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Private debt owed to banks and other financial institutions has been at unprecedented high levels. This paper studies the role of these high levels of debt for workers, based on an assembled micro-dataset that harmonises household surveys from 29 OECD countries. High debt is found to be associated with two bad outcomes for workers: weaker wage growth and an increased risk that they encounter a sharp fall in their wages. People who tend to be particularly affected are the low-skilled, individuals with unstable employment paths and financially vulnerable households. Strong bank supervision and macroprudential measures that aim to avoid credit overexpansion are two policies that can improve the links of private debt with labour income growth and risk. Overall, the evidence in this paper points to finance as one factor behind wage stagnation and the social divisions in today’s labour markets.
This paper explores the nature of exit barriers in the steel industry, their social and economic implications, and policy approaches to deal with exits and steel industry restructuring. Barriers to exit in the steel industry require attention due to their negative impacts on excess capacity. Such barriers mainly stem from government interventions that hinder the closure of inefficient or unviable steel plants, though cost factors specific to the steel industry are important barriers, as well. Exits may also entail important costs associated with redundancy payments to workers, environmental clean-up and operations to dismantle mills. The paper concludes with specific policy recommendations to promote adjustment, including removing subsidies and other government support measures that maintain unviable plants, assisting displaced steel workers into other activities, and other measures to limit the social costs of steel plant closures.
Digital transformation has enabled easier tradability of traditional services across borders and the emergence of new services that create value from data. But the benefits derived from digitalisation risk being derailed by existing and emerging trade barriers. The OECD Digital Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (Digital STRI) is a new tool that identifies, catalogues, and quantifies cross-cutting barriers between 2014 and 2018 that affect trade in digitally-enabled services across all G20 countries. This index is comprised of a regulatory database of existing trade barriers based on publicly available laws and regulations, as well as composite indices that measure the trade restrictiveness of these policies. The Digital STRI shows that the regulatory environment is complex and diverse across G20 countries, and that there is scope to reduce trade barriers, particularly with respect to communications infrastructure and burdensome measures that affect cross-border data transfers. The Digital STRI can also map regulatory heterogeneity across the G20, and help monitor regulatory convergence, e.g. from regulatory cooperation in trade agreements.
The combination of different working-age benefits, childcare costs and income taxation creates complexity, reduces work incentives and holds back employment. This paper compares Finland’s benefit system with two benefit reform scenarios: a uniform benefit for all (“basic income”) and a universal tapering rule (“universal credit”). The scenarios are modelled in the OECD TaxBen model and the TUJA microsimulation model. We find that replacing current benefits with a basic income would improve incentives for many, but with a drastic redistribution of income and likely increasing poverty as a result. Merging working-age benefits with similar aims and coordinating their tapering against earnings would on the other hand consistently improve work incentives and transparency, while preserving or improving social protection.
The G20/OECD Task Force on Financial Consumer Protection has highlighted that "regulators and supervisors can use the insights gained through behavioural economics research to inform their approach to potential remedies to help consumers".
This paper, prepared under the aegis of the G20/OECD Task Force, first provides some historical context for the development of the field of behavioural economics and its increased application to policy. It then looks more specifically at the application of behavioural economics in the area of financial consumer protection. Common biases that individuals demonstrate in the context of making financial decisions are identified, and an overview of how numerous governments are testing and implementing the application of behavioural economics for policies promoting financial consumer protection is provided. The paper concludes by highlighting the opportunity for behavioural economics to help provide cost-efficient ways of making policy more effective at promoting positive outcomes for consumers, and stressing the need to continue an open dialogue with policy makers, regulators and supervisors to exchange experiences and good practices.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit many countries at a time when their education systems were facing multiple challenges. Economic, public-health and social impacts from the pandemic have exacerbated many of these challenges. The aim of this paper is to explore the way in which the behavioural sciences can help support the policy response to the COVID-induced education crisis, and to serve as a learning experience for other future crises. The paper involves an empirical exploration of the factors associated with a range of outcomes using large nationally representative datasets, and interpreting these relationships in the context of a detailed literature review. By using data that it is generally representative of the populations of interest, and is available for many dozens of countries with different histories, languages, cultures, and socioeconomic outcomes, this paper highlights how identifying behavioural biases can direct education systems towards more effective targeted policy interventions.
Governments are created and run by humans, who can experience the same behavioural biases and barriers as individuals in society. Therefore, it makes sense to explore how behavioural insights (BI) can be applied to the governance of regulatory policy making, and not just to the design of regulations themselves. Applying BI can help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the decision-making process, which can, in turn, help improve regulatory decisions. This paper maps the ways in which barriers and biases can affect the institutions, processes and tools of regulatory governance, with a focus on regulatory oversight bodies and regulatory management tools. It concludes with practical ways governments can translate these findings into research and reforms that can help future-proof regulatory policy making and ensure it is agile, responsive and fit for tackling important and complex policy challenges.
This working paper explores the use of behavioural science for promoting environmentally sustainable tourism. It looks at how to use behavioural science to encourage sustainable behaviour, targeting both the consumers and suppliers of tourism activities and services. It concludes with recommendations for planning and implementing a tourism recovery strategy that prioritises both economic and environmental sustainability.
The efficient and safe management of spent fuel produced during the operation of commercial nuclear power plants is an important issue. In this context, partitioning and transmutation (P&T) of minor actinides and long-lived fission products can play an important role, significantly reducing the burden on geological repositories of nuclear waste and allowing their more effective use. Various systems, including existing reactors, fast reactors and advanced systems have been considered to optimise the transmutation scheme. Recently, many countries have shown interest in accelerator-driven systems (ADS) due to their potential for transmutation of minor actinides. Much R&D work is still required in order to demonstrate their desired capability as a whole system, and the current analysis methods and nuclear data for minor actinide burners are not as well established as those for conventionally-fuelled systems...
This report presents a new urban accessibility framework. It identifies which destinations can be reached on foot, by bicycle, public transport or car within a certain time (accessibility). It then measures how many destinations are close by (proximity). The comparison between accessible destinations and nearby destinations shows how well each transport mode performs (transport performance). These three indicators are calculated for destinations such as schools, hospitals, food shops, restaurants, people, recreational opportunities and green spaces in 121 cities in 30 European countries.
Road safety is a major issue in Latin America and substantial actions are needed to reduce the number of road deaths and injuries. This report describes and benchmarks road safety management and performance in ten Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay and Uruguay. The comparisons in this study allow identifying similarities and differences between countries’ road safety performance. It will be useful to policy makers in assessing weaknesses and strengths, and designing effective road safety policies that make use of the experiences in other countries.
This report is part of the International Transport Forum’s Case-Specific Policy Analysis series. These are topical studies on specific issues carried out by the ITF in agreement with local institutions.
When a system of time series is seasonally adjusted, generally the accounting constraints originally linking the series are not fulfilled. To overcome this problem, we discuss an extension to a system of series linked by an accounting constraint of the classical univariate benchmarking procedure due to Denton (1971), which is founded on a movement preservation principle that is very relevant in this case. The presence of linear dependence between the variables makes it necessary to deal with the whole set of contemporaneous and temporal aggregation relationships. The cases of one-way classified (e.g., by regions or by industries) and of two-way classified (e.g., by regions and by industries) systems of series are studied. An empirical application to the Canadian retail trade series by province (12 series) and trade groups (18 series) is considered to show the capability of the proposed procedures.
This article provides the background and describes the processes involved in establishing a national approach to benchmarking the way universities engage with their local and regional communities in Australia. Local and regional community engagement is a rapidly expanding activity in Australian public universities and is increasingly being seen as part of the universal quality assurance assessment process. An initiative of the Australian Universities Community Engagement Alliance (AUCEA), the benchmarking framework was developed over almost three years and involved considerable consultation and testing. The framework comprises an institutional questionnaire, a partner perceptions survey and a “good practice” template. The instruments were tested in a pilot of 12 AUCEA member universities and will be implemented in all 33 AUCEA member universities in late 2008. Comparative results will be available early in 2009. The framework will assist universities and their community partners to improve their contribution to society and the environment through mutual knowledge exchange, learning and enterprising action.
How higher education institutions are managed is one of the most decisive factors in achieving institutional goals. The key role that university governance plays in the improvement of education quality has been the focus of attention in MENA economies since 2009. In this article, the authors present the findings of a screening tool developed as a benchmarking exercise that assesses the extent to which universities in the MENA region are following governance practices aligned with their institutional goals and international trends, and monitors their progress over time. They present the results of testing the methodology of the screening tool in a sample of universities in Egypt, Morocco, the PalestinianAuthority and Tunisia comparing them across five dimensions: 1) context, mission and goals; 2) management orientation; 3) autonomy; 4) accountability; and 5) participation. The findings highlight vivid differences, especially notable in between private and public institutions.