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Energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies provide important opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, households fail to take up many clean energy investments that are cost-effective. This paper reviews different explanations for apparent underinvestment in energy efficiency that have been put forward in the literature. While investments in renewable energy technologies are typically not (yet) profitable, many of its drivers are similar to those that determine energy efficiency investments, and the two types of investment are therefore assessed jointly. The paper also provides new evidence regarding barriers to investment in energy efficiency based on the OECD Survey on Household Environmental Behaviour and Attitudes. Finally, policy solutions that would help overcome some of these barriers are also presented.

• Many micro-enterprises are known to the authorities, in particular because they pay taxes. • Intermediate-revenue countries impose certain standards to protect consumers. • Wages regulations are only rarely respected. • The creation and development of micro-enterprises could be assisted by institutional reforms.

When you think of someone who is an engineer, do you imagine a man or a woman wearing a hardhat? How about when you imagine a teacher standing in front of a class of schoolchildren? If you answer “a man” to the first question, and “a woman” to the second, there’s probably a reason. And the reason is simply that more men than women pursue careers in fields such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics, while women are over-represented in the humanities and medical sciences. This type of gender segregation in the labour market is still prevalent in many countries. But will it continue? Girls now do as well as, and often better than, boys in most core school subjects; and proficiency in a subject influences 15-year-olds’ thinking about the kind of career they want to pursue. Or does it?

• While PISA reveals large gender differences in reading, in favour of 15-year-old girls, the gap is narrower when digital reading skills are tested. Indeed, the Survey of Adult Skills suggests that there are no significant gender differences in digital literacy proficiency among 16-29 year-olds.
• Boys are more likely to underachieve when they attend schools with a large proportion of socio‑economically disadvantaged students.
• Girls – even high-achieving girls – tend to underachieve compared to boys when they are asked to think like scientists, such as when they are asked to formulate situations mathematically or interpret phenomena scientifically.
• Parents are more likely to expect their sons, rather than their daughters, to work in a science, technology, engineering or mathematics field – even when their 15-year-old boys and girls perform at the same level in mathematics.

This paper estimates agglomeration benefits based on city productivity differentials across five OECD countries (Germany, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States). It highlights the relationship between cities’ governmental fragmentation and productivity, and represents the first empirical analysis of how metropolitan governance structures affect this relationship. The comparability of results in a multi-country setting is supported through the use of Functional Urban Areas – an internationally harmonised definition of cities based on economic linkages rather than administrative boundaries. In line with the previous literature, the analysis confirms that city productivity tends to increase with city size; doubling city size is found to be associated with an increase in productivity of between two and five percent. What is more, city productivity is positively associated with the population size of nearby cities. On the governance side, the paper finds that cities with fragmented governance structures tend to have lower levels of productivity. For a given population size, a metropolitan area with twice the number of municipalities is associated with around six percent lower productivity; an effect that is mitigated by almost half by the existence of a governance body at the metropolitan level.

The growing literature studying the determinants of subjective wellbeing find that Mexicans report, on average, levels of life satisfaction that are above what would be predicted by the available objective measures of well-being. This paradox raises the following question: Are the drivers of subjective well-being in Mexico different from the drivers in other countries? This paper tries to answer this question using data from the World Gallup Poll and Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Geografía (INEGI). In particular, it investigates if the impact that key objective measures of well-being have on life satisfaction is different in Mexico than in other countries. The results show that the drivers of life satisfaction are very similar to those in other countries. In particular, as in other countries, in Mexico income, education, health, job status and other individual characteristics are significantly associated with life satisfaction. These findings suggest that the higher average level of life satisfaction in Mexico is probably related to unobserved country characteristics. This Working Paper relates to the 2015 OECD Economic Survey of Mexico (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-mexico.htm).

• In most countries and economies, students who attend schools in urban areas tend to perform at higher levels than other students.
• Socio-economic status explains only part of the performance difference between students who attend urban schools and other students.
• Schools in urban settings are larger, tend to benefit from better educational resources, and often enjoy greater autonomy in how they can allocate those resources.

What are the characteristics of a school as learning organisation? This paper should be seen as an attempt to work towards a common understanding of the school as learning organisation concept that is both solidly founded in the literature and is recognisable to all parties involved, i.e. educators, policy makers, parents and others alike. The paper provides an in-depth analysis of the learning organisation literature in general, and within a school context. It identifies and operationalises the characteristics of the school as learning organisation in an integrated model that consists of seven overarching ‘action-oriented’ dimensions: 1) developing and sharing a vision centred on the learning of all students; 2) creating and supporting continuous learning opportunities for all staff; 3) promoting team learning and collaboration among staff; 4) establishing a culture of inquiry, innovation and exploration; 5) establishing embedded systems for collecting and exchanging knowledge and learning; 6) learning with and from the external environment and larger learning system; and 7) modelling and growing learning leadership. The dimensions and underlying key characteristics are intended to provide practical guidance on how schools can transform themselves into a learning organisation and ultimately enhance student outcomes.

This paper uses data from the Gallup World Poll to explore the determinants of subjective well-being. The paper builds on the existing literature on the determinants of subjective well-being in three areas. First, the paper systematically examines the drivers of measures of affect as well as the determinants of life satisfaction that are more prevalent in the existing literature. Overall, items relating to health status, personal security, and freedom to choose what to do with one’s life appear to have a larger impact on affect balance when compared to life satisfaction, while economic factors such as income and unemployment have a more limited impact. The second part of the paper considers the degree to which there is heterogeneity in the weights assigned by different population sub-groups to the different determinants of subjective well-being. Relatively small differences are found between men and women, but priorities change significantly over the life course. Finally, the paper uses OECD data on the labour market and health policy regimes in different countries to test for the impact of these policy regimes on subjective well-being. Significant results are found for the replacement rate for unemployment assistance, employment protection legislation, and the extent of health co-payments. Although these results are tentative, they suggest that looking for the impact of policy changes on subjective well-being in large cross-country datasets is a promising area for research.

Fiscal consolidation is required in most OECD countries. This is especially so in view of mediumand long-term spending pressures on public finances, related, inter alia, to ageing. Based on a dataset covering a large number of OECD fiscal consolidation episodes starting in the late 1970s, the paper presents evidence, both descriptive and econometric, on macroeconomic conditions and policy set-ups that have been effective in triggering and sustaining fiscal consolidation. Main findings include: Large initial deficits and high interest rates have been important in prompting fiscal adjustment and also in boosting the overall size and duration of consolidation. Concerning the quality of fiscal policies, an emphasis on cutting current expenditures has been associated with overall larger consolidation. Fiscal rules with embedded expenditure targets tended to be associated with larger and longer adjustments, pointing to institutional features playing a potentially important role in generating successful consolation efforts. Experience across countries also shows that certain design features such as transparency, flexibility to face shocks and effective enforcement mechanisms seem important for the effectiveness of fiscal rules.

A brief review of long run projections of demand for road transport suggests that problems related to road network congestion and greenhouse gas emissions are likely to become more pressing than they are now. Hence we review, from a macroscopic perspective, popular policy measures to address these problems: stimulating modal shift, regulating land use to reduce car use, and boosting low carbon technology adoption to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We find that these policies can produce tangible results, but that they may have unintended consequences that drive up costs considerably.

• The report New insights from TALIS 2013: Teaching and learning in primary and upper secondary education (OECD, 2014a) presents an overview of teachers and teaching in primary and upper secondary education for a sample of countries that participated in the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) in 2013.
• Women represent the majority of the teaching workforce for most countries at all levels of education. Despite this and the fact that most principals are former teachers, significantly fewer principals are women at all education levels.
• Primary teachers tend to work in schools where principals report material and personnel shortages that hinder the delivery of quality education more often than upper secondary teachers. Moreover, schools with high proportion of socio-economically disadvantaged students face greater shortages in terms of key resources in many countries. This further exacerbates the already-challenging circumstances for teachers and students.

This paper seeks to answer the following question: what is the potential contribution which active labour market policies can make a part of a strategy to combat high and persistent unemployment and the problems of low pay and poverty among the working-age population? In order to answer this question, it is vital to know what works among active policies and in what circumstances. The OECD Secretariat has been working intensively on these questions in recent years and the paper summarises the main results of our work to date.

The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 provides some factual background on public spending on labour market policies in OECD countries over the past decade, drawing on an internationally comparable data set which the OECD has developed to monitor trends in this field of public spending. Then I summarise the main results of on-going OECD research into the effectiveness of active labour market policies. My review mainly exploits two sources: (i) the ...

Child poverty is firmly on the policy agenda in many OECD countries. One of the main issues in the debate is the appropriate balance between the so-called “benefits strategy” (increasing the adequacy of benefits for low-income families with children) and the so-called “work strategy” (promoting policies to increase employment among poor families). The need to choose between these two apparent alternatives is sometimes seen as a consequence of an unavoidable trade-off between adequacy of benefits, work incentives and the costs of assistance...

Education plays an essential role in preparing the children of immigrants for participation in the labour market and society. Giving these children opportunities to fully develop their potential is vital for future economic growth and social cohesion in OECD countries. But migrant students in most OECD countries tend to have lower education outcomes than their native peers. Extensive previous research has described the system level, school level and individual level factors that influence the education outcomes of migrant students. Building on such previous research, this paper looks at the ways in which education policies can influence these factors to help provide better educational opportunities for migrant students.

OECD’s Recommendation of the Council on Budgetary Governance makes a substantial contribution to discussion of good budgetary practice by synthesising much common understanding while updating it to recognise some lessons from the experience of the Great Recession. Yet its implicit understanding of the purposes of budget processes has weaknesses both as policy and political analysis. The policy understanding overemphasises the importance of budget totals relative to budget details. The political understanding is as top-down as the policy view. Although budgets might be seen as contracts between citizens and the state, in a representative system they are better seen as treaties among citizens negotiated through politics. The Recommendation barely recognizes the existence of and challenges from political conflict.

JEL classification: H00, H60, H61
Keywords: Balance, fiscal policy, information, representation, top-down, United States