2,060 research outputs found

    The Governance of Educational Welfare Markets: A Comparative Analysis of the European Social Fund in Five Countries

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    This book is a first exploratory inquiry into possible educational selectivity effects of the European Social Fund (ESF). It assesses the extent of the gap between the social policy objectives set through regulatory competences in multi-level governance and the structure of incentives it breeds in practice, with a broad range of implications for the capacity of the government to control for an equitable distribution of services at the community level. The chapters emphasize the educational selectivity involved in national policy decisions concerning ESF implementation in the five countries, the role of informal mechanisms in fine-tuning implementation, the negative effects of formalization and failures in accommodating the complexity of goals which characterizes the ESF, as well as the overall fairness of ESF implementation towards the most disadvantaged groups in society. The empirical analysis suggests that social-service delivery contracting as an instrument of governance is no longer regulating against risks for beneficiaries, but fuels increased social division in access to public services

    What do Europeans do at Work? A Task-Based Analysis: European Jobs Monitor 2016

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    [Excerpt] Europe continues its recovery from the economic slump caused by the global financial crisis in 2008, exacerbated by the euro zone single currency crisis in 2010–2011. In 2014–2015, aggregate employment levels rose faster than at any time since 2008 and over four million new jobs were created in the 28 EU Member States. The fifth annual European Jobs Monitor report looks at employment shifts at Member State and aggregate EU level from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2015. Part 1 presents the jobs-based approach, used to describe employment shifts quantitatively (how many jobs were created or destroyed) and qualitatively (what kinds of jobs). This approach relies on breaking employment down into detailed ‘job’ cells, with a job defined as ‘a specific occupation in a specific sector’, for example, a health professional in the health sector, or a skilled craft/tradesman in car manufacturing. A particular focus is placed on the time profile of recent shifts in employment structure. Ranking the jobs according to their wage and educational levels – or a broader multidimensional index of job quality – adds a qualitative dimension to the analysis. In this year’s report, a further level of detail is provided by measuring the intensity involved in carrying out different categories of task: physical, intellectual and social in terms of the job’s content, methods and work organisation, as well as the tools used (such as information and communication technologies (ICT) and machinery). Parts 2 and 3 of the report introduce a new set of indicators on the task content, methods and tools used at work. Derived from international databases on work and occupations, these indicators enable the analysis to go beyond characterising jobs by quality alone – to give a detailed account of what Europeans do at work and how they do it. The indicators provide valuable new insights on the structural differences and recent evolution of European labour markets, as well as a better understanding of labour input in the production process and the changing nature of the skills required. The jobs-based approach has been used since the 1990s to assess the extent to which employment structures in developed economies are polarising, leading to a shrinking middle quintile, or upgrading as the demand for, and supply of, highly qualified workers increases. These are the two main patterns identified in recent analysis of developed economy labour markets, although more recent analysis in the US – corroborated by some evidence in this report – suggests that a downgrading of the employment structure (relatively faster growth at the lower end of the wage distribution) is also emerging as an alternative pattern

    European Jobs Monitor 2014: Drivers of Recent Job Polarisation and Upgrading in Europe

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    [Excerpt] European labour markets added nearly 30 million new jobs in a golden age of employment creation prior to the onset of the Great Recession in 2008. These labour markets subsequently shed six million jobs, and unemployment peaked at 11% in 2013, its highest rate in well over a decade. This third annual European Jobs Monitor report looks in detail at recent shifts in employment at Member State and European Union level in the two years from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2013. It applies a jobs-based approach, which ranks jobs according to wage and then groups them into five categories of equal size (quintiles) ranging from lowest-paid to highest-paid. The net employment change between the starting and concluding periods (in terms of people employed) for each quintile in each country is summed to establish whether there has been net gain or loss. This analytic approach enables employment shifts to be described quantitatively (how many jobs were created or destroyed) and qualitatively (what sectors and occupations were most affected). The report also examines some of the likely drivers of recent shifts in the employment structure: technological advances, as measured by the cognitive and routine task content of jobs; globalisation and trade, measured as the offshorability of tasks or direct international trade; and labour market institutions

    The effectiveness and efficiency of public spending

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    This paper shows that the efficiency in public services more generally and in public spending on education and R&D in particular varies significantly between countries. The paper, however, also illustrates the difficulties of measuring efficiency and effectiveness. Progress has been made in developing the necessary measurement techniques, but there is a lack of suitable data to apply those techniques.  Good quality data are needed because the techniques available to measure efficiency are sensitive to outliers and may be influenced by exogenous factors. Against this background, analyses based upon individual spending areas seem to be a more promising approach to measure efficiency and effectiveness on a cross-country basis.The effectiveness and efficiency of public spending, education spending, R&D spending, efficiency frontier, public administration, input, output, environmental factors, Mandl, Dierx, Ilzkovitz

    The costs of electricity systems with a high share of fluctuating renewables - a stochastic investment and dispatch optimization model for Europe

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    Renewable energies are meant to produce a large share of the future electricity demand. However, the availability of wind and solar power depends on local weather conditions and therefore weather characteristics must be considered when optimizing the future electricity mix. In this article we analyze the impact of the stochastic availability of wind and solar energy on the cost-minimal power plant mix and the related total system costs. To determine optimal conventional, renewable and storage capacities for different shares of renewables, we apply a stochastic investment and dispatch optimization model to the European electricity market. The model considers stochastic feed-in structures and full load hours of wind and solar technologies and different correlations between regions and technologies. Key findings include the overestimation of fluctuating renewables and underestimation of total system costs compared to deterministic investment and dispatch models. Furthermore, solar technologies are - relative to wind turbines - underestimated when neglecting negative correlations between wind speeds and solar radiation.Stochastic programming; electricity; renewable energy

    Study on the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending on tertiary education

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    The purpose of the study is to assess efficiency in public tertiary education systems across EU countries plus Japan and the US with semi-parametric methods and stochastic frontier analysis.  The study identifies a core group of efficient countries. A good quality secondary system, output-based funding rules, institutions' independent evaluation and staff policy autonomy are positively related to efficiency.  Moreover, the study provides evidence that public spending on tertiary education is more effective in what concerns labour productivity growth and employability when it is coupled with efficiency.Efficiency, effectiveness, public spending, tertiary education, Universities, Study on the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending on tertiary education

    Efficiency of investment in compulsory education: empirical analyses in Europe

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    The current economic crisis has put ever more to the forefront the need to achieve educational goals in the most efficient way. Therefore, this report provides an empirical analysis of the efficiency in education in the EU. Efficiency is measured first by using two different but related traditional frontier approaches (Data Envelopment Analysis and Free Disposal Hull) and then the robustness of our findings is checked by means of multi-criteria evaluation. The analysis is based on a number of standard variables from the literature. The results show, among others, that not the amount, but the specific use of resources is what matters; and that the efficiency of an educational system could also contribute to long-term benefits in terms of adults’ skills and competences.JRC.B.4-Human Capital and Employmen
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