better outcomes for older workers.

Ce document de travail examine l’impact du vieillissement sur le marché du travail au niveau de la zone territoriale Emploi Formation de Bresse, Dombes, Val de Saône en France. Le taux d’emploi des séniors est relativement faible en France et dans la ZTEF Bresse-Dombes- Val de Saône. Par ailleurs, le nombre de demandeurs d’emploi de la catégorie 50 ans et plus connaît un très fort accroissement annuel. Le document de travail présente également les résultats d’une enquête OCDE LEED auprès des employeurs sur les pratiques managériales pour les travailleurs de 50 ans et plus. Peu d’entreprises ont intégré la notion de l’âge dans les pratiques managériales et encouragent leurs séniors à rester le plus longtemps possible en activité. L’enquête identifie des besoins de renforcement spécifiques pour les travailleurs séniors et décrit également certaines initiatives locales récentes spécialement dédiées aux demandeurs d’emploi sénior.

This paper presents the OECD Framework for Measuring and Assessing Job Quality developed jointly by the Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Directorate and the Statistics Directorate of the OECD as part of a broader EU-supported project1 and describes its links to the broader well-being agenda pursued by the OECD. The approach to job quality taken is explicitly multi-dimensional and defined in terms of earnings quality, labour market security and quality of working environment. The paper then discusses measurement choices and indicators selected for each of the three dimensions of job quality, highlighting the main limitations on the data front. Finally, the paper documents job quality across OECD and non OECD countries as well as across socio-economic groups for which data are available.

In order to help address climate finance-related information needs under the UNFCCC, this paper explores the extent to which currently-available secondary data make it possible to estimate private finance mobilised by developed countries for climate action in developing countries. This is done by testing the implementation of two approaches: the first one based on an analysis of an investment-related commercial database, and the second one based on the use of publicly-available private finance leverage ratios. Due to data constraints, the focus is on renewable energy as a sub-set of climate mitigation activities. Volumes of private finance estimated as mobilised under the first approach are very partial, due to limitations of the database used, while the second approach results in highly inaccurate extrapolations due to a current lack of empirically-robust publicly-available private finance leverage ratios. These findings highlight the need for improved primary data collection, in particular by public climate finance providers on private co-finance, building upon the recent progress already achieved by a number of bilateral and multilateral development finance institutions. Further, very careful and transparent use should be made of leverage ratios, as they are highly sensitive to both the underlying calculation methods (e.g. in terms of attribution of mobilised private finance among public actors involved), as well as to core characteristics of public finance that result from varying mandates of development agencies and institutions. In any case, amounts of private finance mobilised by public actors and interventions (and ratios that can be calculated on such basis) should not necessarily be interpreted as reflecting their respective abilities to achieve effective and transformational climate action, which requires monitoring of impacts over time.

This paper analyses income mobility in Viet Nam from 2004 to 2008. The concept of income mobility is important for developed and developing economies, especially for those, such as Viet Nam, witnessing a stable persistent economic growth and profound structural transformations. Income mobility adds to the already established literature on poverty and inequality by quantifying how much households benefit from the economic performance of a country. The analysis shows that Viet Nam’s growth facilitated households’ income mobility. The analysis of the drivers of households’ mobility invites policy makers to tailor interventions, e.g. assisting less mobile households with many dependents, or endowing households engaging in agriculture –an important source of income and driver of mobility – with appropriated skills and tools. Furthermore, it is shown that public transfers have only little impact on income mobility, indicating that their effectiveness has to be improved if the state wants to assist households in mitigating shocks and reducing inequality.

This paper identifies and analyses some key challenges that OECD and partner economies may face over the coming 50 years if underlying global trends relating to growth, trade, inequality and environmental pressures prevail. It highlights the growing need for international policy coordination and cooperation in a number of areas. For example, global growth is likely to slow and become increasingly dependent on the diffusion of knowledge and technology, while the economic costs of environmental damages will mount. The rising economic importance of knowledge will tend to raise returns to skills, likely leading to further increases in earning inequalities within countries. While increases in pre-tax earnings do not automatically transform into rising income inequality, the ability of governments to cushion this impact may be limited, as rising trade integration and consequent rising mobility of tax bases combined with substantial fiscal pressures may hamper such efforts. The paper discusses to what extent national structural policies and heightened international cooperation can address these and other interlinked challenges over the coming 50 years.

JEL classification: F, H, I2, I3, J1, O3, O4, Q5
Keywords: Global economy, growth, technological change, inequality, income distribution, immigration, environmental damages, climate change, tertiary education, fiscal consolidation, structural reforms, interdependence, co-ordination, projections

This paper uses data of the high-skilled and low-skilled migrant stock between 92 origin and 44 destination countries to highlight the relationship between economic factors and international migration. It also attempts to uncover links with policy and demographic factors prevailing in the origin and destination countries. The analysis suggests that higher skill-specific wages in the destination are associated with more migration. This relationship appears to be particularly strong for migrants from middle-income countries, supporting theories of an inverted-U relationship between origin country economic development and the propensity to migrate. Policy differences between the destination and origin also appear important, for example in terms of regulations on businesses and labour markets, along with the relative quality of legal institutions. In some instances, the effects on high-skilled and low-skilled migrants differ markedly.

JEL classification codes: F22, J01, O15
Keywords: International migration, labour economics, economic development, public policy

Inflation has become much less sensitive to movements in unemployment in recent decades. A common explanation for this change is that inflation expectations have become better anchored as a consequence of credible inflation targeting by central banks. In order to evaluate this hypothesis, the paper compares two competing empirical specifications across all OECD economies, where competing specifications correspond to the “former” and “new” specification for deriving measures of the unemployment gap which underlie the OECD Economic Outlook projections. The former OECD specification can be characterised as a traditional “backward-looking” Phillips curve, where current inflation is partly explained by an autoregressive distributed lag process of past inflation representing both inertia and inflation expectations formed on the basis of recent inflation outcomes. Conversely, the new approach adjusts this specification to incorporate the notion that inflation expectations are anchored around the central bank’s inflation objective. The main finding of the paper is that the latter approach systematically out-performs the former for an overwhelming majority of OECD countries over a recent sample period. Relative to the backward-looking specification, the anchored expectations approach also tends to imply larger unemployment gaps for those countries for which actual unemployment has increased the most. Moreover, the anchored expectations Phillips curve reduces real-time revisions to the unemployment gap, although these still remain uncomfortably large, in the case of countries where there have been large changes in unemployment.

JEL classification: C22, E24, E31, J64
Keywords: Anchored expectations, Phillips curve, equilibrium unemployment, real-time revisions

Growth, investment and trade are the outcomes of the processes by which people with ideas start firms. But where does the productive capacity of firms come from? What are the barriers that prevent resources to flow to the firms with the greatest potential? Why is it that not all people that possess entrepreneurial talent choose to start firms? This paper reviews the micro forces that matter for aggregate productivity growth focusing on six issues: costs to reallocating labour and capital, the influence of firm ownership and political connections, informality, the allocation of talent across the economy, barriers to internal trade and the working of housing markets. It concludes that the forces are complex but matter tremendously for macro productivity and addressing them requires a wide combination of policies.

Reforms over the past two decades have produced a well-balanced, modern tax system. However, considerable revenues will be needed in the years ahead to expand social spending and infrastructure in order to raise growth and well-being. The challenge is to generate these revenues without penalising growth or exacerbating inequality. Income taxes represent around half of total tax revenue but are levied on small tax bases, partly reflecting the distribution of income. A revenue source less detrimental to growth is consumption taxes, which are mostly raised by the relatively broad value-added tax. Nonetheless, there is some scope to raise further revenue, particularly through broadening the base of these taxes further. Revenues from property taxation are currently limited by the inefficient municipal rates system, which does not function well. An important additional source of revenue is environmentally related taxes. In the design of the tax system, consideration should also be given to the appropriate taxation of the natural resources sector, which remains an important issue for a resource-rich country like South Africa.

Dans les pays de l’OCDE, 5 % des élèves espèrent devenir enseignants : 3 % des garçons et 6 % des filles. Le profil académique des élèves espérant devenir enseignants varie, mais dans nombre des pays de l’OCDE, ces élèves ont un niveau de compétences en mathématiques et en compréhension de l’écrit inférieur à celui d’autres élèves ambitieux qui espèrent devenir cadres, mais dans un autre domaine. L’enquête PISA montre qu’en moyenne, le pourcentage d’élèves espérant devenir enseignants est plus important dans les pays où le niveau de salaire des enseignants est plus élevé.

Top earners have become the subject of intense public and scholarly debate. This is the first paper that comprehensively documents the profiles of the 1% highest paid employees across 18 European countries. The data come from the largest harmonised source available, an employer-based survey that covers the labour income of 10 million employees, excluding the self-employed. The patterns that emerge are broadly common across countries. Workers in the top 1% tend to be 40 to 60 years old, be men, have tertiary education, work in finance or manufacturing, and be senior managers. The analysis also uncovers several cross-country differences. For example, top earners are younger in Eastern Europe, and they include more women in countries with higher overall female employment. The new estimates in this paper are similar to related ones based on administrative records in the few countries for which such studies exist, indicating that the sample is broadly representative of the characteristics of top earners.

This paper re-estimates the elasticities of government revenue and expenditure items with respect to the output gap for OECD countries. These elasticities are used by the OECD to calculate cyclically adjusted fiscal balances. The study updates the earlier 2005 study using the most recent datasets and tax codes, the coverage being confined in this paper to 35 countries, the 34 OECD member states and Latvia. The same two-step methodology is retained: revenue and expenditure elasticities with respect to the output gap being defined as the product of, first, the elasticities of individual revenue and expenditure items with respect to their bases and, second, the elasticities of these bases with respect to the output gap. A number of refinements and methodological improvements are made relative to the 2005 study. The revisions to individual elasticities relative to the 2005 vintage are significant in a number of cases but do not follow a clear pattern across countries, except for the elasticities of corporate income tax revenue which are revised up in most cases.

There is ample empirical evidence for strong and persistent patterns of separated gender roles in Austria. While this model is generally considered to have worked well in the past, it faces important challenges arising from societal and economic changes in Austria. Hence, gender mainstreaming with the aim of more gender equality ranks high on the agenda of Austrian policy makers. An integrated policy framework to make Austria more gender-equal should build on 3 pillars: i) make the tax and benefit system more employment friendly ii) extend the care service infrastructure and iii) encourage more flexible workplace practices. Streamlining family policies across regions and levels of government would entail efficiency gains for all pillars. Long-run simulations suggest that achieving more gender equality in Austria could boost GDP by 13 percentage points until 2060. In addition, promoting more gender equality in the Austrian Society will improve Austrians’ well-being.

Austria has a model of “separate gender roles” in work, family and life arrangements which persists despite efforts to better balance these roles. Irrespective of their education level - which is higher for new generations than men’s - the majority of women with children withdraw fully or partly from the labour force until their children reach school age, and beyond. This pattern has provided the Austrian population with generally high quality family services, but buttressed gender inequalities, and deprived society from the activation of existing talent, and therefore from additional household incomes, fiscal revenues and potential output. Gender differences in life-time career and income paths, well-being, and participation patterns in public life generate increasing dissatisfaction in growing segments of society, among both women and men.