How Do Policies Affect the Exit Rate out of Unemployment? Disentangling Job Creation from Labour Market Frictions

This paper assesses the effects of labour market policies on the unemployment outflow rate while disentangling two channels, namely labour market tightness and employer–employee matching efficiency. Using a sample of 11 OECD countries over the period 1985–2007, we treat the endogeneity of market tightness with business cycle shocks and the tax wedge as instruments. We find that the replacement rate of unemployment benefits, Active Labour Market Policies as well as the tax wedge in countries with poorly representative unions, have a significant, robust, and large impact on market tightness. Employment protection has a negative but small impact on matching efficiency. Overall, policy effects appear to be mostly channeled through market tightness and job creation

Unemployment at risk: the policy determinants of labour market exposure to economic shocks

This paper examines the vulnerability of labour markets to adverse economic shocks. We define labour market exposure as the cumulated amount of excess unemployment generated by a shock before unemployment returns to steady-state. We use a panel of 19 countries covering the period 1985–2010 to assess the influence of labour market policies on labour market exposure, which is also calculated country by country. We find that less generous unemployment insurance, more active labour market policies or a lower minimum wage imply a trade-off between average unemployment and labour market exposure, as they help low-skilled workers to get out of unemployment at the cost of increased vulnerability to adverse shocks. On the other hand, reducing the tax wedge is conducive to both lower steady-state unemployment and labour market exposure

Do environmental and economic performance go together? A review of micro-level empirical evidence from the past decade or so

This article reviews the empirical literature combining economic and environmental performance data at the micro-level, i.e. firm or facility level. The literature has generally found a positive and statistically significant correlation between economic performance, as measured by profitability indicators or stock market returns, and environmental performance, as measured by emissions of pollutants or adoption of international environmental standards. The main reason for this finding seems to be that firms that reduce their material and energy costs experience both better economic performance and lower emissions. Only a small and recent literature analyses the joint causal impact of environmental regulations on environmental and economic performance. Interestingly, this literature shows that environmental regulations tend to improve environmental performance while not weakening economic performance. However, the evidence so far is limited to a handful of environmental regulations that are not extremely stringent, so the result cannot be easily generalized. More research is needed to assess the joint effects of environmental regulations on environmental and economic performance, to explore the heterogeneity of these effects across sectors, countries and types of policies, and to understand which policy designs allow improving environmental quality while not coming at a cost in terms of economic performance of regulated businesses

L'éducation à la culture informationnelle

La publication des actes du colloque international L'éducation à la culture informationnelle (Lille, octobre 2008 - sous le patronage de l'Unesco) présente les regards de chercheurs, de praticiens ou de représentants d'institutions sur cette notion et ouvre de larges perspectives interdisciplinaires. Le nouveau concept de « culture informationnelle » est proposé par la communauté internationale pour mieux appréhender la complexification actuelle des relations entre l'enseignement, l'éducation et l'information, liée au développement exponentiel des technologies numériques. Quel rapport entretient l'éducation à l'information (information literacy) avec l'éducation aux médias (media literacy) et l'éducation numérique (digital literacy) ? Le périmètre de la « culture informationnelle » s'étend maintenant clairement au-delà du monde de la documentation et des bibliothèques. La notion même doit être précisée, revue, alors que les pratiques continuent d'évoluer. Une place importante est consacrée dans l'ouvrage à l'analyse comparée des approches théoriques et de plusieurs expériences menées dans différents pays

Dividing the Pie: The Determinants of Labor's Share of Income on the Firm Level

This paper is the first to study the factors determining labor's share of income on the level of the individual firm, employing an unusually informative panel data set. The empirical examination is concerned with Switzerland which stands out as one of the very few developed countries with a stable labor share. Broadly confirming results from previous cross-country and industry-level studies, we find that the main factor decreasing the labor share in the estimation period is the increase in the share of workers using ICT in the firm. The main reasons why Switzerland's labor share remained almost constant are its relatively slow-rate of technological progress and shifts towards industries with above-average labor shares

The self-organizing fractal theory as a universal discovery method: the phenomenon of life

A universal discovery method potentially applicable to all disciplines studying organizational phenomena has been developed. This method takes advantage of a new form of global symmetry, namely, scale-invariance of self-organizational dynamics of energy/matter at all levels of organizational hierarchy, from elementary particles through cells and organisms to the Universe as a whole. The method is based on an alternative conceptualization of physical reality postulating that the energy/matter comprising the Universe is far from equilibrium, that it exists as a flow, and that it develops via self-organization in accordance with the empirical laws of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. It is postulated that the energy/matter flowing through and comprising the Universe evolves as a multiscale, self-similar structure-process, i.e., as a self-organizing fractal. This means that certain organizational structures and processes are scale-invariant and are reproduced at all levels of the organizational hierarchy. Being a form of symmetry, scale-invariance naturally lends itself to a new discovery method that allows for the deduction of missing information by comparing scale-invariant organizational patterns across different levels of the organizational hierarchy

Reforming the Polish Tax System to Improve its Efficiency

The Polish tax system is characterised by high social security contributions for both employers and employees. As a result, Poland has one of the highest tax wedges in the OECD, despite relatively low personal income tax rates. This, combined with a relatively high minimum wage and generous early-retirement and disability benefit programmes, contributes to low employment rates, in particular among low-skilled workers. The system also relies heavily on consumption taxes, whereas relatively little revenue is collected from such bases as environment externalities, inheritances and, in particular, property. One of the key implications of the tax structure is that the system as a whole is one of the least redistributive among OECD countries. This paper reviews the main features of the tax system and explores options to improve its efficiency, including possibilities to broaden existing tax bases as well as to shift the tax burden from labour towards less mobile and distorting sources such as property. Réformer le système fiscal polonais afin d'améliorer son efficience Le système fiscal polonais se caractérise par des cotisations patronales et salariales de sécurité sociale élevées. Par conséquent, la Pologne compte l’un des coins fiscaux les plus élevés de l’OCDE, malgré des taux de l’impôt sur le revenu des personnes physiques relativement bas. Cette situation, associée à un salaire minimum relativement conséquent et à des indemnités généreuses de retraite anticipée et d’invalidité, contribue à la faiblesse des taux d’emploi, surtout parmi les travailleurs peu qualifiés. Par ailleurs, le système s’appuie massivement sur les impôts sur la consommation, tandis que les recettes provenant d’autres sources telles que les taxes sur les produits polluants, les droits de mutation et surtout les impôts fonciers sont relativement minimes. L’une des principales conséquences de cette structure fiscale est que le système est, dans son ensemble, l’un des moins redistributifs parmi les pays de l’OCDE. Cette étude examine les principales caractéristiques du régime fiscal polonais et envisage différentes solutions pour améliorer son efficience, comme l’élargissement des assiettes d’imposition existantes et le transfert de la charge fiscale du travail vers des sources moins mobiles et entraînant moins de distorsions, telles l’immobilier.tax reform, taxation, VAT, personal income tax, corporate income tax, polish tax system, property tax, labour tax wedge, coin fiscal, impôt sur les bénéfices, système de taxation polonais, fiscalité, impôt sur le revenu, taxe foncière, réforme de la taxation, TVA

Structural Policies and Growth: A Non-Technical Overview

In contrast to what has happened throughout the 1960s and 1970s, some of the largest EU countries and Japan are no longer closing the income gap vis-à-vis the United States. Worse, the gap may even be widening since the mid-1990s. While in the case of Japan the gap in GDP per capita is essentially due to the lagging performance in labour productivity, the European Union is trailing mainly in terms of labour resource utilisation, reflecting both lower employment rates and fewer hours worked. This paper provides a brief overview of the main structural factors thought to have contributed to differences in the degree of labour resource utilisation, as well as in the intensity of physical and human capital use and in the pace of technological progress. In doing so, it provides a set of performance and policy indicators which can be used to assess progress achieved in structural reform ... Politiques structurelles et croissance : Une vue d'ensemble non-technique Contrairement à la tendance observée durant les années 60 et 70, certains des principaux pays de l’union européenne et le Japon ne referment plus l’écart qui les sépare des États-Unis en termes de revenu par habitant. Cet écart est peut-être même en train de se creuser davantage depuis le milieu des années 90. Alors qu’au Japon l’écart de PIB par habitant vis-à-vis des États-Unis est dû essentiellement au retard de la productivité, dans le cas de l’union européenne il s’explique largement par une plus faible utilisation des ressources de main d’œuvre, reflétant à la fois des taux d’emploi moins élevé et un nombre inférieur d’heures ouvrées. Cette étude donne une vue d’ensemble des liens entre les politiques structurelles et la performance des marchés du travail et des produits. Ce faisant, elle fournit un certain nombre d’indicateurs de performance et de politique qui peuvent êtres utilisés pour évaluer le progrès réalisé sur le plan des réformes structurelles ...productivity, employment rates, growth, regulation, structural policy, taux d'emploi, réglementation, politique structurelle, croissance, productivité

The Decline in Private Saving Rates in the 1990s in OECD Countries: How Much Can Be Explained by Non-wealth Determinants?

The substantial decline in private-sector saving rates observed in several OECD countries in the late 1990s coincided in several cases with a sharp increase in household financial net worth. This was seen by many observers as evidence that the strong rise in equity and residential property prices during the late 1990s had been treated by households as a permanent increase in wealth, leading to an unsustainable drop in saving and raising fears of an eventual negative wealth effect. Applying estimation techniques for systems of dynamic panel equations, this paper looks at basic determinants of private saving for a sample of 15 OECD countries and finds that the sharp decline in saving observed after 1995 can be largely explained, even in a post-sample fashion, by fundamentals other than financial wealth. Among the determinants, the rise in public-sector saving is found to have contributed the most to the decline in private saving between 1995 and 2000. Based on this investigation, there is little evidence that consumers had gone too far in responding to the stock market boom of the late 1990s, even in countries where private saving rates have fallen to historically low levels. On the other hand, the results suggest that a loosening of fiscal policy may have a limited stimulatory impact on private consumption...

La baisse des taux d'épargne privée durant les années 90 dans les pays de l'OCDE : Contribution des déterminants autres que la richesse

La baisse substantielle des taux d’épargne privée observée dans plusieurs pays de l’OCDE durant la fin des années 90 a coïncidé dans bien des cas avec une forte hausse de la richesse financière nette des ménages. Ce phénomène a été interprété par plusieurs analystes comme indiquant que la forte augmentation des valeurs mobilières et immobilières durant cette période avait été traitée par les ménages comme une hausse permanente de la richesse, entraînant une baisse non soutenable de l’épargne, et faisant ainsi surgir la crainte d’un éventuel effet de richesse négatif. À l’aide de techniques d’estimation pour un panel d’équations dynamiques, cette étude examine les principaux déterminants de l’épargne privée pour un échantillon de 15 pays de l’OCDE et constate que la baisse de l’épargne observée après 1995 peut être largement expliquée par des déterminants fondamentaux autres que la richesse financière, y compris en période hors échantillon. Parmi ces déterminants, c’est la hausse de l’épargne publique qui a contribué le plus à la désépargne privée entre 1995 et 2000. À en juger par les résultats, il ne semble guère que les consommateurs aient réagi trop fortement au boom du marché boursier des années 90, même dans les pays où les taux d’épargnes ont tombés à des niveaux sans précédent. Par contre, les résultats donnent à penser qu’un assouplissement de ...