Orsetta Causa

How quickly does structural reform pay off? An empirical analysis of the short-term effects of unemployment benefit reform

While there is a fairly broad consensus regarding the potential adverse effects of generous unemployment benefit insurance on steady-state employment, the short-term effects of benefit reforms are not well-established. This paper contributes to fill this gap by estimating impulse responses to benefit reform “shocks” identified for a panel of OECD countries. Findings indicate that although it takes time for unemployment benefit reforms to pay off, such reforms do not appear to entail any negative short-run effects. There is however some suggestive evidence that reducing unemployment benefits could have negative short-run effects in “bad times”.JEL classificationE02, E24, E60, J38, J58, J68

Overcoming Barriers to Competitiveness

Raising manufacturing productivity is of central importance to the developing world and an essential element of policy making. Overcoming Barriers to Competitiveness is about establishing the most reliable analysis of manufacturing productivity possible and helping policy makers set their priorities. The paper demonstrates that productivity rests on five elements of the economy: infrastructure, capital, trade, education and aggregate efficiency. These factors, when multiplied together, give a true picture of a country’s situation on the productivity “league table”. More than a simple comparison, this ranking system allows the identification of which elements in each particular national or regional case require most attention. This approach can be viewed as another way of addressing the so-called “competitiveness problem” of poor countries. It does not say, however, that other areas can be totally neglected; one of the main points of the paper is that all five elements have to be ... L’accroissement de la productivite manufacturiere est une priorite essentielle des pays en voie de developpement. Vers une meilleure productivite industrielle des pays pauvres se donne pour objectif de fournir une analyse de la productivite manufacturiere qui soit susceptible d’aider les decideurs politiques de ces pays a fixer leurs priorites. L’article demontre que la productivite repose sur cinq facteurs: les infrastructures, le capital, le commerce, l’education, et l’efficacite globale. Il permet ce faisant de classer les pays relativement les uns aux autres eu egard leur dotation en chacun de ces facteurs. Plus qu’une simple comparaison, ce systeme de classement permet d’identifier les elements qui, a un niveau regional ou national, requierent une attention particuliere. L’une des theses centrales de l’article est que les pays pauvres doivent le plus souvent s’atteler a la resolution de ces cinq handicaps a la fois, l’idee sous-jacente est en effet d’eviter que l’un d’entre ...

Equity in Student Achievement Across OECD Countries

This paper focuses on inequalities in learning opportunities for individuals coming from different socio-economic backgrounds as a measure of (in)equality of opportunity in OECD countries and provides insights on the potential role played by policies and institutions in shaping countries’ relative positions. Based on harmonised 15-year old students’ achievement data collected at the individual level, the empirical analysis shows that while Nordic European countries exhibit relatively low levels of inequality, continental Europe is characterised by high levels of inequality – in particular of schooling segregation along socio-economic lines – while Anglo-Saxon countries occupy a somewhat intermediate position. Despite the difficulty of properly identifying causal relationship, cross-country regression analysis provides insights on the potential for policies to explain observed differences in equity in education.