1887
  1. Home
  2. Papers
  3. Browse by: "2016"

Browse by: "2016"

Index

Title Index

Year Index

/search?value51=igo%2Foecd&value6=2016&sortDescending=false&sortDescending=false&value5=2016&value53=status%2F50+OR+status%2F100+OR+status%2F90&value52=&value7=&value2=&option7=&value4=subtype%2Farticle+OR+subtype%2Fworkingpaper+OR+subtype%2Fpolicybrief&option5=year_from&value3=&option6=year_to&fmt=ahah&publisherId=%2Fcontent%2Figo%2Foecd&option3=&option52=&sortField=prism_publicationDate&sortField=prism_publicationDate&option4=dcterms_type&option53=pub_contentStatus&option51=pub_igoId&option2=&page=3&page=3
  • 16 Feb 2016
  • Koen De Backer, Carlo Menon, Isabelle Desnoyers-James, Laurent Moussiegt
  • Pages: 38
Le constat que les entreprises (manufacturières) des économies de l’OCDE rapatrient de plus en plus leurs activités manufacturières dans leur propre pays a suscité beaucoup d’intérêt ces dernières années. Quelques exemples de grandes entreprises multinationales ayant suivi cette voie ont reçu un large écho, et ainsi donné une visibilité accrue au phénomène de la relocalisation tant dans la presse (économique) que dans le cadre des travaux menés par les universitaires et des discussions entre responsables de l’action publique. Le débat sur la relocalisation (souvent appelée aussi « rapatriement », « délocalisation de voisinage » et « relocalisation de proximité ») est très intense, certains affirmant même que le temps des délocalisations est révolu. Cependant des désaccords profonds s’expriment à propos de l’ampleur effective de cette tendance pour les économies, en particulier au sujet du nombre d’emplois que la relocalisation est censée rapatrier. Alors que les décideurs politiques des économies de l’OCDE espèrent que la relocalisation pourrait aider à redynamiser leur industrie manufacturière en perte de vitesse, la justification de mesures en faveur de la relocalisation n’est pas claire.
English
The health system in South Africa is unique in many ways. South Africa spends 41.8% of total health expenditures on private voluntary health insurance – more than any OECD country – but only 17% of the population – mostly high income citizens - can afford to purchase private insurance. Given the magnitude of private health expenditures, the activities in the private health care market have an important impact on the functioning of the health care system as a whole. Medical schemes (private health insurance) in South Africa mainly finance care that is predominantly delivered by private providers (i.e., private hospitals, specialists, general practitioners, pharmacies). Therefore, these schemes primarily finance an alternative to seeking care in the public sector and offer services that duplicate those available in the public sector.
Since 2000, real estate prices in Switzerland have risen rapidly. By some measures, between 2000 and 2014 apartment prices almost doubled, while those of single-family homes increased by around 60%. Price rises have varied considerably across cantons. Transactions activity in the sector has been robust, with growth in mortgage volumes strongly outpacing disposable income. As a consequence, Switzerland’s residential mortgage debt-to-GDP ratio, at 120%, is the highest in the OECD. This is despite a private ownership rate of only around 40%, one of the lowest in the OECD. Banks’ exposure to the mortgage market is the sixth highest in the OECD, with mortgages making up over 80% of domestic (non-interbank) bank loans. That said, high house prices are being supported by very low interest rates, immigration-fuelled population growth and smaller family units, while demand is being bolstered by mortgage interest tax deductibility and institutional investors. Restrictive planning regulations have also damped the supply response. These factors have contributed to low rental yields, although high compared to other assets and very low vacancy rates. A number of measures have been taken by banks and authorities over the past three years to shore up banks’ exposure and to take the heat out of the market. These include a minimum down payment of 10% of the collateral value of the property from the borrower’s own funds, which may not be obtained by pledging or early withdrawal of second-pillar pension assets, and compulsory amortisation of loans. A counter-cyclical buffer (CCB) was activated at the beginning of 2013 and obliges banks to hold additional common equity Tier 1 capital based on their risk-weighted mortgage positions secured by residential real estate in Switzerland. In January 2014, the CCB was increased from 1% to 2%. Despite these measures, house prices remain high and the risk to the banking sector elevated. This Working Paper relates to the 2015 OECD Economic Review of Switzerland (http://www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-switzerland.htm)
In many OECD countries changes in demography and health conditions are putting pressure on public finance. To prevent further expansion of government spending as a percentage of GDP, public spending efficiency will need to be raised. This paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess the efficiency of welfare spending in a sample of OECD countries around 2012, focussing on health care, secondary education and general public services. The DEA model has a two input-one output structure, with at least one of the variables representing a composite indicator controlling for country-specific factors (socio-economic environment and life-style factors, for example). We find wide dispersion in efficiency measures across OECD countries and provide possible quantified improvements for both output and input efficiency.
Unemployment and quality job creation remain pressing concerns for many localities and regions across the OECD. Municipalities, districts, provinces and regions have it within their power to speed up change and seize new economic opportunities. With the right strategies and implementation plans, the fortunes of local businesses, jobs and people can be significantly changed for the better. This report examines workforce and skills development issues Skive Municipality, Denmark. It highlights the unique employment challenges faced by the community and policy actions that have been taken to attract investment and human capital into the region. The report outlines a set of recommendations to improve policies and programmes that support job creation, employment, and productivity.
Despite having low government spending, Switzerland scores highly in various public policy outcomes, including health, education and transportation. But, as the population grows and ages, efficiency of public spending will have to rise to maintain low tax rates. Given its high returns, the provision of early childhood education and care should be boosted, especially for children from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, including those from immigrant families. Cantons should avoid oversupplying baccalaureates, thereby lowering university dropout rates. Policies will also need to adapt to structural changes in the labour market, by boosting the supply and attractiveness of fields of study that are facing high demand on the labour market, and by further clarifying study streams across tertiary education. Health-care efficiency could be raised by further developing managed-care networks. Enforcing systematic data collection for the quality of care would also help patients and providers make better informed choices. Generic drugs’ prices are too high due to a poorly designed price-fixing mechanism. Transportation suffers from congestion that could be reduced by implementing peak-load pricing on roads and trains. But efficiency in public spending is also about allocating public funds optimally. Switzerland’s rapidly rising social security entitlements and its fiscal equalisation system constrain public spending and risk crowding out important expenditures. Fast-rising social security entitlements could be addressed via indexing the retirement age to life expectancy. Fiscal equalisation weakens tax-raising incentives for some cantons; this could be addressed by allowing them to keep a larger part of their increased revenues. Efficiency in allocating public expenditure could also be raised by increasing the share of public spending allocated by tender and harmonising procurement regulations across all levels of government. This Working Paper relates to the 2015 OECD Economic Review of Switzerland (http://www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-switzerland.htm)

A public-private partnership (PPP) is a long-term contractual arrangement whereby the government calls on a company or a consortium formed for the purpose to design, build, finance and maintain a structure or facility necessary for its public-service mission. The company or consortium is subsequently remunerated according to the availability and performance of the structure or facility. The remuneration must enable the company or consortium to repay its initial investment and cover the financing costs and the services it provides. In a broad sense PPPs have long existed in France under various names and in various forms, marking the history of the development of the country’s infrastructure networks. In the modern sense, corresponding to the partnership contract (contrat de partenariat now renamed “machés de partenariat” since 2015) created in 2004 and covering all-inclusive government-pay contracts, PPPs have made significant inroads in certain sectors of public management such as social infrastructure (schools, hospitals, prisons, etc.). As a result France topped the European PPP league table in 2011-12, though PPPs remain a niche market overall in relation to the total amount of public procurement. Now, ten years later, it is possible to take stock, in both qualitative and quantitative terms, of projects initiated and carried out. This report aims to show the impact and effects of this new public procurement resource, sector by sector, in facts and figures, and to illustrate the contributions it has made and the feedback it has generated by major type of project and by public-sector initiator, from municipalities to central government agencies.

JEL classification: H40, H5, H83
Keywords: Infrastructure, partnership contracts, public private partnerships, public procurement

Good infrastructure is crucial to a country’s development and continued success. Russia’s developmental goals require new and upgraded infrastructure throughout its territory. Private investment in capital projects will be vital for Russia to meet these goals. To facilitate private investment, the Russian government has embarked on a series of reforms aimed at improving the investment climate and creating a robust institutional framework for private sector participation in concessions and Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). The OECD’s 2012 Council Recommendation on Principles for Public Governance of Public-Private Partnerships (the PPP Recommendation) aims to support governments facing trade-offs between three demands inherent in a PPP project process. This article provides an overview of the alignment of the policies of the Russian Federation in the area of public governance of PPPs with these recommendations.

JEL classification: H41, H54, H57
Keywords: Council recommendations, public private partnerships, Russian Federation, value for money

Aggregate expenditure ceilings are today a feature of budgeting in many OECD countries. They are typically used either to enforce a trend-based expenditure policy, or to gradually reduce the size of government. With the increased popularity of expenditure rules, aggregate ceilings are also required to give effect to these rules. This article focuses on the key design issue of the coverage of aggregate expenditure ceilings – that is, should they cover the totality of government expenditure, or is it legitimate to exclude certain categories of expenditure? It is suggested that the distinction between “determinate” and “indeterminate” expenditure is crucial to properly answering this question. It is also argued that the appropriate coverage of aggregate expenditure ceilings is different during expenditure planning (budget preparation) and during budget execution.

JEL classification: E620, H610
Keywords: Expenditure ceilings, top-down budgeting, determinate expenditure, indeterminate expenditure, automatic changes, trend-based expenditure policy, contingency reserve, forecasting margin, sequestration, compensation mechanism, welfare cap

In this paper we describe how we included travel time variability in the national Dutch transport forecasting model and what the policy impacts of this new forecasting tool are. Until now, travel time reliability improvements for road projects were included in Dutch cost-benefit analysis (CBA) by multiplying the travel time benefits from reduced congestion by a factor 1.25. This proportionality is based on the linkage between congestion reduction and reliability improvements. However, this treatment of reliability is not useful to evaluate policies that especially affect travel time variability. From the start, this method was provisional and meant to be replaced by a better method capturing travel time variability. For this, we derived an empirical relation between the standard deviation of travel time, mean delay of travel time and length of route. This has been implemented in the national Dutch model as a post processing module. The new travel time reliability forecasting model will be incorporated in the Dutch guidelines for CBA.

Transport project prioritisation and selection processes require consideration of many aspects of costs, intended benefits and other impacts. Economic analysis methods can measure many of those factors, though the analysis methods must be specified in ways that meet the information needs of decision-makers. This paper examines how benefit-cost analysis, economic impact analysis and multi-criteria analysis approaches have evolved and been applied to address the specific form of governmental decision processes that exist in the U.S. and some other countries. It discusses how “ex-post” case studies and associated statistical studies of have been promoted and utilised to both inform and refine “ex-ante” evaluation methods. It concludes by discussing the advantages, limitations and trade-offs involved in the use of this approach for transport project decision-making.

This paper analyses three main mechanisms through which transport improvements have impacts that deliver real income gain over and above user-benefits. One is economic density and productivity, a second is induced private investment and associated land-use change, and a third is employment effects. There are relatively well-established methodologies for incorporating the first and third of these in cost-benefit appraisal, and these methodologies are reviewed in the paper. For the second, the paper outlines how transport induced investments can create consumer surplus, and describes a method for quantifying this in cost-benefit appraisal. Data issues encountered in implementing these methods are discussed.

This paper provides an overview of some alternative conceptual definitions of travel time variability, discusses their implications about behaviour, and puts them into a broader context, including deviations from the underlying assumptions regarding rational behaviour. The paper then discusses the empirical basis for assigning a value to travel time variability. This discussion leads to the conclusion that a fair amount of scepticism is appropriate regarding stated preference data and that attention should turn to the possibilities that are emerging for using large revealed preference datasets. The bottom line is that travel time variability is quantitatively important and cost-benefit analysis should account for it, using the best values we can get, in order not to imply a bias towards project that do not reduce travel time variability. Omitting the cost of travel time variability is not the neutral option.

This paper applies the Inclusive Growth framework to the OECD Regional Well-being Database in order to compute multidimensional living standards (MDLS) among OECD regions from the early 2000s to 2012. MDLS are based on the equivalent income approach, where, for different income groups, the monetised value of health status and unemployment are added to disposable income and aggregated with a generalised mean function to allow inequality to be taken into account. Results highlight that, due to the spatial concentration of good and bad outcomes, regional disparities are amplified when observed through the lens of MDLS as opposed to income-based regional disparities. The paper also shows that people living in metropolitan regions experienced, on average, higher levels of MDLS but also a sharper decline during the economic crisis. Growth of MDLS in metropolitan regions during this period was characterised by a higher contribution of life expectancy and a lower contribution of income inequality with respect to the other regions.

There is a drive towards delivering and operating public infrastructure through public-private partnerships as opposed to traditional approaches. The assessment of the value for money achieved by the two alternative approaches rests on both the cost of financing, and the efficiency in delivery and operation. This paper focuses on the cost of financing, and in particular the cost associated with transferring risk from the public to private sphere. If capital markets are efficient and complete, the cost of private and public financing should be the same, with the relative delivery and operational efficiency remaining as the primary determinant of value for money. However, evidence suggests the risk transfer to a public-private partnership entails an inefficient risk pricing premium. We argue that a high price for public-private partnerships results from large risk transfers, risk treatment within the private sector, and uncertainty around the past and future performance of PPP consortiums. The corollary of the finding is that the efficiency gains from a PPP need to be much higher than previously understood to deliver better value for money than under a traditional approach.

This paper develops OECD information on housing policies and the degree to which OECD countries pursue social policy objectives them. Data collected by the OECD shows that most OECD countries provide considerable support to promote access to homeownership: reported spending can amount up to 2.3% of GDP. Most OECD countries also support the provision of social rental housing, but public support for social rental housing is declining in many countries and the private rental sector is playing an increasingly important role in promoting access to affordable housing. In almost all OECD countries housing support is also delivered through means-tested housing allowances, for which reporting countries spend between 0.6 and 1.8% of GDP. The available data do not allow for a comprehensive cross-country comparison of the housing policy mix but, where available, data suggest that owner-occupied housing receives significant support compared to other tenures.Access to housing and housing quality also remain pressing concerns in many OECD countries. Significant numbers of people are homeless: while statistics are difficult to compare, most OECD countries report that 1 to 8 people in every thousand lack regular access to housing. In addition, many households live in low-quality dwellings: 15% of low-income households live in overcrowded dwellings and 14% do not have access to an indoor flushing toilet. Neighbourhood crime and pollution are also problematic for many households throughout the OECD.
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error