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This article looks at the stages of crisis management and some of the different degrees of transparency on losses and risks in the US and Europe. It also compares alternative approaches to dealing with impaired assets used in the USA and Europe. Exposure to off-balance losses remains a key issue. Europe, surprisingly, has been and remains the major issuer of collateralised synthetic obligations that have been so prominent in the crisis. The capital needs of banks over the next few years is examined, and great uncertainties remain due to the unknown extent to which off-balance sheet vehicles will need to be consolidated. Finally, the requirements of longer-run reform are outlined.

Historically, the definition and measurement of academic standards in British higher education have been the exclusive prerogative of the academic community. The calibration of standards across institutions was the responsibility and purpose of the external-examiner system. But the mechanisms in place to achieve these ends have broken down under the weight of the massification of UK higher education, the need to recruit international students to sustain revenue streams, and the league-table or rankings culture that has resulted in academic standards being sacrificed in order to maintain or improve institutional image. In 2008 the House of Commons inaugurated a wide-ranging inquiry into these matters. Its August 2009 report proposes radical solutions, the adoption of which will represent a definitive break with the traditions of the past.

Définition des critères de qualité et évaluation des performances universitaires : Une perspective britannique

Traditionnellement, la définition des critères de qualité et l’évaluation des performances universitaires dans l’enseignement supérieur britannique étaient la prérogative exclusive de la communauté universitaire. L’étalonnage des critères de qualité dans l’ensemble des établissements relevait de la responsabilité du système d’examinateurs externes dont c’était l’objectif.

Cependant, les mécanismes mis en place à cette fin se sont effondrés sous le poids de la massification de l’enseignement supérieur britannique, la nécessité de recruter des étudiants internationaux pour maintenir les flux de revenus, et la culture des classements qui a conduit au sacrifice de la qualité afin de préserver ou d’améliorer une image institutionnelle. En 2008, la Chambre des Communes a inauguré une vaste enquête sur ces questions. Son rapport d’août 2009 propose des solutions radicales, dont l’adoption constituera une rupture définitive avec les traditions du passé.

This report seeks to address critical issues such as these by synthesising the evidence on innovations in more market-driven education systems. The analysis draws on data from over 20 OECD and non-OECD countries, including both developed nations that seek to move beyond established systems of state-run schools, and developing nations where formal and de facto policies promote more free-market approaches to educational expansion. In doing this, the report focuses on the primary and secondary levels, where education is usually compulsory. The more universal nature of educational access at those levels provides a different set of conditions and incentives compared to the post-compulsory tertiary level. And the report pays special attention to the charter school experiment in North America, where reformers explicitly tried to create more competitive conditions in order to encourage the development of innovations in the education sector. Policy approaches such as this that use decentralisation, deregulation, greater levels of autonomy, competition and choice may have singular potential to induce innovations in the education sector, both in how education is organised and the school content that is delivered — critical concerns if the education sector is to be more effective and reach under-served populations.
Measures were taken by many developing country governments to mitigate consequences of high international agricultural commodity prices from mid 2006 until mid 2008, and to block their transmission to domestic markets, with varying degrees of success and cost. A significant international response has focused on emergency relief and renewed efforts to invest in agricultural development. This paper describes and contrasts the approaches taken by national governments versus international organizations and donors to respond to this food crisis, and their consequences. It also explores approaches already underway to enhance aid effectiveness and achieve more rapid agricultural development for smallholder farmers, identifying potential and past roadblocks.

This case study examines the effect of deregulation and trade reform on South Africa’s agriculture sector, which is highly dualistic consisting of a developed commercial sector and a subsistence farming sector. Deregulation and trade reform has led to substantial changes in innovation in the commercial agriculture sector, such as wine and fruit, leading to a large change in composition while innovation seems to have been more limited in subsistence agriculture, which lacks absorption capacity. Legal uncertainties related to land reform may also be a factor which can negatively affect innovation in the commercial farming sector. Keywords: innovation, deregulation, trade reform, South Africa, agriculture, wine, fruit, field crops, foreign investment, absorption capacity.

This case study examines the effect of domestic reform including trade on New Zealand’s agriculture sector. Agricultural and trade reform has increased competition and brought substantial changes in innovation in the commercial agriculture sector, such as wine, fruit, livestock and dairy, which in turn has led to important changes in composition and an across the board increase in innovation and productivity. Keywords: innovation, agricultural reform, trade reform, New Zealand, agriculture, agricultural machinery, sheep, dairy, wine, horticulture, foreign investment. 

The policy debate on accountability in higher education has been vigorous in many countries, but it has focused primarily on broad objectives or approaches. Limited attention has been paid to the mechanisms by which universities would implement accountability objectives and to the critical role of academics in developing ways to assess learning outcomes. Yet, giving members of the professoriate a central role in accountability is vital: implementing accountability requires decentralised implementation linked to the differing circumstances of study fields and levels. Academics must be involved in a sequence of tasks – developing assessments, testing and refining them against new evidence, making sense of accountability results, and responding with changes in programmes or delivery.

This paper outlines a process showing how universities and other tertiary institutions could develop and use outcome measures for student learning. It also recognises that professional and disciplinary associations (e.g. business, education, chemistry, literature and social welfare), nationally and internationally, could contribute to these developments in their specialty fields.

En quoi les professeurs de l’enseignement supérieur peuvent-ils contribuer à « responsabiliser » leurs établissements ?

L’idée d’une responsabilisation de l’enseignement supérieur a donné naissance, dans de nombreux pays, à un débat politique houleux. Toutefois, ce débat vise essentiellement à définir des objectifs ou des approches génériques, et s’intéresse relativement peu aux mécanismes grâce auxquels les universités pourraient avancer sur la voie des objectifs de transparence. De même, il faudrait s’interroger davantage sur le rôle clé que pourraient jouer les universitaires pour concevoir de nouvelles méthodes d’évaluation des retombées de l’apprentissage. Il est en effet essentiel que les membres du corps enseignant jouent un rôle central dans les initiatives visant à accroître la responsabilité et la transparence des systèmes d’enseignement supérieur : pour fonctionner durablement, ces initiatives doivent être menées de façon décentralisée, au vu des spécificités propres à chaque discipline et à chaque niveau d’études. Dans cette optique, les universitaires ont bel et bien un rôle à jouer à différents stades : il leur faut élaborer des outils d’évaluation, mais aussi tester et adapter ces outils au vu des résultats de recherche les plus récents, interpréter les résultats obtenus en termes de responsabilité et modifier si nécessaire les programmes ou les méthodes pédagogiques.

Ce rapport propose un cadre théorique utilisable par les universités et les autres établissements d’enseignement supérieur pour concevoir puis utiliser des outils permettant d’évaluer les retombées de l’apprentissage. L’auteur suggère par ailleurs que certaines professions et disciplines (telles que les entreprises commerciales, le secteur éducatif, l’industrie chimique, le monde littéraire ou encore les organismes de protection sociale) pourraient contribuer, à l’échelon national et international, à promouvoir cette évolution dans leurs domaines respectifs.

This papers estimates unrestricted monetary reaction functions for four Latin American countries (Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico) and tests for the presence of non-linear effects in central bank behaviour. The analysis covers the post-1999 inflation-targeting period. We deal with the presence of unit roots in the data by estimating the policy rules in a co-integration setting. We test for linear and non-linear co-integration among the variables of interest. The results suggest that a non-linear specification is not rejected by the data for Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, but it is for Chile. Estimation of smooth-transition models by NLLS and EN-NLLS suggests that the central bank’s response to the inflation gap (i.e. deviations of expected inflation from the target) is invariant across policy regimes in Colombia. It becomes stronger in Mexico as expected inflation deviates from the target. Policy responses appear to weaken in Brazil as the inflation gap widens, a finding that most probably reflects a history of adverse supply shocks and upward adjustments in targets in the early years of inflation targeting. Non-linearity is also found in the central bank’s response to the exchange rate in Brazil and Colombia.
This paper provides a comparative analysis of defined contribution (DC) pension systems in Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. There are considerable similarities in the systems which have evolved out of employer sponsored trust-based defined benefit (DB) systems and have expanded at different rates as DB has declined. The plans predominantly offer individual accounts with a choice of funds, with virtually no guarantees of performance and few regulatory restrictions on investment. Most funds are heavily invested in equities, although there is a move in some of the countries to life-styling investments in the run-up to retirement. The paper finds notable contrasts between fiduciary requirements, the regulation of transparency and charges and the approach to the pay-out phase, which raise some important public policy questions.
Many authors underlined the convergence of financial structures towards a model which combines elements of the Anglo Saxon one, where markets prevail, with characteristics of the continental European systems, where intermediaries are predominant. The goal of this paper is to study financial systems convergence through the lens of household asset allocation. We analyze s and ß convergence of total household financial assets and their main components: deposits, securities other than shares, shares and other equity, insurance technical reserves. The novelty of the paper is to exploit a database containing time series since 1980 for nine OECD countries. Using disposable income as a scale variable, we found convergence of household total financial assets, insurance technical reserves and shares and other equity. Weaker results are obtained for convergence of household securities other than shares, and currency and deposits. In a nutshell, financial systems show signals of convergence in asset allocation, but national characteristics persist when households invest in securities and deposits.
This paper presents stylised facts about development aid and capital flows to developing countries. It compares their volumes and volatilities and finds that foreign aid is not the major source of finance for these countries any more, though not for all regions. The expansion of private flows has usually come at the cost of an increased volatility that adds up to aid volatility, already considered to be an issue. We do not find any negative and significant correlations between aid shocks and capital flow shocks. Investigating complementarity between flows, we show that in a cross section of countries official development aid (ODA) and capital flows are substitutes but not within countries. On the other hand capital flows are complements both across and within countries. We also make use of a private funds database in order to underline the differences between portfolio investors to emerging markets and aid donors. To our knowledge this paper is the first to use such data in comparison with aid flows. We find that private portfolio equity is more volatile than ODA, and that it is neither a substitute nor a complement of ODA, both across and within countries. We argue that these results reinforce the calls for a new stabilising role of ODA. We then study aid donors and private funds portfolios to contribute to the current debate on aid fragmentation by providing trends for the last 50 years. We show that aid donors have constantly been fragmenting their portfolios by giving aid to an increasing number of countries, but also by making asset allocations more equal across countries. Private portfolio equity funds, on the other hand, have done the opposite for ten years and put a heavy weight on few countries in their portfolios. These observations complement the existing results about the progressive nature of aid flows and the regressive nature of private flows.

Abstract: This review contains the Main Findings and Recommendations of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the report of the Secretariat. It was prepared with examiners from the United States and Australia for the Peer Review meeting held on 26 June 2007. The review noted that the European Community as a donor disbursed over USD 10 billion in official development assistance in 2006, while the European Commission plays a potentially important “federating” role for the institutions of all 27 Member States of the European Union. The DAC commended both the role of the Commission in reshaping its development co-operation and the progress made since the 2002 Peer Review in delivering Community assistance. It welcomed a 2007 policy that seeks better division of labour among the Commission and the Member States and the 2005 European Consensus on Development which outlines a common policy framework for them. The DAC noted a number of challenges facing the European Community, including: ensuring that European Union policies take forward the development focus of the Consensus; implementing these policies effectively at the country level; and continuing to reform the institutions and to simplify the procedures. 

French

Abstract: This review contains the Main Findings and Recommendations of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the report of the Secretariat. It was prepared with examiners from the Netherlands and Greece for the Peer Review meeting on 8 June 2007. Among the main issues covered were: the significant funding for official development assistance (ODA) and the welcome decision on the part of the Danish Government to maintain its ODA at a minimum of 0.8% of gross national income; the solid legal grounding, resulting from the long-standing support for development assistance; the integrated, decentralised, development co-operation system, which facilitates effective aid delivery and provides flexibility for aligning and harmonising programmes; the positive emphasis on quality assurance; the need to pursue Denmark’s efforts in meeting the commitments of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness; the need to further develop and disseminate learning both within and outside Danida, especially in areas of high interest for the donor community, like mainstreaming crosscutting issues, capacity development and decentralisation; and the need to make further progress on aid untying. 

French

Abstract: This review contains the Main Findings and Recommendations of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the report of the Secretariat. It was prepared with examiners from Belgium and Switzerland for the Peer Review Meeting on 10 October 2007. This peer review of Canada’s development co-operation programme highlights Canada’s renewed commitment to Africa; a promising approach toward fragile states, such as Haiti and Afghanistan; initiatives to make Canadian aid more effective, focusing on accountability and explaining results to the Canadian public and parliament; and strong commitment to good humanitarian donorship (GHD). Canada still faces some challenges, including: i) strengthening the mandate for development co-operation and for CIDA, while addressing some of the agency’s fundamental structural issues; ii) producing a policy for development co-operation which focuses on reducing poverty; iii) articulating an approach to policy coherence for development; iv) continuing to increase aid to meet Canada’s commitments made at Monterrey; v) focusing its aid on fewer partner countries in order to generate stronger impact and voice; and vi) galvanising the implementation of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. These steps are needed if Canada’s performance is to match its ambition to become a leading player in the donor community. 

French
This paper examines the relationship between tax structures and economic growth by entering indicators of the tax structure into a set of panel growth regressions for 21 OECD countries, in which both the accumulation of physical and human capital are accounted for. The results of the analysis suggest that income taxes are generally associated with lower economic growth than taxes on consumption and property. More precisely, the findings allow the establishment of a ranking of tax instruments with respect to their relationship to economic growth. Property taxes, and particularly recurrent taxes on immovable property, seem to be the most growth-friendly, followed by consumption taxes and then by personal income taxes. Corporate income taxes appear to have the most negative effect on GDP per capita. These findings suggest that a revenue-neutral growth-oriented tax reform would be to shift part of the revenue base towards recurrent property and consumption taxes and away from income taxes, especially corporate taxes. There is also evidence of a negative relationship between the progressivity of personal income taxes and growth. All of the results are robust to a number of different specifications, including controlling for other determinants of economic growth and instrumenting tax indicators.
In presenting this case study of an innovative school building in Scotland, the author describes its unique design features, conveys the viewpoints of the users, client and design team, and reveals the lessons learned. Dalry Primary, North Ayrshire Introduction Dalry Primary School in North Ayshire is the latest case study featured on the Scottish Government’s website. By April 2009, the website will provide 32 case studies of recently completed nursery, primary and secondary school buildings in Scotland. The purpose is to highlight good practice and demonstrate different approaches to school design issues to help inform local authorities and others involved in the planning, briefing and design of school estate projects. Dalry Primary is a unique project involving the close collaboration of artists, architects and the county’s council in designing and realising a new concept in primary school building. The whole school is designed as a learning prototype, offering multiple opportunities to engage with different organisational and teaching methods, utilising or modifying the facilities and spaces. It does not impose directions or solutions, but offers them as options.
French
This paper uses a stratified sample of firms across OECD economies over the period 1996-2004 to analyse the effects of corporate taxes on productivity and investment. Applying a differences-in-differences estimation strategy which exploits differential effects of corporate taxes on firms with different profitability, it is found that corporate taxes have a negative effect on productivity at the firm level. The effect is negative across firms of different size and age classes except for the small and young, which may be attributable to the relatively low profitability of small and young firms. The negative effect of corporate taxes is particularly pronounced for firms that are catching up with the technological frontier. In the investment analysis, the results suggest that corporate taxes reduce investment through an increase in the user cost of capital. This may partly explain the negative productivity effects of corporate taxes if new capital goods embody technological change.

This paper aims at the production of a chronology for the EU15 business cycle by comparing parametric and non-parametric procedures on monthly and quarterly data as well in a combined approach. The main innovation is the joint use of the monthly series for the EU15 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the EU15 Industrial Production Index (IPI) from 1970 to 2003. The monthly IPI and the quarterly GDP at the EU15 level have been reconstructed starting from the available national series. The monthly GDP has then been computed using temporal disaggregation techniques. The obtained chronology is directly comparable to ones produced by several authors for the euro area.

The role of private pensions in the provision of retirement income has grown significantly in the past two decades, reflecting efforts by many countries to trim down unsustainable pay-as-you-go benefits. The role of private provision of retirement income is visible in countries with mature defined benefit private pension plans, as well as in countries that have introduced a mandatory private pillar as part of a systemic pension reform. This report seeks to develop a comparative study on the regulation of private pension systems across a range of countries, with a particular focus on the major systems in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Central and Eastern Europe, as well as selected high income OECD countries. It contains individual country profiles that provide detailed information on each country‘s private pension system. Each country report includes information on members´ participation; contribution rates, asset management, investment regulations, asset valuation and investment return regulations.
This paper is one of five case studies which is a part of a larger project looking at the various effects that trade and investment can have on innovation. This paper studies the effect of domestic reform including trade on New Zealand's agriculture sector. Agricultural and trade reform has led to increased competition and has led to substantial changes in innovation in the commercial agriculture sector such as wine, fruit, livestock and dairy leading to a large change in composition and an across the board increase in innovation and productivity.

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