Browse by: "H"

The size, structure and growth of health and pension programmes have, in recent years, been matters of concern to all OECD governments and societies. At issue are not only currently important social and economic questions, but also future difficulties which are likely to arise with the ageing of OECD population structures.

Japan has the fastest ageing population structure in the OECD. In 1960 the proportion of the population aged 65 and over in Japan was 5 per cent. In 1985 this proportion was 10 per cent, and in 2000 it is projected to be 15 per cent. The resulting pressures on social programmes are well understood in Japan, and the way in which the Japanese government and people are approaching this issue is of interest to other countries which must soon face similar problems.

Unemployment has emerged as one of the most pressing economic concerns in the majority of OECD countries. However, experiences differ across countries as regards the level, volatility and composition of unemployment. Nevertheless, a common feature in many countries is that given levels of wage acceleration, capacity utilisation and vacancy rates are now associated with much higher levels of unemployment than used to be the case two decades ago. Countries seem to differ in the extent to which rising trend unemployment reflects a rise in equilibrium unemployment ("the natural rate") or slow adjustment towards an equilibrium level which is lower than trend unemployment. A number of factors can be pointed to as affecting either equilibrium unemployment or the speed of adjustment in labour markets. Such factors comprise both labour market institutions and policies as well as features that are outside the realm of structural policies. A review of the literature as well as the examination ...

The paper reviews trends in health-care expenditure and assesses the main forces underlying the increase since 1960. It then describes and evaluates various health-care reforms. The report argues that top-down budget controls appear to have had some success in reducing the growth in health-care spending but, to be sustainable, they need to be supported by microeconomic reforms. Significant improvements in micro-efficiency and effectiveness can be obtained by improving incentives facing health-care providers. Policy developments in a few leading countries suggest that a system where funders/insurers act as purchasers, contracting with competing health-care providers, is a promising model for reform. A statistical annex assesses whether differences in institutional arrangements for funding and providing health care explain international differences in health expenditure ...

In 1995/96, 47.5 per cent of the population of Bangladesh were still living below the poverty line. While this represents a decline compared to 62.6 per cent in 1983/84, the absolute number of poor people has in fact increased over the same period. This paper argues that the persistence of poverty in Bangladesh originates less in the lack of resources for its alleviation than in the failures of governance.

These failures consist of a lack of a developmental vision, absence of a commitment that goes beyond rhetoric and that could translate the vision into policies and programmes, and weak capacities at the administrative, technical and political levels to implement such programmes. As a corollary of these failures, successive governments have surrendered ownership over national policy agendas in the field of poverty alleviation to international donors and NGOs. Furthermore, different areas of policy–making have been appropriated by special interest groups pursuing sectional concerns ...

OECD health-care systems confront the dual challenge of containing costs and maximising the health of their populations. The effectiveness of health-care provision in fostering longer and healthier lives is therefore of fundamental importance. In order to respond to these challenges, policy makers are demanding more and better information on health outcomes.

Therefore, this paper presents a summary of the current state-of-the-art in health outcome indicators for monitoring population health status and for evaluating the performance and effectiveness of various health policies and medical-care interventions. The paper begins by developing a framework for classifying the range of indicators that have been put forward to measure health outcomes. It then illustrates the potential value of different indicators for policy making within this framework and describes some recent trends in health status in OECD countries ...

This STI Working Paper deals with this group of rapidly expanding firms. It does so by placing the discussion into a context of entrepreneurship, arguing that there are two main aspects to this notion: one of business start-ups and market entry, and another one of innovation. Evidence is based on results from five OECD countries (Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Sweden) as well as from Quebec (Canada). Each of these studies used a firm-level data set to identify high-growth firms and their differentiating characteristics. High-growth firms are those firms that rank first according to a measure that combines relative (percentage) and absolute rates of employment expansion.

Despite considerable differences in the underlying data and some of the methodologies, number of common findings emerge:

• High-growth firms account for a disproportionately large part of gross jobs gained.
• Small firms exhibit higher net job creation rates than large firms do. At the same time, significant flows ...

We construct a revised version of the Barro and Lee (1996) data set for a sample of OECD countries using previously unexploited sources and following a heuristic approach to obtain plausible time profiles for attainment levels by removing sharp breaks in the data that seem to reflect changes in classification criteria. It is then shown that these revised data perform much better than the Barro and Lee (1996) or Nehru et al. (1995) series in a number of growth specifications. We interpret these results as an indication that poor data quality may be behind counterintuitive findings in the recent literature on the (lack of) relationship between educational investment and growth. Using our preferred empirical specification, we also show that the contribution of TFP to cross-country productivity differentials is substantial and that its importance relative to differences in factor stocks increases over time ...

The main policy implication that emerges from this study is that subsidised education without at the same time provision for the creation of growth-enhancing jobs can be good for the individual but bad for growth (and presumably public finances). There is evidence of very high private returns to education, in the form of higher wages for degree holders, but also evidence that these returns are not always matched by social returns in the form of higher output. Governments need to ensure that educated men and women have incentives to work in occupations that contribute to social welfare. Admittedly, some of those occupations, such as the running of social services or the looking after of sick people, do not show up in growth statistics. But they are as valuable as those that do ...

This paper reviews the role of house prices in influencing private consumption and residential investment in OECD countries. Deregulation of the mortgage markets in most OECD countries since the 1970s has made it easier for households to borrow for current consumption on the basis of their housing wealth, and the easing of borrowing constraints has often been accompanied by sizeable withdrawal of housing equity. The analysis presented in the paper and a review of existing empirical work for the major OECD countries suggest that house prices have a significant positive impact on private consumption through wealth effects and/or an easing of liquidity constraints. House prices also influence the profitability of house building, and in many countries there is a close association between profitability of house construction and private residential investment. A corollary of these results is that residential property prices can be useful indicators of demand pressures in the economy ...

Norway, like most OECD countries, will experience a significant ageing of its population, although it will be less dramatic. Moreover, it starts from an enviable position: employment rates of older people are among the highest in the OECD, pension outlays are currently relatively low and substantial financial assets have been accumulated in the Government Petroleum Fund. However, without reforms, due to the maturing of the pension system, ageing will lead to one of the biggest increases in pension spending as a share of GDP in OECD countries over the next 50 years. This paper thus, after exploring the scale of the demographic changes, examines the relevant institutions and their effect on the decision to retire. In light of the expected increase in the elderly, various issues concerning their economic position and health care are considered. The paper then presents the fiscal impact of ageing: the cost of the pension system will more than double, while health care spending for the ...

In Finland, as in most OECD countries, the ageing of the population is one of the major long-term policy challenges. This paper first explores the scale of the demographic changes in Finland, the relevant institutions and their effect on the decision to retire. In light of the increase in the number of elderly expected over the coming years, various issues concerning their economic position and health care are considered. The paper then considers the impact that demographic changes will have on public finances: the cost of the pension system will increase by a third; health care spending and the cost of care for the frail elderly are also likely to rise substantially. The paper ends by outlining the policy options to copy with ageing ...

Globalisation, governance and economic performance affect each other in very complex mutual relationships. In this paper, we establish a clear and well-circumscribed hypothesis: “is there an effect of globalisation on governance?” To test this hypothesis or, even more specifically, to test how openness can affect the quality of domestic institutions, we survey available theoretical explanations of causal relationships between globalisation and governance. Microeconomic theory helps us identify trade policy, competition by foreign producers and international investors, and openness-related differences in institution building costs and benefits, as three major transmission mechanisms through which openness affects a country’s corruption levels. Examining a large sample of countries covering a 20-year long period, we found robust empirical support for the fact that increases in import openness do indeed cause reductions in corruption, a crucial aspect of governance. The magnitude of ...

The health status of the Japanese is one of the best in the world. The healthcare system has no doubt contributed to this, though the current state of research in health economics does not permit the determination of the extent of such contribution. The Japanese system, based on social insurance, has provided both basic care and free choice of doctors to every citizen at affordable costs. It has, however, become increasingly clear that the Japanese system has failed to allocate resources properly, ensure financial equity and adapt to changing patterns of demand. This paper first explains how a system that once seemed to function well has become inappropriate, then how policies have tried to overcome some of the problems. The paper concludes with key considerations shaping future reform ...

Poor people lack access to health care with a negative impact on their dignity, human capital formation and their risk-management options. Recently an emerging movement of community-based health insurance schemes has attracted the attention of policy makers and researchers as it seems that these schemes target the poor more efficiently. Taking the example of community-based health insurance schemes in rural Senegal this paper identifies the factors explaining participation in these schemes. Using household survey data of non-members and members, we found that household income, religion, village characteristics and the belonging to a certain ethnic group exert the strongest influence on the probability of participation. From these findings, it follows that i) although the schemes reach the “poor” in general, the “poorest of the poor” within the villages find it financially difficult to participate; ii) social exclusion due to religion or ethnic group might persist. Several options ...

This working paper has been presented and discussed at the October 2002 OECD National Accounts Experts Meeting. The objective of the paper is two fold: (1) present comparable results for household financial and non financial assets and liabilities for Europe, the USA and Japan, (2) analyse the change in the composition of household gross and net wealth of these countries and zones between 1995 and 2000. Data is based on official financial accounts sources. However the paper proposes (and estimate the corresponding data) an original classification, better adapted to analysis: pension funds assets are broken down between defined-benefit and defined contribution, life insurance between unit-linked and guaranteed-rate, mutual-funds between equity, bond and mixed. The paper discusses the reliability of the data, including non listed shares and non financial assets. The paper then discusses global and detailed compared trends of household wealth between countries ...

This paper synthesises the existing literature on human capital formation and foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries. The aim is to take a bird’s eye view of the complex linkages between the activities of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and policies of host developing countries. In doing so, general trends, best practices and policy experiences are extracted to evaluate the current state of knowledge. The literature indicates that a high level of human capital is no doubt one of the key ingredients for attracting FDI, as well as for host countries to gain maximum benefits from their activities. Most developing countries, however, underinvest in human capital, and the investment that is actually taking place is unevenly distributed across countries and regions that have adopted different human resource development (HRD) policies. To improve human capital formation and thus to attract more FDI would therefore require a more coherent approach that takes host country ...