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The European railway industry continues to undergo reform and liberalization due to European law incentives. Recent events in Italy give the country a special place in this process: a new competitor has commenced operations in the high-speed rail (HSR) market based on a private initiative. This paper aims to investigate this rail transport innovation looking for the driving forces and obstacles and to identify the main impacts for the Italian consumers. We also try to provide some interesting results helpful for other countries regarding passenger rail reforms. Based on the Italian case, it seems that open access competition in the HSR market is able to produce significant improvements in favour of passengers and also a ‘win-win’ game between all railway actors.

Questions surrounding the local and regional impact of higher education institutions (HEIs) have been around for a long time. In the United Kingdom there was pioneering work on the economic impact of Cambridge on its region (Segal Quince and Partners, 1985) and other studies in the 1980s, but the issues have become more focused in recent years around two poles of interest: the contribution that universities can make to the knowledge economy and the critical role that regions play in determining national economic success. This has prompted a major OECD/IMHE study, the findings of which have been published in a report entitled Higher Education and Regions: Globally Competitive, Locally Engaged (OECD, 2007). The report was followed by a conference, under the same title, held in Valencia, Spain, from 19 to 21 September 2007, which brought together many of the participants in the original research programme. This special issue of the Journal derives from that conference and seeks to present a balanced collection of thematic and case study contributions....

As part of a larger effort to fund public universities, variable fees at the graduate and undergraduate levels are a topic of discussion in the United States and increasingly throughout the European Union. This essay describes the relatively new shift to have students pay for a significant portion of their university education, emerging fee structures, and discusses the possible policy implications of variable fee structures. We argue that emerging cost-sharing fee policy in the United States and in England is being pursued incrementally, without an adequate conceptual model for long-term funding of universities and their possible impact on students and academic programs.

Recent economics literature on offshoring highlights the trend towards the relocation of high-skill jobs to emerging economies. This evolution presents a challenge to the established knowledge economy discourse on which the relationship between higher education, higher skills, higher productivity and higher incomes has been based. This paper identifies some tentative impacts of offshoring for employment and education patterns in OECD countries and argues that the assumptions of the knowledge economy discourse need to be revised. The implications for higher education institutions are considered and three potential strategic responses are presented.

OECD governments are facing unprecedented challenges in the markets for government securities as a result of continued strong borrowing amid a highly uncertain environment with growing concerns about the pace of recovery, surging borrowing costs, sovereign risk and contagion pressures.

Following the end of the “Cold War”, the OECD has, since the early 1990s, been conducting “Outreach” activities (i.e. policy dialogue and capacity-building cooperation activities with non-Member economies), first with the Central and Eastern European countries in transition, and now extending to many other emerging economies. These “Outreach” activities have of course included financial sector reform, as the financial sector is often considered one of the key sectors in assisting these economies’ developments. The OECD’s efforts in this area have focused on, and continue to give primary attention to, capital market reform (including corporate governance) as well as insurance and pension market policies and reform on a regional basis; they have been recently targeting Asia, as this...

In the late 1980's the OECD began co-operation (i.e. policy dialogue with nonmember economies) with the Asian Newly Industrialising Economies, and when the Berlin wall fell in 1989 it launched a programme with the Central and East European countries in transition.

After some significant corrections in the second half of May and in early June, major equity markets have resumed their growth, in some cases regaining levels reached before the May-June contraction. Against a backdrop of healthy corporate balance sheets, robust earnings growth and low default rates, investor sentiment has remained positive, as reflected in these equity market developments and compressed credit spreads. However, there are signs of increasing nevousness, which include the May/June market turbulence and somewhat increased levels of historical and implied volatility. The increased nervousness may reflect in part downward revisions to economic forecasts.

Financial markets in major economies have been broadly strong after some weakening in the first part of the fourth quarter of 2005. Equity markets in the euro area have been buoyant over the past few months, and the strong upswing of Japanese markets in the fourth quarter was perhaps driven by prospects of the end of deflation.

Over the past few months, prices in major financial markets have remained strong despite further oil price increases. After major equity markets had shown a soft spot around March and April, they regained their upward trend in the second quarter. Terrorist attacks in London in July and the hurricane Katrina in the United States which hit the New Orleans region at the end of August did not disrupt markets, despite the large size of human, economic and insured losses associated with the latter event.

Over the past few months, major equity markets generally have continued their upward trend, while interest rates at the long end of the maturity spectrum have declined. Meanwhile, credit spreads for both investment grade and sub-investment grade borrowers continue to be compressed and volatility appears to have diminished in most market segments.

Financial markets have shown resilience in an environment of marked increases in oil and commodity prices and somewhat diminished expectations about the strength of the economic recovery. Major stock markets, which had risen over most of the first quarter, showed some weakening at the end of March, and again in late May and in mid-August, losing part of the gains they had made since the end of the downturn in the first half of 2003. Since then, however, equity markets have risen moderately or at least held steady and bond markets have absorbed, better than had been feared ...