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  • Between 2000 and 2009, total expenditure on educational institutions as a percentage of GDP rose by 0.88 percentage point from 5.34% to 6.22%; the increase came from both public and private sources.
  • In OECD countries, 16.0% of total educational expenditure for all levels of education came from private sources in 2009, compared to 12.2% in 2000. The private share in expenditure increased from 22.9% to 30.0% on average at the tertiary level, whereas it increased from 7.1% to 8.8% at primary, secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary levels.
  • The increase in private expenditure was not tied to a decrease in public spending on education. Rather, both sources of education expenditure had different growth rates.
  • At the country level, a higher share of private expenditure for tertiary education institutions is not associated with more limited access to tertiary education or decreasing opportunities for students from disadvantaged families to enrol in tertiary education.
French
Transport infrastructure has been dangerously neglected in recent times. Lack of transport infrastructure impedes economic integration and poverty reduction. Involving the private sector in financing the transport infrastructure is proving harder than anticipated.
French

This article, originally presented as a keynote speech at the June 2009 meeting of the OECD Working Party of Senior Budget Officials, explores the state of new public management from the perspective of current political theory and presents relevant findings from a 2009 OECD comparative study, “Value for Money”. JEL classification: H830. Keywords: New public management; NPM; public administration; Dunleavy; public governance reform; value for money.

This paper analyses convergence in per capita gross regional product of Russia’s regions during the period 1995-2010, when regional data are available. Using a panel regression framework we find no evidence for beta-convergence. Instead we find divergence, which is, however, attenuated over time. Robustness checks that use regional real income instead of gross regional product confirm this outcome as do non-parametric estimates of convergence, namely estimates using Markov transition probability matrices and stochastic kernel plots of regional relative income. Decompositions of regional income and gross regional product also find no sigma-convergence of Russian regions. These decompositions point to the geographical concentration of extractive activities in the Urals and of business services and of the public administration in the Moscow area as the main culprit for this lack of convergence. They also establish that despite reforms to equalize provisions of public goods across Russia, the social services sector of the public administration, education and health still do not have the expected equalizing impact on regional income.

This paper examines the relationship between the output gap and inflation in Japan by estimating Phillips curves and testing for changes since the advent of low inflation and/or the stabilisation of the rate of change of inflation. The work provides empirical support for the hypothesis of a change in the relationship between output and inflation in an environment of low inflation for Japan. In particular, there is evidence that the slope of the Phillips curve becomes flatter when the inflation rate is below ½ per cent (quarter-on-quarter, non-annualised) and also that there has been a break in the relationship between demand pressures and inflation in Japan since the beginning of the 1990s. Evidence is also found that the relationship changes when the inflation rate is either rising rapidly or falling sharply. At such times, changes in demand pressure have stronger effects on inflation. These results are robust to a wide range of specifications, including corrections for the ...

This paper examines the future of capital income taxation in a world of capital mobility. It first explores the motivation for personal and corporate income taxation in an open economy and argues that policymakers should view these taxes as having quite different impacts on the economy. The paper then suggests that some forces (e.g. capital flight) will encourage governments to shift away from capital income taxation while others (e.g. tax exportation) will have the opposite effect ...

Public finance specialists and constitutional theorists are very reluctant to establish legal norms for budget systems. International organisations have published guidelines for desirable features of budgetary transparency. Except for external audit standards, international bodies have not specified which features should be incorporated in domestic law. As a result, there are no international standards that specify legal requirements for desirable features of national budgeting systems. Classical and new budget principles, as well as the distinct functional responsibilities of the legislature and the executive in budgetary processes, should guide policy makers who wish to establish a “good” law for their national budget system. For budget preparation, adoption, execution, reporting and auditing, this section identifies desirable features that should be included in the law. Suggestions are also made as to which budget principles should be included in constitutions, primary law and secondary law.

According to Becker [1964], when labour markets are perfectly competitive, general training is paid by the worker, who reaps all the benefits from the investment. Therefore, ceteris paribus, the greater the training wage premium, the greater the investment in general training. Using data from the European Community Household Panel, we compute a proxy of the training wage premium in clusters of homogeneous workers and find that smaller premia induce greater incidence of off-site training, which is likely to impart general skills. Our findings suggest that the Becker model provides insufficient guidance to understand empirical training patterns. Conversely, they are not inconsistent with theories of training in imperfectly competitive labour markets, in which firms may be willing to finance general training if the wage structure is compressed, that is, if the increase in productivity after training is greater than the increase in pay.

Across OECD countries, more and more individuals have attained tertiary education and the share of those with less education has declined. Although there are more tertiary-educated individuals than ever before, they still achieve good labour market outcomes. This confirms that labour market demand is generally keeping pace with rising educational attainment. Only in about one-quarter of OECD countries, the employment advantage of tertiary-educated adults over adults with upper-secondary or post-secondary education has declined over the past two decades, which may be a sign that demand for tertiary-educated people is slowing down. Countries also need to address the situation of young men and women who have not completed upper secondary school and who face low employment prospects.Across OECD countries, more and more individuals have attained tertiary education and the share of those with less education has declined. Although there are more tertiary-educated individuals than ever before, they still achieve good labour market outcomes. This confirms that labour market demand is generally keeping pace with rising educational attainment. Only in about one-quarter of OECD countries, the employment advantage of tertiary-educated adults over adults with upper-secondary or post-secondary education has declined over the past two decades, which may be a sign that demand for tertiary-educated people is slowing down. Countries also need to address the situation of young men and women who have not completed upper secondary school and who face low employment prospects.

French
Fewer 15-year-olds in East Asian countries reported that they use memorisation than did 15‑year‑olds in some of the English-speaking countries to whom they are often compared. In no PISA-participating education system did boys report more intensive use of memorisation than girls when learning mathematics. Memorisation as a learning strategy may work with easy problems, but it is unlikely to be effective if it is the only strategy used when confronted with complex mathematics problems.
French
Regardless of the type of school attended (public or private, advantaged or disadvantaged), 15-year-old students spent more time in mathematics lessons in 2012 than in 2003. The average amount of time spent in mathematics classes varies by more than a factor of two across countries and economies. The more time spent in mathematics classes, the better students perform, on average; but giving students more work in class is often not enough to improve learning outcomes.
French
OECD’s Producer Support Estimate (PSE) is the only available source of internationally comparable information on support levels in agriculture. It attracts much attention and receives wide media coverage, not the least in reports that are critical of the way some agricultural policies are pursued. Interpretation of PSE results is not always in line with the underlying concepts, and often too narrowly focused on a few aggregate numbers. Against this background, the PSE approach as used by OECD has been criticized as providing potentially misleading information. This note deals with three central questions raised in such criticism.
This paper is part of the joint project between the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission and the OECD’s Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs on “Review of Labour Migration Policy in Europe”. This document has been produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Grant: HOME/2013/EIFX/CA/002 / 30-CE-0615920/00-38 (DI130895) A previous version of this paper was presented and discussed at the OECD Working Party on Migration in June 2015. The paper investigates the main likely drivers of migration towards the EU. It encompasses a literature review on the determinants of potential and actual migration, followed by an illustrative empirical investigation of worldwide migration intentions – focused on intentions to move permanently in a restricted time span, based on the Gallup surveys on the opinions and aspirations of people around the globe. The paper then continues with a descriptive analysis of migration intentions using both aggregated figures and figures disaggregated by region or country of destination and region or country of origin. It then investigates if individuals intending to move to European countries differ from those intending to move elsewhere using basic individual characteristics such as sex, age, education, and marital and employment status. When feasible, it compares the findings with the profile of recent migrants residing in OECD countries derived from the Database on Immigrants in OECD and non-OECD Countries.
Part I of this paper first presents information on trends and composition of social expenditure as in the OECD Social Expenditure database for the years 1980 – 2007. Over this period, public social expenditure as a percentage of GDP, on average across OECD, increased from 15.6% to 19.2%. Public pension spending (6.4% of GDP) and public health expenditure (5.8% of GDP) are the largest social spending items.

Part I also presents social expenditure indicators that account for the effects of the tax system as well as indicators on private social expenditure. Including both of these features alters country rankings by level of social spending and leads to a convergence of spending-to-GDP ratios across countries. Based on this broader measure net total social expenditure as a percent of GDP at factor costs in 2007 was highest in France and Belgium, at 30% of GDP, and between 22 and 28% of GDP in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Part II of this paper presents the OECD SOCX Manual. It starts with a discussion of methodological, classification and data issues regarding the gross spending items as in SOCX. It also looks at the methodological aspects of measuring net social expenditure, and presents information on how relevant estimates were derived. Accounting for the effect of the tax system and private social expenditure leads to greater similarity in social expenditure-to-GDP ratios across countries and to a reassessment of the magnitude of welfare states. After accounting for the impact of taxation and private benefits, social expenditure amounts to over 30% of GDP at factor cost in Belgium and France; social expenditure also ranges within a few percentage points of each other in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Concern that unilateral greenhouse gas emission reductions could foster carbon leakage and undermine the international competitiveness of domestic industry has led to growing calls for carbon-based border-tax adjustments (BTAs). This paper uses a global general equilibrium model to assess the economic effects of BTAs and comes to three main conclusions. First, BTAs can reduce carbon leakage if the coalition of countries taking action to reduce emissions is small, because in this case leakage (while typically small) mainly occurs through international trade competitiveness losses rather than through declines in world fossil fuel prices that trigger rising carbon intensities outside the region taking action. Second, the welfare impacts of BTAs are small, and typically slightly negative at the world level. Third, and perhaps more strikingly, BTAs do not necessarily curb the output losses incurred by the domestic energy intensive-industries (EIIs) they are intended to protect in the first place. This is in part because taken as a whole, EIIs in industrialised countries make important use of carbon-intensive intermediate inputs produced by EIIs in other geographical areas. Another, deeper explanation is that EIIs are ultimately more adversely affected by carbon pricing itself, and the associated contraction in market size, than by any international competitiveness losses. These findings are shown to be robust to key model parameters, country coverage and design features of BTAs.
There is a case, but there are also counter-arguments. With sufficient forward-looking behaviour among firms and households, price-level targeting can act as a powerful built-in stabiliser through automatic shifts in inflation expectations. This stabilisation mechanism reduces the need for large shifts in policy rates, alleviating the risk of hitting the zero lower bound of nominal interest rates and falling into a liquidity trap. Furthermore, credible price-level targeting can support capital accumulation by protecting the long-run purchasing power of money and reducing the inflation risk premium embedded in actual long-term real interest rates. However, price-level targeting can imply welfare-reducing policy-induced output volatility in situations where the degree of forward-looking behaviour is very low. The self-regulating capacity of price-level targeting can be undermined if central banks are not fully credible. Besides, aggressive inflation targeting can replicate some of (but not all) the benefits of price-level targeting. On balance, the case for adopting price-level targeting is not clear-cut, all the more so since transition costs are likely to be significant.
This paper reviews the arguments in favor of excluding investment from fiscal policy constraints (the adoption of a “golden rule”). The paper starts by reviewing the goals and motivations of fiscal policy rules. From this analysis, it is clear that answering the question of whether investment should be excluded from those constraints can only be done once the goals and logic of those constraints are made clear. The strongest arguments in favor of a “golden rule” are those of transparency and intergenerational fairness. Other arguments, such as the possibility that public investment pays for itself, do not receive strong empirical support. The paper concludes that for a policy rule to be sustainable and have enough political and public support, it is necessary to have a proper, transparent and, therefore, different accounting treatment for investment. Whether this implies that investment should be completely excluded from fiscal policy constraints is left as an open question.

Problems associated with the environment loom large over the future well-being of young generations. A previous issue of PISA in Focus (PISA in Focus 87) shows that in 2015 many 15-year-old students believed that the future – their future – was going to be worse, environmentally, than the present. In particular, only a minority of students (fewer than one in five, on average across OECD countries) believed that problems related to air pollution, the extinction of plants and animals, clearing forests for land use, water shortages and nuclear waste would improve over the next 20 years. But are teenagers more or less pessimistic than their parents?

The impact of productivity on employment remains uncertain, particularly in light of growing concerns regarding potential negative effects of technological progress on labour demand. This report uses harmonised and comparable data from 13 countries spanning the last two decades to comprehensively analyse how productivity growth affects employment dynamics at various levels of aggregation. The study's findings highlight a positive correlation between productivity growth and employment as well as wage growth, both at the firm level and on a broader scale. This outcome arises from counteracting mechanisms and heterogeneous dynamics across different groups of firms. The findings have relevant policy implications: productivity is not just an isolated key economic objective, but well-designed and complementary policies can also help convert technological and organisational change into higher employment and wage growth.

  • While the reading proficiency of Canadian 15-year-olds closely predicts reading proficiency at age 24, young adults can shape their reading skills after the end of compulsory schooling.
  • In the transition to young adulthood, reading skills generally improve – but more for some groups than for others. Immigrants, in particular, manage to close performance gaps between the ages of 15 and 24.
  • Participation in some forms of formal post-secondary education is consistently and substantially related to improvements in reading skills between the ages of 15 and 24.
French
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