David Grubb

Activation Policies in Ireland

In Ireland the placement function of the Public Employment Service (PES) is primarily within FAS, the Training and Employment Authority, which is supervised by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE). But employment counselling services are also provided by the “Local Employment Service” (which has partly-separate funding and management arrangements); Facilitators within the Department of Social and Family Affairs (who implement an “Activation Programme”, which however lacks participation requirements); and the “Services to the Unemployed” activity within the Local Development Social Inclusion Programme (which is managed through a third Department). The number of staff in FAS Employment Services and the Local Employment Service, relative to the number of wage and salary earners in the economy, appears to be relatively low, about half the average level of staffing of institutions responsible for the placement function in Australia and Northern and Western Europe (countries which also have high benefit coverage rates for unemployment).

Long time series for public expenditure on labour market programmes

The OECD has collected data for public expenditure on labour market programmes (LMPs) continuously since the mid-1980s. For most longstanding Member countries, data according to a consistent classification system and definition of scope are available for reference years 1985 to 2002. Starting with reference year 1998, Eurostat started collecting and publishing data according to a somewhat different classification system and definition of scope. In line with agreements for bilateral coordination of data collection, the OECD after some time adopted - for non-Eurostat OECD Member countries as well as Eurostat countries – most of the features of the Eurostat system. This allows the OECD to use data collected by Eurostat rather than making a separate data request to the 20 Eurostat countries that are members of the OECD. OECD data according to the “new” classification and definition of scope are generally available for reference year 2002 onwards, or 1998 onwards for Eurostat countries. These data are often used in time-series applications, e.g. for documenting long-term trends in total social expenditure (in which labour market programmes are one component), or in time-series regressions that attempt to estimate the impact of training programmes vs. job-creation programmes on unemployment. It is no longer practicable to do such work using only the “old” data which stop in 2002 or the “new” data which start in 2002 or 1998. If the two data sets are combined using crude extrapolation and splicing techniques, time-series movements will result primarily from statistical breaks (i.e. changes in definition and coverage of the statistics) rather than real changes in spending patterns. L’OCDE a rassemble des donnees pour les depenses publiques au titre des programmes du marche du travail (PMT) de facon continue depuis le milieu des annees 80. Pour la plupart des pays membres de longue date, des donnees selon un systeme de categories et une definition du champ coherents sont disponibles pour les annees de reference 1985 a 2002. A partir de l’annee de reference 1998, Eurostat a rassemble et publie des donnees selon un systeme de categories et une definition du champ modifies. En conformite avec des accords bilateraux concernant la collecte des donnees, apres un certain temps l’OCDE a adopte – pour les pays membres non Eurostat autant que pour les pays Eurostat – la plupart des caracteristiques du systeme Eurostat. Cette approche permet a l’OCDE d’utiliser les donnees collectees par Eurostat plutot que d’adresser des requetes de donnees separees aux 20 pays Eurostat membres de l’OCDE. Le donnees OCDE selon les « nouvelles » categories et definition du champ sont le plus souvent disponibles a partir de l’annee de reference 2002, ou a partir de 1998 pour les pays Eurostat. Ces donnees servent souvent en series temporelles, par exemple pour documenter les tendances a long terme dans les depenses sociales totales (les PMT en etant une composante) ou dans les regressions temporelles qui visent a estimer l’impact sur le chomage des programmes de formation ou bien des programmes de creations d’emplois. Ces travaux ne sont plus faisables en se servant uniquement de donnees « anciennes » qui s’arretent en 2002 ou des donnees « nouvelles » qui demarrent en 2002 ou en 1998. Si les deux bases de donnees sont regroupees avec des techniques d’extrapolation et de raccordements crues, les variations temporelles seront principalement le reflet de ruptures statistiques plutot que des changements reels dans la distribution des depenses.

A Variance Comparison of OLS and Feasible GLS Estimators

Second-order approximations to the variances of OLS and GLS estimators are compared when the covariance matrix is locally nonscalar. Using a result of Rothenberg, the comparison of OLS and GLS variances is shown to be asymptotically equivalent to a weighted mean square error comparison of the error covariance parameter estimators used in those two procedures. When there is only one covariance parameter, this comparison depends only on the noncentrality parameter of a classical hypothesis test for a scalar covariance matrix.