Browse by: "P"

Parental emotional support, alongside material and temporal support, is an important determinant of children's subjective well-being and academic success. However, not all children benefit from the same level of parental support, and there are major differences depending on families' socio-economic status and child gender. Using the PISA 2018 surveys, this paper examines differences in parental support reported by 15-year-olds both within countries according to social status and between girls and boys, and between countries. We show that differences in parental emotional support by parents' education level and child gender are substantial. Some of these differences are (largely) explained by other characteristics such as family wealth, country of origin, and school urbanicity and private/public status. Greater parental emotional support is also found to be associated with higher PISA test scores and greater subjective wellbeing, with little variation by parental education. On the whole, our findings suggest that a significant enhancement in parental support and related child outcomes, especially in countries with lower average levels of parental emotional support, can be attained through a combined effort on several fronts: by addressing monetary and material poverty within families, by facilitating parents in balancing work and taking care of their children, by promoting greater parental involvement in their children's school life, and by offering appropriate services to assist families with special needs and facing greater challenges.

Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, governments and economic actors have increasingly been setting greenhouse gas emissions reduction or net zero targets. Amidst risks of delayed action and greenwashing, there is need to understand whether climate related targets and transition plans are consistent with the Paris Agreement. Climate change mitigation scenarios can be used as inputs to design such targets and plans, and as benchmarks to assess progress towards them. In this context, this paper proposes criteria for selecting global climate change mitigation scenarios that can be considered consistent with the Paris Agreement temperature goal and emissions objectives, based on state-of-the-art literature on climate science and mitigation scenarios.

Parliaments have a unique role in ensuring that adopted laws, regardless of who initiated them, are evidence-based and fit-for-purpose. For the executive branch, laws are vital instruments through which they deliver public policy. Governments therefore rely on parliaments to scrutinise and adopt legislation in a timely, well-planned and co-ordinated manner. Parliamentary scrutiny of government lawmaking and its role in ex post evaluation of law implementation helps the legislature hold the executive to account. Evidence-based lawmaking is especially critical to EU integration processes as they involve adoption of many new laws. This paper reviews how laws are planned, initiated, prepared, scrutinised and evaluated by the parliaments of six Western Balkan administrations. The report discusses the concept of lawmaking within a parliamentary system of government. It considers how parliaments and governments co-operate and co-ordinate their legislative activities throughout the lawmaking cycle, providing a comparative analysis of existing rules and procedures as well as lawmaking practices. A set of key findings and policy recommendations are provided to support the Western Balkan administrations to plan and implement future reforms.

Although global value chain (GVCs) participation in Southeast Asia has been growing, little is known about whether the benefits from participation are accruing to larger firms or if small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which make up the majority of companies and employ the bulk of the domestic workforce, are also able to take advantage of the new opportunities on offer. This paper uses detailed firm level data from Southeast Asian countries to split the OECD Trade in Value Added database and map how SMEs have been participating in GVCs. It then identifies the benefits associated with this participation and looks into the policy levers that can help make GVC participation in the region more inclusive. It suggest that policy makers focus on: i) reducing trade costs that hit SMEs hardest; including tariffs, trade agreements and trade facilitation; ii) creating an enabling environment to promote domestic linkages so that SMEs can create partnerships with larger firms and multinationals to export indirectly; and iii) reducing non-tariff measures that are especially onerous for SMEs through wider ASEAN regulatory harmonisation and adopting more flexible rules of origin.

The NEPAD founding statement of 2001 emphasised the importance of trade and within this a number of specific themes including diversification of production, enhanced international competitiveness, promotion of exports, and improvements in market access. The paper prepared by the NEPAD Secretariat for the 7th meeting of the APF in Moscow in October 2006 identified 4 main areas in which African efforts were focused: deepening of African integration; trade facilitation efforts; private sector participation in building trade-enabling infrastructure; and mainstreaming of trade and national development strategies...

The NEPAD founding statement of 2001 identified agriculture as a sectoral priority. Key declarations include the 2003 CAADP Framework calling for 6% agricultural growth rates; the 2003 Maputo Declaration calling for 10% of public expenditure to be spent on agriculture and rural development within 5 years; the 2004 Sirte Declaration on ’The Challenges of Implementing Integrated and Sustainable Development on Agriculture and Water in Africa’; and the 2006 Abuja Declarations on Fertilisers (June) and Food Security (December)...

NEPAD’s founding statement in 2001 identified domestic savings and improvements in public revenue collection as key resources to be supplemented by official development assistance, debt relief and private capital flows. The statement further underlined that improved governance is a prerequisite for increased capital flows...

The NEPAD founding statement of 2001 identified infrastructure as a key sectoral priority. It proposed a programme including increased investment both in maintenance and in new infrastructure, new regulatory frameworks, and the promotion of public-private partnerships. NEPAD subsequently developed a Short-Term Action Plan designed to accelerate progress in this sector, and a Medium-Long Term Strategic Framework. Successive meetings of AU Ministers have underlined the importance of infrastructure to economic growth.

This study examines the geographical and temporal evolution of violence in which pastoralists are engaged. Building upon an analysis of over 36,000 violent events in North and West Africa between January 1997 and April 2020 in which 206 pastoralist groups were involved, this paper provides a regional report on wider patterns of pastoralist violence over the last two decades. Pastoralist violence has both expanded and intensified in the region, as is evidenced by the rapid increase in number of events and fatalities over the past decade. A comprehensive understanding of pastoralists’ roles in this violence is thus crucial to facilitating more effective polices towards sustainable peace.