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This paper focuses on whether previous findings on the relationship between trade and institutional integration on FDI location in Central and Eastern European economies are consistent with observed patterns in South East Europe.

This paper focuses on the location of foreign direct investment in Central European economies during transition with a view to addressing whether trade agreements and institutional integration have had an impact on FDI inflows and location.

Agricultural production and support in Canada, the United States, and the European Union are highly concentrated on larger farms, which have higher income levels than the average of all farms. Smaller farms, though, are more dependent on support (in particular, payments) which accounts for a larger share of their gross receipts. As payments to farmers are more equally distributed than production, government support reduces income inequality by farm size and farm type. This study, carried out in the context of the OECD Network for Farm Level Analysis, concludes that improved efficiency and equity of policies will require better targeting of income support and, in turn, better information on the income and wealth situation of the agricultural population.
French
This paper provides a description of the classification systems used to measure hospital services in selected OECD countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, United Kingdom (England), and the United States. Three classifications are relevant: those on diagnoses; on procedures; and on products. In addition, methods used to measure the cost of hospital services are reviewed.

Universities have always been important to national economies, but since the financial crisis of 2007-08 they have become key economic actors. Because they supply highly skilled labour and undertake basic research that enable nations to engage in global competition, they are capable of boosting production and innovation. This article explores the impact of the institutional reform of Danish universities since 2001, notably in relation to research, teaching and innovation. It also discusses how these reforms have affected universities’ capacity to stave off the financial crisis. By the time the financial crisis erupted these institutions were strong and independent, which is one reason why – so far – Denmark has fared relatively well compared to other European countries. If its universities are to maintain this position they will need to be continuously reformed, but change needs to go hand-in-hand with greater trust in the reform process by government and politicians.

Dynamic gains from trade can be an important conduit for increased firm-level innovation and productivity, both key components of economic growth. This paper builds on previous research on the dynamic gains from trade by moving beyond a single country basis to examine impacts on firm-level productivity for a cross-section of countries. It also focuses on productivity gains through the import of intermediate inputs and capital goods and systematically explores the specific impacts of non-trade, or complementary, policies on firms‘ ability to realise dynamic gains. This paper shows that a range of complementary policies affects a firm‘s ability to generate productivity gains from intermediate and capital goods imports. Access to skilled labour is a particularly important policy variable with respect to the import of intermediate goods, followed by access to finance, while macroeconomic stability slightly outranks access to finance for capital goods importers. The importance of access to finance has particular policy significance given the wide-spread financial reforms being discussed or underway.
With all the competition to get into the right universities to secure the best jobs, secondary school students are often encouraged to take after-school classes in subjects already taught in school to help them improve their performance – even if that means forsaking other fun and interesting ways of spending after-school hours, such as playing sports, taking music lessons or volunteering at a local community centre or hospital. Students in the OECD area spend an average of nearly two-and-a-half hours per week in after-school lessons. In Greece, Israel, Korea, Turkey and the partner countries Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar and Tunisia, students spend over four-and-a-half hours per week in such classes. Does that investment in after-school classes pay off?...
Italian, French
Homeownership rates have increased significantly in many OECD countries over recent decades. Using micro-econometric decomposition techniques, this paper shows that part of this increase can be explained by changes in the characteristics of households, including age, household structure, incomes and education. Nevertheless, a significant portion of the change in homeownership rates remains unexplained by shifts in household characteristics, leaving a potential role for public policy in explaining developments in homeownership rates. Panel estimates suggest that the relaxation of down-payment constraints on mortgage loans has increased homeownership rates among credit-constrained households over recent decades, resulting in a rise in the aggregate homeownership rate that is comparable to the impact of population ageing. In countries where tax relief on mortgage debt financing is generous, however, the expansionary impact of mortgage market innovations on homeownership is smaller. This is consistent with the tendency for such housing tax reliefs to be capitalised into real house prices, which may crowd-out some financially constrained households from homeownership at the margin. The impact of housing policies regulating the functioning of the rental market, such as rent regulation and provisions for tenure security, on tenure choice is also explored.

The literature on private higher education has identified striking differences between the public and private sectors in terms of fields of study. For example, unlike their public counterparts, private universities have traditionally specialised in the social sciences and humanities. This paper explores the university market in Argentina to see if these differences still persist today, or if they have blurred over time. This dynamic is studied from the perspective of both supply (the percentage of institutions offering a specific degree programme) and demand (student enrolments). Clearly, both sectors are venturing further and further into each other’s traditional domains.

It’s elementary: students benefit from pre-primary education. The OECD’s PISA 2009 results show that in practically all OECD countries 15-year-old students who had attended some pre-primary school outperformed students who had not. In fact, the difference between students who had attended for more than one year and those who had not attended at all averaged 54 score points in the PISA reading assessment – or more than one year of formal schooling (39 score points). While most students who had attended pre-primary education had come from advantaged backgrounds, the performance gap remains even when comparing students from similar backgrounds. After accounting for socio-economic background, students who had attended pre-primary school scored an average of 33 points higher than those who had not...
Italian, Japanese, French, Spanish, German

At its meeting held on 17 and 18 November 2009,1 the OECD NEA.s Nuclear Law Committee (NLC) discussed the issue of obtaining financial security to cover liability for environmental damage. The experts from the insurance industry observed that the liability for environmental damage under the ¡°2004 Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy¡± (2004 Paris Convention)2 may differ from the liability established under the ¡°Directive 2004/35/EC of

French
Russia is sometimes referred to as “the Saudi Arabia of energy efficiency”; its vast potential to reduce energy consumption can be considered a significant “energy reserve”. Russia, recognising the benefits of more efficient use of energy, is taking measures to exploit this potential. The president has set the goal to reduce energy intensity by 40% between 2007 and 2020. In the past few years, the IEA has worked closely with Russian authorities to support the development of energy efficiency indicators in Russia, critical to an effective implementation and monitoring of Russia’s ambitious energy intensity and efficiency goals. The key findings of the IEA work with Russia on developing energy efficiency indicators form the core of this report.
Decision-makers in fisheries management are confronted with the challenge of how to respond to existing and predicted changes in ocean conditions that are likely to affect the stocks of fish they manage. In order to address climate change most research and thinking advises decision-makers to ensure that fisheries are well-managed and abundant in an ecosystem context. These policies can best allow fisheries to adapt to changing climate. To address climate change, decision-makers should carefully monitor changing conditions and potential changes in factors affecting fish stock abundance. An adaptive approach to fisheries management under conditions of climate change requires that decision-makers engage with fishing interests in a transparent manner and in ways that respect the input of fishing interests and in ways that acknowledge the levels of uncertainty. This approach implies a governance approach to management that is closer to co-management or shared management responsibility than in most hierarchical processes that characterize fishery management to date. The answer to the question of when fishery decision-makers should begin to incorporate climate change into decision making processes is that they should have started yesterday. The justification for this is that even today, climate variability can affect fishery management decisions and the sooner this is understood and incorporated into the management process the better. In economic terms, a conservative decision relative to fisheries management is likely to produce a positive long term benefit whereas the failure to recognize the need to act in time may have serious immediate negative consequences especially when compounded by inadequate management. While climate change can also produce positive consequences for some species a note of caution is still advised in anticipating and responding to such opportunities.

The aim of this paper is to assess whether the use of ICT has an impact on student performances as measured in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006. After controlling for observable students’ characteristics and self-selection, we did find a positive and significant effect of the frequency of computer use on science scores. In most countries, however, this effect seems larger when computer is used at home rather than at school. This finding questions the effectiveness of educational policies aimed at promoting computer use at school as a tool for learning.

This paper tests the hypothesis that, by giving people more voice in the government decision-making process, fiscal decentralisation fosters social capital, measured in terms of interpersonal trust. Empirical evidence based on World Values Survey data and seemingly unrelated probit estimations for a cross-section of countries suggests that people living in federal/decentralised countries find it more important to have voice in government decisions than their counterparts living in unitary/centralised countries. Pro-voice attitudes are, in turn, associated with greater social capital. The cross-country estimations are complemented by country-specific regressions for Brazil and Indonesia on account of these countries. experiences with fiscal decentralisation. The results show that the cohorts of individuals that have been exposed to decentralisation are in general more pro-voice (and trustful of strangers in the case of Brazil) than their counterparts that have not been exposed to decentralisation. These findings are not driven by the effects of political liberalisation on people.s attitudes towards the importance of having voice in government decisions and interpersonal trust.
There is a broad recognition that the development of cross-cutting, high-quality, shared, and accessible information about a society’s progress is crucial to ensure that decision-making is simultaneously responsive and responsible at all levels. There is no single correct way to manage a project to measure societal progress - different projects will have different goals, audiences and resources. However, there are certain steps which most projects should consider when planning and implementing the process. This paper presents advice and practical guidelines for anyone who is considering running a societal progress indicators project. It identifies six key steps in the process, from defining the issue and selecting collaborators, through producing and disseminating the indicators, to ensuring they are used and remain relevant.
This paper compares notional defined-contribution pension schemes (also known as notional accounts) with two alternative designs of earnings-related pension schemes: points systems and definedbenefit plans. It examines, in detail, four economic advantages of notional accounts that deliver retirement incomes in an equitable and economically efficient manner. The issue of equity arises in the treatment of people who draw their pensions at different ages and contribute for a different number of years. The issue of economic efficiency arises because pension systems can and do distort individual decisions to work and save. First, benefits are based on lifetime earnings, rather than a subset of “best” or “final” years’ pay. Secondly, an extra year’s contribution gives rise to an additional benefit. Thirdly, benefits are reduced to reflect the longer expected duration of payment for people who retire early and, similarly, increased for people who retire late. Finally, benefits are reduced as life expectancy increases, again to reflect the longer duration for which benefits would be paid. An analysis of OECD countries’ pension systems – of all different types – shows that most have already achieved most of these objectives, but without adopting notional accounts.
Macro-level changes can have substantial effects on the distribution of resources at the household level. While it is possible to speculate about which groups are likely to be hardest-hit, detailed distributional studies are still largely backward-looking. This paper suggests a straight forward approach to gauge the distributional and scale implications of large output changes at an early stage. We illustrate the method with an evaluation of the impact of the 2008-2009 crisis in Germany. We take as a starting point a very detailed administrative matched employer-employee dataset to estimate labor demand and predict the effects of output shocks at a disaggregated level. The predicted employment effects are then transposed to household-level micro data, in order to analyze the incidence of rising unemployment and reduced working hours on poverty and inequality. We focus on two alternative scenarios of the labor demand adjustment process, one based on reductions in hours (intensive margin) and close to the German experience, and the other assuming extensive margin adjustments that take place through layoffs (close to the US situation). Our results suggest that the distributional and scale consequences are less severe when labor demand reacts along the intensive margin.

Switzerland’s aid volume was USD 2.02 billion in 2008, an increase of more than 6% over the previous year, and a total of 0.42% of its gross national income (GNI). In 2008 it had already surpassed its Monterrey commitment to contribute 0.4% of its GNI to official development assistance (ODA) by 2010. Switzerland should adopt a 0.5% target for its aid, keeping in mind the 0.7% UN target. Switzerland has a long tradition of international assistance; its aid to humanitarian causes and multilateral donors serves as an example in good practice. Although Switzerland contributes to international thinking on governance and development in fragile situations, it faces challenges in implementing some of the international principles for making aid more effective, particularly in fragile states. Swiss aid is dispersed among too many countries and sectors, and it now strives to strengthen its focus. While welcoming the steps Switzerland has taken to reinforce its strategic approach to development co-operation, greater cohesion between the Ministries of Economic and Foreign Affairs would reduce duplication and transaction costs. In reforming its aid system, Switzerland will need to do more to set standards, monitor outcomes and assess impact of its development co operation programmes. Switzerland has made progress in bringing areas such as trade and the restitution of stolen assets in line with its commitments to development. It must build on such examples to ensure that all policies are coherent with its development aims. Switzerland must also strengthen efforts to communicate the positive results of aid in order to maintain strong public and political support.

French

The Italian development co-operation is facing major challenges. The first is an urgent need to reform official development co-operation in the absence of political consensus on how to proceed. The second is that Italy will fail to meet its international commitment to increase official development assistance (ODA) to 0.51% of its gross national income (GNI) by 2010 and is unlikely to meet 0.7% by 2015. In 2008 Italy’s ODA/GNI ratio was 0.22. Despite the challenges remaining, there has been some improvement in Italian aid management since 2008. Italy intends to focus on 35 priority countries, the greater authority given to Italy’s embassies and technical offices to deliver and to contribute to formulating programmes and deliver aid, and the Steering Committee on Development Co-operation’s high level policy direction. Italy still needs a strategy for its development co-operation that is shared by all relevant government departments and regional and local authorities working towards common objectives: building systems to promote coherence between development co-operation and other policies; reforming human resource management for the core cadre of development experts; and regularly undertaking monitoring and independent evaluation. In addition, the limited political debate and public awareness about Italian development co-operation show there is an urgent need for the Italian authorities, together with civil society, to build popular support for development and public pressure for reforming Italian development co-operation.

French

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