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Japan is in the process of developing much closer economic ties with its Asian neighbours, at both the government and private-sector levels. While there is little official support in Japan for the creation of any formal regional integration scheme, there is evidence of Japanese behaviour leading to what can be termed soft regionalisation with Japan as the dominant actor. A major increase in direct investment, supported by large amounts of foreign aid helping to create the necessary infrastructure for that investment, is the principal vehicle for the increasing Japanese involvement in Asia. Regional trade flows have shown less of a shift toward Japan, but that could change in the 1990s.
The developing nations of Asia have been quite receptive to this rapid increase in the Japanese economic presence, and would be quite foolish to restrict the inflow of foreign aid and direct investment. Recipient countries should recognize however that the co-ordination between ...
This paper reviews recent literature on job gains and job losses. Economies exhibit high rates of gross job reallocation - both high levels of job gains and job losses. For the OECD nations for which data are available, total turnover averaged more than twenty per cent during the 1980s. This is a result of differing behaviour of establishments (firms) in the face of similar general economic conditions.
Two streams have developed in the literature in attempting to characterize the influence of structural change on job turnover. The first sees structural turnover as continuous, and emphasizes the importance of establishment openings as the primary means through which more significant changes in an economy occur. An alternative view emphasizes the concentration of job losses stemming from structural change in cyclical downturns. The timing and pace of structural change can have an important influence on labour market policies.
The behaviour of the four components of job turnover over ...
The OECD Competition Committee organised a seminar on judicial enforcement of competition law in October 1996. This document includes an executive summary, an analytical note by the OECD and written submissions by judges and experts, as well as an aide-memoire of the discussion.
This Joint Assessment compares the strengths of four donors in Tanzania, namely Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Japan, as well as the challenges facing them, and makes observations on their aid programmes. The aim of the Joint Assessment of these four donors (2-13 March 2003) was to understand the way in which the implementation of donors’ partnership strategies contributes to country ownership. The paper looks at the challenges for donors posed by the Tanzanian aid co-ordination mechanisms, which strongly promote Tanzanian ownership of the development programme. It concludes with a series of lessons for DAC donors...
This paper was prepared for the OECD-IEA Climate Change Expert Group (formerly called the Annex I Expert Group) for the purpose of providing useful and timely input on specific topics relevant to international negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The papers do not represent the views of the OECD, the IEA, or their member countries, rather they are Secretariat information papers intended to help inform countries as well as the UNFCCC audience on key technical issues in the international climate change negotiations.
The installation of final repositories for nuclear waste has been a most controversial topic on the German political agenda for decades. The beginning of efforts to solve this problem can be traced back to the 1970s when plans for the establishment of an Integrated Nuclear Waste Disposal Centre (Integriertes Entsorgungszentrum) in the State of Lower Saxony were developed. It was in this context that in 1976,1 the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) of 19592 (the 2002 consolidated text is reproduced in Supplement to Nuclear Law Bulletin No. 70) was amended by inserting Section 9a, paragraph 3, sentence 1, which reads very succinctly: “The Federation shall establish installations for the safekeeping and final disposal of radioactive waste.” Despite the subsequent AEA amendments of Section 9a, paragraph 3 and the addition of a paragraph 4 (1998)3 that were to allow the Federation to transfer the exercise of its functions to third parties, these administrative provisions were never used. Accordingly, full responsibility of the Federation for the fulfilment of its obligation under Section 9a, paragraph 3 of the AEA remains intact today.
A small simulation model is used to evaluate the contribution that the three arrows of the government’s strategy – bold monetary policy to achieve higher inflation, flexible fiscal policy and growth-boosting structural reforms – could make to reversing the rise in Japan’s public debt ratio, currently about 230% of GDP. The findings indicate that with fiscal consolidation amounting to around 7½ percentage points of GDP by 2020, modestly higher growth coming from increased female labour force participation and higher productivity growth, as well as inflation gradually rising to 2% thanks to unconventional monetary policy measures, the debt ratio could be put on a downward trajectory by the end of this decade, although it is likely to remain above 200% of GDP in 2035. Among the many uncertainties surrounding this scenario, the risk of a larger-than-projected increase in interest rates stands prominently and could prevent the turnaround in debt dynamics.
JEL classification codes: E63; H68.
Keywords: Japan; debt; deficit; fiscal; budget; projection; simulation; arrow; consolidation; growth; inflation; reform.
Many countries invest considerable resources into promoting employment and the creation of jobs. At the same time, policies and institutions still pay relatively little attention to the quality of jobs although job quality has been found to be a major driver of employee wellbeing and may be an important factor for work productivity. Eventually, job quality might also influence labour supply choices and lead to higher employment. Providing robust evidence for the relationship between job quality and worker productivity could make a strong case for labour market policies directed at the improvement of job quality. This paper reviews existing evidence on the relationship between the quality of the work environment and individual at-work productivity, defined as reduced productivity while at work, and assesses the effect of health on this relationship.
After screening 2 319 studies from various fields and disciplines, including economics and medicine, 48 studies are reviewed. Strong evidence is found for a negative relationship between job stress or job strain and individual at-work productivity and for a positive relationship between job rewards and productivity. Moderate evidence is found for a negative relationship between work-family conflict and at‑work productivity and for a positive relationship between fairness at work and social support from co-workers and productivity. Health influences the relationship between the quality of the work environment and productivity. Specifically, the relationship is stronger for people in good health.
Job quality needs a more prominent place in labour market policy. More attention needs to be paid to workers’ perceptions of the quality of their work environment and how policies and practices at both the level of the worker and the work environment may influence this. Furthermore, as health‑related factors significantly influence the relationship between job quality and productivity, multidisciplinary approaches are needed to support at‑work productivity.
System resilience is the ability for complex, dynamic-adaptive socio-technical systems to absorb and rebound from trauma or stress, and to avoid “jousting with dragons” where results are uncertain and often fatal. In a safety context, the term “dragons” originates from Professor David Woods at Ohio State University and the relatively new field of Resilience Engineering.
Dragons are an illustration for the consequence of “surprise” as depicted in ancient seafarer maps that filled the seas beyond the known boundaries of the ancient world with fire-breathing dragons, and certain death. In a modern day sense, dragons represent the unintended, and often unforeseen and unpredictable, consequences of crossing operational boundaries that are difficult to identify precisely, are often influenced by various actors, and are continually changing. In particular, due to the complex, dynamic-adaptive behaviour of systems, classic statistical metrics used in current Safety Management Systems (SMS) no longer allow us to predict the next undesired event. We need to change our focus and find new ways of capturing the faint signals of impending failure. This will require structural, psychological and social changes in the way SMSs work. In this paper, the issues of understanding and managing complex, dynamic-adaptive systems through the quality of resilience, and how to avoid “jousting with dragons” in the transport sector using a Resilience Engineering lens are addressed.
This paper was prepared as background for a discussion held at the 2017 OECD Global Forum on Competition on judicial perspectives on competition law. It introduces the judicial role in the application of competition law in West Africa amongst other issues.
The nature, content and milieu of work – i.e. the quality of the working environment – matter in many ways for people, firms and society as a whole. There is a great deal of evidence to show clear associations between job quality and the health of workers, their ability to successfully combine work and life while fully mobilising their skills and abilities to build a career, and their productivity. Investments in quality working environments can be welfare enhancing and economically efficient. Policies and practices reflect these findings insufficiently, an apparent paradox that finds its roots in various market failures. There is scope for public intervention to raise awareness, to ensure better coordination of key stakeholders (employers, workers’ representatives and various public entities) and to put in place the right financial incentives for firms to invest in better working conditions. Action in this field is also important in view of ongoing considerable changes in the labour market. The future of work is very uncertain at this stage; the digitalisation and uberisation of work have the potential for improvements in working conditions but also bear the risk of de-skilling, lower pay, lower job security and poor working conditions for parts of the labour force.