The need for a European harmonised data collection on private organic consumption – methodological and economic issues -

European markets for organic products are growing rapidly, but the market information available in most European countries is seriously limited as a basis for investment and policy decisions. The EU was therefore funding a three-year concerted action EISfOM (European Information System of Organic Markets) to analyse the current situation in 32 countries and to develop proposals to improve the quality and the volume of a European wide organic production and market data collection to support the development of a sector which offers significant potential for further growth as well as environmental and economic benefits. One area of data collection is related to the consumption of organic food. Presently no official organic consumption and consumer price statistics exist at European level. However, there are manifold national approaches to get access to organic consumption data in terms of volumes and values mostly operated by private household panel approaches. The main barrier is related to a missing European approach to harmonise the different specifications and classifications which would be enable a cross country comparison of data. As user requirements and costs for different approaches differ as a minimum standard a European wide definition of key indicators for organic consumption and methods for national data output harmonisation should be developed

The Contribution and Potential of Data Harmonization for Cross-National Comparative Research

The promise of empirical evidence to inform policy makers about their population's health, wealth, employment and economic well being has propelled governments to invest in the harmonization of country specific micro data over the last 25 years. We review the major data harmonization projects launched over this period. These projects include the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), the Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF), the Consortium of Household Panels for European Socio-Economic Research (CHER), the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), and the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We discuss their success in providing reliable data for policy analysis and how they are being used to answer policy questions. While there have been some notable failures, on the whole these harmonization efforts have proven to be of major value to the research community and to policy makers.

The construction of coincident and leading indicators for the euro area business cycler of the euro area business cycle

This paper investigates the business cycle properties of the euro area and computes a coincident and a leading indicator of economic activity. We accomplish this by applying the newly introduced generalized factor model to a properly constructed and harmonized data set of short term statistics of the euro area (794 monthly series). Unlike other methods used in the literature, the procedure takes into consideration the cross-country as well as the withincountry correlation structure and exploits all information on dynamic cross-correlations. As a byproduct of our analysis, we provide a characterization of the commonality and dynamic relations of the series in the data set with respect to the coincident indicator and a dating of the euro area cycle.business cycle, dynamic factor model

The prevalence of mild cognitive impairment in diverse geographical and ethnocultural regions: The COSMIC Collaboration

Background Changes in criteria and differences in populations studied and methodology have produced a wide range of prevalence estimates for mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Methods Uniform criteria were applied to harmonized data from 11 studies from USA, Europe, Asia and Australia, and MCI prevalence estimates determined using three separate definitions of cognitive impairment. Results The published range of MCI prevalence estimates was 5.0%-36.7%. This was reduced with all cognitive impairment definitions: performance in the bottom 6.681% (3.2%-10.8%); Clinical Dementia Rating of 0.5 (1.8%-14.9%); Mini-Mental State Examination score of 24-27 (2.1%-20.7%). Prevalences using the first definition were 5.9% overall, and increased with age (P < .001) but were unaffected by sex or the main races/ethnicities investigated (Whites and Chinese). Not completing high school increased the likelihood of MCI (P = .01). Conclusion Applying uniform criteria to harmonized data greatly reduced the variation in MCI prevalence internationally

An empirical analysis of business dynamics and growth

This paper examines the relationship between business dynamics (entry and exit of firms) and employment growth at the country-industry level. We use a cross-country data set with harmonized data on numbers of entries and exits for a selection of fastgrowing and innovative industries in six developed economies. In our regression analysis we allow for separate effects of both the extent of business dynamics (volatility of firms) and the composition of business dynamics (net-entry of firms). We also test for the existence of an 'optimal' level of business volatility, possibly indicating that entry and exit levels are too high in certain industries. We find positive employment effects of net-entry rates and volatility rates. These effects are found to be considerably stronger for manufacturing compared to services. We find no evidence for an 'optimal' level of business volatility. �

Data sets on pensions and health: Data collection and sharing for policy design

A growing number of countries are developing or reforming pension and health policies in response to population ageing and to enhance the welfare of their citizens. The adoption of different policies by different countries has resulted in several natural experiments. These offer unusual opportunities to examine the effects of varying policies on health and retirement, individual and family behaviour, and well-being. Realizing these opportunities requires harmonized data-collection efforts. An increasing number of countries have agreed to provide data harmonized with the Health and Retirement Study in the United States. This article discusses these data sets, including their key parameters of pension and health status, research designs, samples, and response rates. It also discusses the opportunities they offer for cross-national studies and their implications for policy evaluation and development.data analysis, comparison, old age risk, health status, quality of life, social policy, demographic aspect, international

The role of use cases in development of a reference framework for interoperability of data exchange in agriculture

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An empirical analysis of national differences in the retail bank interest rates of the euro area

The availability of new harmonized data on bank interest rates allows a rigorous assessment to be made of cross-country price homogeneity/heterogeneity in euro area retail credit markets. Econometric analysis shows that the banking market is still highly segmented and that the degree of integration in a single country (Italy, taken as a benchmark for integration) is greater than in the euro area. However, national differences can be partially explained by variables reflecting the characteristics of domestic depositors and borrowers (“demand side” regressors, such as risk exposure, disposable income, alternative financing sources, average firm size) and the characteristics of the banking systems (“supply side” regressors, such as banking market concentration, asset and liability structure). The euro area prices appear different because national banking products appear different or because they are differentiated by national factors. Once these factors have been controlled for, many differences disappear.bank interest rates, convergence, integration

Returns to Education in Europe – Detailed Results from a Harmonized Survey

We use the European Community Household Panel, a harmonized data set covering the countries of the European Union, to provide detailed estimates of the returns to education. Our results can be summarized as follows. Firstly, average returns to education have been mostly stable during the second half of the 1990s and are highest in Portugal and Ireland and lowest in the UK and Italy. Secondly, returns to schooling are significantly negatively related to the educational attainment of the population. Thirdly, for most countries we find significant cohort effects and these are in general uniform across countries implying lower returns to education for younger cohorts. Fourthly, in most countries schooling exerts a significantly stronger impact on wages at the top of the wage distribution, aggravating within-group inequality. Finally, we provide evidence that the more pronounced the difference in returns to education along the wage distribution, the higher the average return to education.Returns to schooling, cohort effects, quantile regression