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The balanced growth and stochastic growth theory implies stable consumption-to-output and investment-to-output ratios. It is tested by cointegration techniques for three different German data vintages. Systems cointegration tests are helpful in revealing inconsistencies across vintages. Differencing and rebasing, often used to adjust for benchmark revisions, are generally not sufficient to ensure consistent real-time macroeconomic data. Vintage transformation functions estimated by cointegrating regressions are more flexible. Empirically, the cointegrating property between consumption and output, as well as between investment and output, is often found, whereas the one-to-one relationship is mostly rejected. Moreover, the linear transformation function is helpful in describing the relation between two older final vintages. This function seems to be insufficient if the most recent data collection framework is involved.

Based on an endogenous growth model, we show that intermediate goods markets imperfections can curb incentives to improve productivity downstream. We confirm such prediction by estimating a model of multifactor productivity growth in which the effects of upstream competition vary with distance to frontier on a panel of 15 OECD countries and 20 sectors over 1985-2007. Competitive pressures are proxied with sectoral product market regulation data. We find evidence that anticompetitive upstream regulations have curbed MFP growth over the past 15 years, more strongly so for observations that are close to the productivity frontier.

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 Japan and the United States for the Peer Review meeting on 9 June 2009. The review noted that Sweden was the most generous of all DAC donor countries as a proportion of its national income in 2008. Sweden is a leader in the areas of aid effectiveness and good humanitarian donorship. It has initiated important reforms to bolster the quality of its aid and to make its development efforts more supportive of partner country priorities. Sweden sets an example as a reliable and engaged donor to multilateral organisations but could make its support more strategic. Sweden is ahead of many donors when it comes to making its national policies and actions consistent with its development objectives, but implementation difficulties led to a revised approach, which is promising.

French

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 Luxembourg and Norway for the Peer Review meeting on 29 April 2009. Among the issues covered were: the welcome efforts to focus Austrian development co-operation on the world’s poorest people; plans to substantially increase aid for humanitarian action, priority partner countries, and UN agencies; and progress made with the organisational reform started in 2004. Austria needs to sharply increase its aid to meet its commitment to reach 0.7% of ODA/GNI by 2015; to make its aid more predictable; and to increase the share of aid that can be programmed by partner countries. Staffing and technical expertise in the Foreign Affairs Ministry must be strengthened so that it can effectively carry out its mandate as the national co-ordinator for aid and development policy; there should be increased focus on public and political awareness about global development challenges; and a medium-term development policy, endorsed by the government, which commits all ministries to Austria’s development co-operation objectives.

French

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 Italy and New Zealand for the Peer Review meeting on 24 March 2009. The review noted that Ireland is a champion in making aid more effective. Poverty reduction is the overarching goal of Irish Aid, and reflecting this, its programme is well concentrated on a limited number of very poor African countries. Ireland is a predictable and flexible donor, and its attention to local priorities is appreciated by the developing country partners with whom it works. It is balancing efforts to meet the best international development standards while dealing with the impact of the global economic crisis. Ireland is focusing on achieving results and should enhance its efforts to measure the impact of its aid programme. The DAC urges Ireland to communicate development results to the public to maintain support for overseas development.

French

Over the last few decades, public-private partnerships have been increasingly used by governments around the world to finance and manage complex operations. Doubts about their efficiency have been raised, however. Criticism of public-private partnerships reflects the fact that governments tend to use them as “off-budget” operations, to avoid fiscal constraints. Do they generate “value for money” to the public sector? The literature is less than unanimous. How one assesses value for money in these types of arrangements has become extremely important for public managers.

Discussions at the 11th OECD-WBG-IMF Global Bond Market Forum focused on four key areas: i) the impact of crisis-related measures and the potential implications of exit; ii) the measurement of sovereign risk; iii) the determinants of investor demand; and iv) debt managers’ response to the crisis. Overall, participants felt that the steps taken to stabilise financial conditions had generally been effective and that conditions in financial markets were normalising. However, discussions highlighted a number of ongoing risks including: i) while credible consolidation plans were needed, fiscal and monetary policy would be tightened too soon; ii) managing investor uncertainty would prove critical in managing risk in the near-term; and (iii) regulatory changes might lead to a deterioration in conditions in primary and secondary markets and otherwise aggravate the challenges facing debt managers. JEL Classification: G15, G18, G20, G24, G32, G38, H62, H68 Keywords: Outlook on public deficits and government debt, crisis and debt management policies, government debt market, measurement of sovereign risk, investor demand, exit strategy

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
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.
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.
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 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.

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.

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.

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
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

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.

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.

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