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Global rankings are creating a furore wherever or whenever they are published or mentioned. They have become a barometer of global competition measuring the knowledge-producing and talent-catching capacity of higher education institutions. These developments are injecting a new competitive dynamic into higher education, nationally and globally, and encouraging a debate about its role and purpose.

As such, politicians regularly refer to them as a measure of their nation’s economic strength and aspirations, universities use them to help set or define targets mapping their performance against the various metrics, while academics use rankings to bolster their own professional reputation and status.

Based on an international survey (2006) and extensive interviews in Germany, Australia and Japan, (2008), this paper provides a comparative analysis of the impact and influence of rankings on higher education and stakeholders, and describes institutional experiences and responses. It then explores how rankings are influencing national policy and shaping institutional decision making and behaviour.
Some changes form part of the broader modernisation agenda, improving performance and public accountability, while others are viewed as perverse. Their experiences illustrate that policy does matter.

Les classements mondiaux suscitent l’enthousiasme chaque fois qu’ils sont publiés ou mentionnés. Ils sont devenus le baromètre de la concurrence mondiale, mesurant la capacité des institutions d’enseignement supérieur en termes de production de savoir et de captation des talents.

Ces développements injectent une nouvelle dynamique de compétition dans l’enseignement supérieur, au niveau national et mondial, et suscitent un débat sur son rôle et ses objectifs. À ce titre, les hommes/femmes politiques y font régulièrement référence en tant qu’instrument de mesure de la puissance économique et des aspirations de leur nation, les universités s’en servent pour établir ou définir leurs objectifs en termes de performance par rapport à diverses métriques, tandis que les universitaires utilisent les classements pour appuyer leurs propres réputation et statut professionnels.

Cet article se fonde sur une enquête internationale (2006) et des entretiens approfondis menés en Allemagne, en Australie et au Japon (2008) pour réaliser une analyse comparative de l’impact et de l’influence des classements sur l’enseignement supérieur et ses parties prenantes et pour décrire les expériences et réponses institutionnelles. Cet article étudie également la manière dont les classements influencent la politique nationale et façonnent la prise de décision et les comportements institutionnels. Certains changements s’inscrivent dans le cadre plus large du programme de modernisation qui tend vers une amélioration des performances et une plus grande responsabilité publique, tandis que d’autres sont considérés comme pervers. Leurs expériences démontrent l’importance des choix politiques.

The increased importance of rating agencies for emerging-market finance has brought their work to the attention of a wider group of observers — and under criticism. This paper evaluates whether the importance of ratings for developing-country finance has changed since the Asian Crisis and whether rating agencies have modified the determinants for their rating decisions. It also provides an analysis on recent suggestions by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision as these are very important for gauging the future role of sovereign ratings for foreign debt finance in developing countries. While the explanatory power of conventional rating determinants has declined since the Asian crisis, recent rating performance for Argentina and Turkey can still be qualified as lagging the markets, as variables of financial-sector strength and the endogenous effects of capital flows on macroeconomic variables seem to remain underemphasised in rating assessments. The market impact of sovereign ...

Certain areas related to the topics under discussion here lie outside my field; for instance the evaluation of risk assessment and security deficiencies in the transport sector. What has convinced me of the importance of this subject are a few very general conclusions, indeed I would say, impressions, that I have drawn from the truly remarkable development of our powers to analyse the risk decision-making process over some years now. In this paper, the term “uncertainty” is often used with reference to the management of risks arising from intentionally malicious acts3. The costs of security in this sense of the term are an element of every transport budget today. In addition to the costs of prevention, surveillance and forecasting, the costs of the potential damages arising from such acts will also have to be taken into consideration from this point onwards. The events of 11 September 2001, which accelerated this trend, should suffice to convince us that, from now on, the consequences of such damages will be on a scale comparable to the costs of war (...)

Over the past decade, public expenditure in Slovakia was characterised by substantial social transfers and high public sector wage expenses. This paper analyses the main features of Slovakia’s public expenditure system, reviews expenditure trends, and discusses recent reform initiatives. The latter have concerned the introduction of medium-term budget projections, the switch towards performance-based budgeting, the limitation of extra-budgetary funds, the devolution of spending power to sub-central administrative units, changes to the public employment regime, and reforms of the social security system. These initiatives are critically assessed and a number of recommendations concerning implementation and further reform steps are developed ...

In OECD countries, fiscal reports are increasingly sophisticated, highlighting governments’ commitment to fiscal transparency and accountability towards parliaments and citizens. However, users regularly express concerns with these documents, revealing a fundamental “paradox” with government fiscal reporting: desire for detail and sophistication may come at the expense of clarity. Against this background, this paper looks at four countries (Australia, Canada, France and the United Kingdom) that have endeavoured to resolve this paradox by rationalising their fiscal reporting with the aim of making it more legible for users and draws a short set of implications for other countries looking to strengthen and rationalise their fiscal reporting practices.

JEL Codes: H50, H60, H83
Keywords: fiscal reporting, accountability, transparency                                                    

This report contains a new set of results on the levels of real per capita GDP and its main components in OECD countries in 1980, with estimates for later years upto 1984. Real per capita GDP is obtained by valuing the goods and services in different countries at a fixed set of prices, namely, the average prices prevailing at the time within the group of countries covered. This procedure is essentially the same as that used to measure volume changes over time within a single country when the fixed prices of some base year are used to compile expenditure or output series at constant prices. The international measures of real per capita GDP for different countries can therefore be interpreted in the same way as the volume indices which are used to measure real rates of growth within a single country.

These international volume measures may be contrasted with measures of per capita GDP which are frequently obtained by converting data for different countries into a single currency ...

This paper analyses the factors influencing the level and volatility of real house prices in a panel of OECD countries over the period 1980-2005. Results suggest that real house prices tend to rise proportionally with real household incomes, while declines in structural unemployment and real interest rates are associated with higher real house prices. The process of mortgage market deregulation has coincided with a noticeable increase in real house prices in OECD countries, while high rates of leverage are found to amplify house price volatility. Estimates suggest that tax reliefs on mortgage debt financing costs tend to be capitalised into real house prices and may also amplify price volatility, reflecting the tendency for such policies to encourage leverage. While higher transaction costs are associated with lower house price volatility, this effect is modest compared to the impact of banking supervision. Indeed, prudential banking supervision and policies designed to contain the excessive build-up of leverage are shown to significantly reduce the extent of house price volatility, underscoring the importance of ongoing efforts to reform prudential frameworks in OECD countries.

Over the past twenty years or so, unemployment has been increasing in most OECD economies. In the same period, there has been a considerable increase in the wedge between the real cost to the employer of hiring a worker and the net real wage received by the worker. The present study examines whether changes in the wedge (including various tax rates) may have generated long-lasting effects on real labour costs. Behaviour which generates this kind of outcome is called "real wage resistance". If there is real wage resistance, a rise in the wedge leads to higher unemployment. If this outcome persists in the long run, the primary problem related to the functioning of the wage setting mechanism is not necessarily the speed of adjustment but rather the equilibrium in which adjustment terminates.

The countries examined are the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Australia, Sweden and Finland. The study covers the private business sector and the ...

This report provides an overview of the various existing green real estate financing products and the state of the market for these products. After a decade of growth, green real estate finance markets remain small compared to conventional real estate finance markets. There are a number of challenges in aligning green real estate finance market practices with sustainability goals, including the lack of common definitions, standards and quality data that hinder the ability of market participants and regulators to identify, monitor and manage risks and opportunities. More efforts are needed to promote investments in real estate projects so as to transition to a low-carbon real estate and meet the climate objectives of the Paris Agreement. Drawing on a detailed assessment of these markets and products, this report puts forward policy considerations to elaborate principles and good practices that may contribute to supporting the decarbonisation of real estate assets.

Unemployment in South Africa is extremely high and unevenly distributed, being concentrated among young less-skilled blacks. The legacies of apartheid can explain part of the increase in labour supply and inability of the economy to absorb it which produced the extreme levels of unemployment, but more could have been done to unwind those legacies and other policies and institutions have contributed to the dysfunction of the labour market. Notably, improvements in product market regulation to strengthen competition could help expand formal sector employment. Changes in municipal laws and regulations to ease migration and facilitate informal employment are also likely to be particularly important. Improving the implementation of employment protection legislation could also help reduce unemployment. Efforts to tackle crime could help reduce the brain drain and attract skilled immigrants, which would likely boost demand for less-skilled workers via complementarities. Over the longer term, improvements in basic education will be key to reducing the excess supply of less-skilled workers.

Measures that enable the acquisition of new skills and reduce mismatches between the demand and supply of existing skills can boost US economic growth and make its benefits more inclusive. Although overall schooling performance has generally improved over time, many disadvantaged students still fail to achieve basic numeracy and literacy. Many parents are denied the opportunity to make their most productive contribution to the economy due to a lack of paid parental leave provisions, publicly-funded childcare and early-childhood education. Discrimination against individuals on the basis of race and gender or those with criminal records can also create barriers to opportunity. Some geographic areas of the country are performing very well, while others are being held back by governance structures that are ill-equipped to deal with economic, social, and environmental challenges. Getting the right policies and infrastructure in place in a timely manner can expand opportunity in these areas.

China’s regions have been experiencing impressive growth over the past decades, but their potentials could be better exploited by creating a single product and labour market. Local protectionism increases transaction costs and hinders competition, thereby taking a toll on productivity. Administrative monopolies have long thrived and are hard to dismantle. Restrictions on the hukou and the fragmented pension system limit labour mobility. Local regulations aim at, among other things, securing the collection of local taxes, without which cities could not afford to offer the same public services to migrants as to urbanites. Hence, dismantling local regulations and creating a single product and labour market needs to go hand-in-hand with the reform of inter-governmental finances.

Recent measures on both the product and labour market front appear to aim at making up for the slow progress over the past decade or so. There are signs that these efforts are helping China’s regions at various levels to converge toward each other. Disparities are shrinking faster across provinces, compared to within provinces. Integration of product and labour markets will boost productivity over the medium-to long term by reducing transaction costs, but could potentially widen regional disparities, which are already relatively high. This will necessitate enhanced transfers and re-centralisation of the financing of spending in some key categories such as education and health. Policies to help catching up of laggard regions by better connectivity through infrastructure investment are bearing fruit, but such investments should be subject to rigorous cost-benefit criteria to enhance capital allocation efficiency and should take into account externalities. Notwithstanding significant disparities along multiple dimensions across provinces, inequalities, be it in terms of income, wealth or education, are actually most striking along the rural-urban dimension. The rural revitalisation strategy, a novel element of the 19th Party Congress outcomes, is expected to address this issue. The other recent strategy of nurturing the formation of city groups will also likely benefit rural areas in-between those cities.

This Working Paper relates to the 2019 OECD Economic Survey of China (http://www.oecd.org/economy/china-economic-snapshot/).