By Marilyn Achiron. Who wants to be a teacher? As this month’s PISA in Focus shows, in many countries the teaching profession is having a hard time making itself an attractive career choice – particularly among boys and among the highest-performing students. More...
Backpacks and belonging: What school can mean to immigrant students
By Marilyn Achiron. How school systems respond to immigration has an enormous impact on the economic and social well-being of all members of the communities they serve, whether they have an immigrant background or not. Immigrant Students at School: Easing the Journey towards Integration reveals some of the difficulties immigrant students encounter – and some of the contributions they offer – as they settle into their new communities and new schools. More...
Santa Claus: A multidimensional review
By Patrick Love. Here in France, Christmas preparations are in the final stages, but amidst all the shopping, cooking, and decorating, it’s easy to lose sight of the essential: how well does Santa Claus do on key problems challenges facing the business community, policymakers and civil society in our increasingly globalised economy? In the sections below, we set out the main strands of OECD analysis and advice in a number of domains (in alphabetical order), then assess how well Santa does. Since peer review wasn’t possible, we’ve adopted the so-called P-F approach, where P is “pass” and F is “fail”. More...
How OECD and IEA contributed to COP21
By Noe van Hulst. With the world welcoming the new comprehensive global climate agreement at COP21 aiming to limit the global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius, it is worth noting the significant contribution that the OECD family has made. These contributions were aptly summarized in a useful joint statement by the secretariats of OECD, IEA, International Transport Forum and Nuclear Energy Agency right after COP21 kicked off. More...
Aid for Trade: From Hong Kong to Nairobi, and beyond
By Frans Lammersen. The Tenth WTO Ministerial Conference, taking place this week in Kenya, offers an excellent opportunity to take stock of the achievements of the Aid for Trade Initiative and reflect on how to continue its relevance in the changing trade and development landscape. More...
What do economists do? How do you become one?
By Sebastian Foulkes-Best. In France, when you get into ninth grade, the classes and work are similar to the year before, although harder. Though there is one thing to get excited about, and that is that you have to do a one week internship in a company or organisation of your choice. More...
COP21 agreement: A decisive turning point
By Angel Gurría. The Paris Agreement at COP21 marks a decisive turning point in our response to climate change. I strongly applaud this historic commitment and the robustness of a deal that includes an ambitious target for limiting the global temperature rise, a five-year review cycle, clear rules on transparency, a global goal for resilience and reducing vulnerability and a framework for supporting developing countries. More...
Climate disclosure: knowledge powers change
By Angel Gurría. Everybody is interested in the impacts of what companies are doing – shareholders, clients, the media, governments… And as recent experiences as well as the current discussions at and around COP21 show us, the environmental practices and impacts of doing business are coming under increasing scrutiny. More...
A Californian enigma: Record-high agricultural revenues during the most severe drought in history
By Guillaume Gruyère. Drought in California has been in the headlines frequently these last three years, with startling pictures of empty reservoirs, rivers and canals, wildfires, disappearing snowpack and dry earth. The ongoing drought in the State is believed to be the most severe in the last 500 years. More...
The next focus for pension policy: social sustainability
By Stefano Scarpetta and Adrian Blundell-Wignall. The 2015 edition of Pensions at a Glance marks the tenth anniversary of the OECD’s flagship series on pension systems and retirement incomes. Ten years of scrutiny of member and G20 countries’ pension systems and policies, ten years of assessing and predicting workers’ pension entitlements, and ten years of recommending reforms that lead to more financially sustainable pay-as-you-go pensions and respond to citizens’ need for stable and adequate incomes in old age. More...