Browse by: "2014"
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We develop monthly indicators for tracking short-run trends in real GDP growth in 32 advanced and emerging-market economies. We test the historical performance of our indicators and find that they do a good job at describing the business cycle. In a recursive out-of-sample forecasting exercise, we find that the indicators generally produce good real GDP growth forecasts relative to a range of time series models.
In recent years, central banks and international organisations have been making ever greater use of factor models to forecast macroeconomic variables. We examine the performance of these models in forecasting French GDP growth over short horizons. The factors are extracted from a large data set of around one hundred variables including survey balances and real, financial, and international variables. An out-of-sample pseudo real-time evaluation over the past decade shows that factor models provide a gain in accuracy relative to the usual benchmarks. However, the forecasts remain inaccurate before the start of the quarter. We also show that the inclusion of international and financial variables can improve forecasts at the longest horizons.
Algeria
Nuclear security
Armenia
Nuclear safety and radiological protection
Brazil
Canada
Nuclear security
Liability and compensation
France
Radioactive waste management
International co-operation
Germany
Radioactive waste management
Greece
Management of spent fuel and radioactive waste
Ireland
Transport of radioactive material
Luxembourg
Nuclear safety and radiological protection
Poland
Nuclear safety and radiological protection
Radioactive waste management
General legislation
Portugal
General legislation
Slovak Republic
General legislation Slovenia Nuclear safety and radiological protection
Ukraine
International co-operation
United States
Issuance of Proposed Waste Confidence Rule and Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement for public comment
Issuance of Final Rule Updating Part 51 and Final License Renewal Generic Environmental Impact Statement Update
Inflation adjustment to the Price-Anderson Act Financial Protection Regulations
Uruguay
Nuclear safety and radiological protection
The importance of uranium can be examined from several perspectives. First, natural uranium is a strategic energy resource because it is a key ingredient for the generation of nuclear power and, therefore, it can affect the energy security of a state. Second, natural uranium is also a raw material in relative abundance throughout the world, which can, through certain steps, be transformed into nuclear explosive devices. Thus, there is both an interest in the trade of uranium resources and a need for their regulatory control. The importance of uranium to the worldwide civilian nuclear industry means that its extraction and processing – the so-called “front end” of the nuclear fuel cycle – is of regulatory interest. Like “ordinary” metal mining, which is generally regulated within a country, uranium mining must also be considered from the more particular perspective of regulation and control, as part of the international nuclear law regime that is applied to the entire nuclear fuel cycle.
Russian Federation
Federal Law No.170 of 21 November 1995 on the use of atomic energy
Uruguay
Law no.19.056 On the Radiological Protection and Safety of Persons, Property and the Environment
Japan
Third Supplement to Interim Guidelines on Determination of the Scope of Nuclear Damage resulting from the Accident at the Tokyo Electric Power Company Fukushima Daiichi and Daini Nuclear Power Plants (concerning Damages related to Rumour-Related Damage in the Agriculture, Forestry, Fishery and Food Industries)
France and the United States
Joint Statement on Liability for Nuclear Damage
Franco-Russian Nuclear Power Declaration
- Dans les pays de l’OCDE, plus d’un tiers des hommes enseignant dans le primaire ont désormais plus de 50 ans.
- Dans les pays de l’OCDE, l’âge moyen des enseignants du secondaire a augmenté d’un mois chaque année au cours des dix dernières années.
- Seuls quelques pays ont réussi à mettre en place des politiques à même d’abaisser de façon significative la moyenne d’âge des enseignants.
- L’augmentation du nombre de femmes dans le corps enseignant n’entraîne plus la baisse de l’âge moyen de ce dernier, la moyenne d’âge des enseignantes augmentant à rythme plus soutenu que celle des enseignants.
- Lorsque les élèves pensent que les efforts qu’ils fournissent pour apprendre peuvent faire la différence, ils obtiennent des résultats significativement plus élevés en mathématiques.
- Le fait que dans la plupart des pays, d’importants pourcentages d’élèves pensent que la réussite scolaire est principalement le fruit d’un travail assidu, plutôt que de capacités intellectuelles héréditaires, laisse penser que l’éducation et son contexte social peuvent jouer un rôle déterminant dans la transmission de valeurs qui encouragent la réussite.
- L’utilisation par les enseignants de stratégies d’activation cognitive, telles que le fait de donner aux élèves des problèmes qui nécessitent une longue réflexion de leur part ou des problèmes pour lesquels la méthode de résolution n’apparaît pas immédiatement, et d’aider les élèves à apprendre de leurs erreurs, est en corrélation avec l’engagement des élèves.
- Les élèves auxquels les enseignants fixent des objectifs clairs d’apprentissage et apportent un retour d’information sur leur performance en mathématiques tendent également à faire part d’un niveau plus élevé de persévérance et d’ouverture à l’égard de la résolution de problèmes.
- When students believe that investing effort in learning will make a difference, they score significantly higher in mathematics.
- The fact that large proportions of students in most countries consistently believe that student achievement is mainly a product of hard work, rather than inherited intelligence, suggests that education and its social context can make a difference in instilling values that foster success in education.
- Teachers’ use of cognitive-activation strategies, such as giving students problems that require them to think for an extended time, presenting problems for which there is no immediately obvious way of arriving at a solution, and helping students to learn from their mistakes, is associated with students’ drive.
- Students whose teachers set clear goals for learning and offer feedback on their performance in mathematics also tend to report higher levels of perseverance and openness to problem solving.
- More than one-third of male primary school teachers in OECD countries are now over 50 years old.
- Across OECD countries, the average age of secondary school teachers has increased by one month every year in the last decade.
- Only a few countries have managed to develop policies which lower the average age of teachers significantly.
- Increasing the numbers of female teachers no longer lowers the average age, as the female teaching workforce is ageing faster than its male counterpart.
This article explores country-by-country differences in academic performance and attitudes towards school between students who repeated a grade in primary school, in secondary school or never repeated a grade. The analyses use PISA 2009 for 30 countries in which a relatively high proportion of students repeated a grade before the age of 15. The comparisons across countries and the examination of models of both academic and non-academic performance contribute to shed some light on the consequences of repeating a grade for students. The estimated associations suggest that in most countries examined, at the age of 15, students who repeated a grade in secondary school tend to perform better academically than do students who repeated a grade in primary school, but worse than non-repeaters. In terms of the measure of behavioural performance chosen for this analysis, attitudes towards school, in the majority of countries, non-repeaters tend to report more positive attitudes towards schools than primary and secondary-school repeaters, but the comparison between repeaters in primary and secondary schools shows less consistent patterns across countries. These differences are observed after accounting for background characteristics of the students and exploring some differential relationships between grade repetition and education outcomes according to student characteristics. The achievement and behavioural gaps among groups of repeaters may reflect differences in the development of academic and behavioural skills over the school years, as well as differences in the way these groups of students are treated across different educational systems.
This paper uses panel regression techniques to assess the policy determinants of private-sector innovative activity – proxied by R&D expenditure and the number of new patents – across 19 OECD countries. The relationship between innovation indicators and multifactor productivity (MFP) growth is also examined with a particular focus on the role of public policies in influencing the returns to new knowledge. The results establish an empirical link between R&D and patenting, as well as between these measures of innovation intensity and MFP growth. Innovation-specific policies such as R&D tax incentives, direct government support and patent rights are found to be successful in encouraging the innovative activities associated with higher productivity growth. However, direct empirical evidence of the positive effects of these policies on productivity is less forthcoming. A pervasive theme from the analysis is the importance of coupling policies aimed at encouraging innovation or technological adoption with well-designed framework policies that allow knowledge spillovers to proliferate. In particular, the settings of framework policies relating to product market regulation, openness to trade and debtor protection in bankruptcy provisions are found to be important for the diffusion of new technologies.
JEL classification: L20, O30, O40
Keywords: Intangible assets, innovation, productivity growth, public policy
In many OECD countries debt has soared to levels threatening fiscal sustainability, necessitating its reduction over the medium to longer term. This paper proposes a stylised model, featuring endogenous interactions between fiscal policy, growth and financial markets, to highlight how economic shocks and structural features of an economy can affect consolidation strategy and resulting growth and inflation developments. The fiscal authorities are assumed to choose a consolidation path from a predetermined set of possible paths by maximising cumulative GDP growth and minimising cumulative squared output gaps, with the objective to reach a given debtto- GDP level within a finite horizon and stabilise debt afterwards under the assumption of the unchanged fiscal policy stance. Illustrative simulations for a hypothetical economy show, among other things, that by requiring debt to stabilise part of the initial adjustment can be reversed; some stepping up of the fiscal adjustment can be optimal if bond yields increase due to an exogenous shock; and for some debt reduction targets, high fiscal multipliers, hysteresis effects and higher government bond yields imply protracted deflation and large negative output gaps, stressing the need to select reasonable fiscal targets consistent with market conditions.
JEL classification: E61, E62, H6
Keywords: Fiscal consolidation, sovereign debt, government budget balance, fiscal rules
The purpose of this paper is to examine the welfare effects of birth-related leave (BRL) in terms of life satisfaction. To do so, we exploit variations in BRL policies to assess their impact on life satisfaction. The paper adds to the existing literature in various ways. First, it uses new data collected by Baldi et al. (2011) and Baldi and Chapple (2010) to describe how life satisfaction moves around the date of the reforms over time and in a number of EU countries covered in the Eurobarometer surveys. Second, the paper analyses the relation between life satisfaction and BRL in Germany and the United Kingdom with long individual panel data collected with the GSOEP and the BHPS survey. The potential endogeneity bias of the treatment effect is addressed by building a quasi-natural experiment using policy changes as the assignment rule. The results from a variety of different methods suggest that BRL polices generally have a significant positive effect on life satisfaction. Women on BRL have higher life satisfaction, controlling for observable and unobservable personal characteristics. This result is robust to alternative specifications.
JEL classification: H53, I16, J38
Keywords: Welfare, subjective well-being, difference-in-difference, birth-related leaves
Despite sustained efforts made in recent years to rein in budget deficits, a majority of OECD countries still face substantial public finance consolidation needs. While essential to avoid the disruption and large costs ultimately associated with unsustainable public finances, fiscal consolidation complicates the task of achieving other policy goals. In most cases, it weighs on demand in the short term. And, if too little attention is paid to the mix of instruments used to achieve consolidation, it can undermine long-term growth, exacerbate income inequality and slow the process of global rebalancing. It is therefore important for governments to adopt consolidation strategies that minimise these adverse side-effects. The analysis proposes consolidation strategies that take into account other policy goals as well as country-specific circumstances and preferences. To do so, increases in particular taxes and cuts in specific spending areas are assessed for their effects on short- and long-term growth, income distribution and external accounts. The results of detailed illustrative simulations indicate that a significant number of OECD countries may have to raise harmful taxes or cut valuable spending areas to deliver sufficient consolidation, underscoring the need for structural reforms to counteract these side-effects. The results are robust to an extensive range of sensitivity checks.