Browse by: "2017"

Spatial intelligence concerns the locations of objects, their shapes, their relations, and the paths they take as they move. Recognition of spatial skills enriches the traditional educational focus on developing literacy and numerical skills to include a cognitive domain particularly relevant to achievement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This report reviews research showing that (a) spatial thinking and STEM learning are related, and (b) spatial thinking is malleable. It evaluates two strategies for exploiting these findings in education. Strategy 1 involves direct training of spatial skills. Strategy 2 involves spatialising the curriculum, using tools suited to spatial thinking including spatial language, maps, diagrams, graphs, analogical comparison, physical activity that instantiates scientific or mathematical principles, gesture and sketching. Existing data support including spatial thinking and tools in designing curricula, training teachers and developing assessments. At the same time research continues to evaluate the effectiveness of the efforts and explore mechanisms.

Iceland has high living standards, low poverty, high inclusiveness and one of the most sustainable pension systems. It is the most highly unionised country in the OECD and, in the past, successful social pacts have protected the lowest paid workers during crises, and on occasion helped fight inflation. Nevertheless, Iceland experiences recurrent bursts of social tensions and labour unrest that often result in large wage awards, particularly in times of economic boom. Iceland is prone to accentuated economic cycles, and the pro-cyclical nature of collective bargaining aggravates these harmful dynamics.
Social partners often have disagreements over what has been agreed in the past and they can have differing views on the state of the economy. Trust among the social partners has been undermined and wage co-ordination is low. There is a large number of unions, many of them very small, and wage demands are often not consistent with macroeconomic stability. Labour unrest frequently originates in the public sector as wages lag behind the private sector.
Fostering trust and increasing wage co-ordination would make collective bargaining more effective and help sustain the benefits of the system for future generations. A technical committee should be established to provide reliable and impartial information to wage negotiators. Wage negotiations could start with “wage guidelines” issued by the major labour and employer confederations. State mediator should have greater powers in order to improve wage co-ordination and support the “wage guidelines”.
This working paper relates to the 2017 OECD Economic Survey of Iceland (http://www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-iceland.htm).

Integration into Global value chains (GVCs) provides opportunities for economic growth and development. However, the nature and extent of these opportunities differ across countries and sectors, and participation in GVCs can support processes of economic transformation in a variety of ways depending on the type of GVC. This paper explores some of the linkages between GVC participation and economic transformation at the sectoral level, with a view to assisting countries in assessing the various policy options for maximising their comparative advantages and their benefits from GVC participation. Three aspects of the relationship between GVC participation – defined as the use of foreign intermediates and integration into international production networks – and economic transformation are explored: i) sectoral differences in upgrading dynamics; ii) the role of services; and iii) resilience to external shocks. A range of qualitative and empirical approaches are used to explore and test the robustness of the relationship for three sectors presenting different characteristics in terms of their trade dynamics and links with economic transformation: mining and quarrying; motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers; and transport and storage services.

Stronger integration in global value chains would speed up economic convergence to advanced OECD economies and raise living standards. Participation in global value chains (GVCs) offers opportunities for boosting productivity through knowledge transfer and intensive use of technologically advanced inputs. It also enables Latvia to diversify exports into high value added goods and services. Latvia’s participation in GVC lags behind its Baltic and Central European peers. It also draws less value added from GVCs compared to many OECD economies. Nevertheless, GVC participation boosts the productivity of Latvian firms and enables them to increase employment and wages. Strong skills, high innovation capabilities and efficient resource allocation are essential for Latvian firms to engage in more knowledge intensive activities within GVCs. Improving access to higher education, promoting innovation cooperation between Latvian firms and foreign research institutes, reducing the large informal economy and establishing an effective judiciary and insolvency regime would unlock productivity growth through stronger integration in GVCs.
This Working Paper relates to the 2017 OECD Economic Survey of Latvia. (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-latvia.htm).

Declining student numbers; growing fiscal pressures; and intensified international competition for prestige, research talent and funding, have increasingly made collaborations, alliances, and mergers among higher education institutions a priority for institutions themselves, and for the governments that support them. Collaborations, alliances and mergers among higher education institutions may seek to enhance academic performance, to achieve economic efficiencies, or to better align the network and performance of institutions to public needs. Institutional collaboration occurs less frequently and successfully in the design and delivery of instruction than in other domains, owing largely to the traditionally autonomous and solitary role of faculty in this area. Collaboration is much more common in research, engagement, and back-end administration and other supports, with research collaboration often offering the greatest performance gains, and administrative collaboration the greatest potential efficiencies. Targeted grants are the most common tool governments use to encourage institutional collaboration and consolidation, while more flexible quality assurance standards and the greater alignment of policy frameworks more generally can also make it much easier for institutions to collaborate. Evidence about the outcomes of collaborations, alliances, and mergers is limited, but indicates that these initiatives can strengthen institutional performance, produce efficiencies, improve resilience and enhance alignment to national priorities, although not for all institutions in all circumstances. Policymakers who succeed in promoting effective collaboration appear to strategically stimulate institutional initiative, support effective planning and implementation, secure stakeholder buy-in, concentrate resources, and achieve policy alignment.

Estonia is highly integrated into the global trade system: it exports approximately 80% of GDP and around half of domestic employment is sustained by foreign demand. Given that international trade and foreign direct investment are considered as major channels of technology diffusion and productivity growth, this bodes well for reviving income convergence. To capitalize on the country’s high trade intensity, policymakers need to remove remaining trade barriers and improve policies fostering knowledge diffusion as well as talent retention and attraction. At the same time, to ensure that benefits of more trade are shared across the population, the social safety net should be bolstered, and participation in upskilling programmes and their labour-market relevance increased.
This Working Paper relates to the 2017 OECD Economic Survey of New Zealand (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-estonia.htm).

This paper focusses on the link between urbanisation and consumption behaviour in China. Urbanisation is defined here as rural people moving to cities to work and migrant workers in cities obtaining urban residential status, against the backdrop of government plans to settle 100 million rural dwellers into cities and grant urban residential status to another 100 million migrant workers who already reside in cities. Using household data of the China Family Panel Studies dataset, the paper investigates the impact of those residential status changes on household consumption. The results of the analysis suggest that moving up the residential ladder in this way will likely result in increased consumption by almost 30% for both groups of people and thus contribute to rebalancing of the economy. Higher incomes and longer times in education are important drivers of this process, while a greater number of children in the family discourages consumption.
This Working Paper relates to the 2017 OECD Economic Survey of China (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-china.htm).

Assuming that immigrants select destinations according to absolute returns to their observable and unobservable human capital, I present a human capital model of migration accounting for taxes, transfers and limited portability of skills. The model predicts both segmented sorting of migrants to countries with a compressed income distribution, with negative sorting increasing with lower portability and positive sorting increasing with portability. Sorting to countries with greater income dispersion increases unambiguously with host-country relevant skills. Migrants to countries with compressed incomes will hence be more likely to be either out of work or overqualified and low-paid compared to natives with similar observable skills, and compared to migrants to countries with greater income dispersion. Regressions results on data for 16 OECD countries from the OECD Survey of Adult Skills are in line with the model. Controlling for observable skills and characteristics, including a literacy test score, immigrants from countries that are less wealthy or further away in geographical and cultural distance are significantly more likely to be either out of work or overqualified and low-paid in high-benefit countries. Wage compression, generous transfers and high taxes, typical traits of the so-called “Nordic” or “Flexicurity” model, may therefore contribute to making immigrant integration more challenging.

This paper details a methodology for calculating the extent of terrestrial and marine protected areas recorded in the World Database on Protected Areas by country, type and IUCN management categories. The method allows the data on protected areas to be summarised in a harmonised and more detailed way than is currently available, without requiring any additional reporting by countries. When used in combination with other information about protected areas, this new indicator can help better understand the extent and focus of countries’ conservation efforts.

Many OECD countries have undergone reforms over the past decade to introduce advanced roles for nurses in primary care to improve access to care, quality of care and/or to reduce costs. This working paper provides an analysis of these nurse role developments and reforms in 37 OECD and EU countries. Four main trends emerge: 1) the development in several countries of specific advanced practice nursing roles at the interface between the traditional nursing and medical professions; 2) the introduction of various new, supplementary nursing roles, often focused on the management of chronic conditions; 3) the rise in educational programmes to train nurses to the required skills and competencies; and 4) the adoption of new laws and regulations in a number of countries since 2010 to allow certain categories of nurses to prescribe pharmaceuticals (including in Estonia, Finland, France, Netherlands, Poland and Spain).

Higher living standards and well-being, as well as convergence with more advanced economies, will depend on achieving higher productivity, which in turn would be boosted by more investment in capital. In particular, investment in knowledge-based capital and greater inward FDI can help Slovenia develop its economy and improve global integration. Complementing such investments requires a workforce that is given the opportunities and incentives to continuously engage in upskilling and seek employment where they are most productive, in the process raising their incomes. Reskilling can be improved by boosting the links between educational institutions and local and foreign firms, helping Slovenia to overcome its problems of long-term unemployment and low employment rates of older workers. Improving life-long learning will allow workers to adapt to a changing economic environment and thereby contribute to their own well-being. Adjusting wage determination and broadening labour market activation measures can smooth these adjustments.
This Working Paper relates to the 2017 OECD Economic Survey of Slovenia
(www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-slovenia.htm).

This paper explores the connection between “zombie” firms (firms that would typically exit in a competitive market) and bank health and the consequences for aggregate productivity in 11 European countries. Controlling for cyclical effects, the results show that zombie firms are more likely to be connected to weak banks, suggesting that the zombie firm problem in Europe may at least partly stem from bank forbearance. The increasing survival of zombie firms congests markets and constrains the growth of more productive firms, to the detriment of aggregate productivity growth. Our results suggest that around one-third of the impact of zombie congestion on capital misallocation could be directly attributed to bank health and additional analysis suggests that this may partly be due to reduced availability of credit to healthy firms. Finally, improvements in bank health are more likely to be associated with a reduction in the prevalence of zombie firms in countries where insolvency regimes do not unduly inhibit corporate restructuring. Thus, leveraging the important complementarities between bank strengthening efforts and insolvency regime reform would contribute to breaking the shackles on potential growth in Europe.