How Doing Business Jeopardizes Institutional Reform

Simplifying business formalization and eliminating outdated formalities is often a good way of improving the institutional environment for firms. Unfortunately, the World Bank's Doing Business project is harming such policies by promoting a reform agenda that gives them priority even in countries lacking functional business registers, so that the reformed registers keep producing valueless information, but faster. Its methodology also promotes biased measurements that impede proper consideration of the essential tradeoffs in the design of formalization institutions. If Doing Business is to stop jeopardizing its true objectives and contribute positively to scientific progress, institutional reform and economic development, then its aims, governance and methodology need to change.

Evaluating Spanish pension expenditure under alternativa reform scenario

In this paper we evaluate the quantitative impact that a number ofalternative reform scenarios may have on the total expenditure for publicpensions in Spain. Our quantitative findings can be summarized in twosentences. For all the reforms considered, the financial impact of themechanical effect (change in benefits) is order of magnitudes larger thanthe behavioral impact or change in behavior. For the two Spanish reforms,we find once again that their effect on the outstanding liability of theSpanish Social Security System is essentially negligible: neither themechanical nor the behavioral effects amount to much for the 1997 reform,and amount to very little for the 2002 amendment.

Social security in theory and practice (II): Efficiency theories, narrative theories and implications for reform

166 countries have some kind of public old age pension. What economic forcescreate and sustain old age Social Security as a public program? Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin (1999b) document several of the internationally and historically common features of social security programs, and explore "political" theories of Social Security. This paper discusses the "efficiency theories", which view creation of the SS program as a full of partial solution to some market failure. Efficiency explanations of social security include the "SS as welfare for the elderly" the "retirement increases productivity to optimally manage human capital externalities", "optimal retirement insurance", the "prodigal father problem", the "misguided Keynesian", the "optimal longevity insurance", the "governmenteconomizing transaction costs", and the "return on human capital investment". We also analyze four "narrative" theories of social security: the "chain letter theory", the "lump of labor theory", the "monopoly capitalism theory", and the "Sub-but-Nearly-Optimal policy response to private pensions theory".The political and efficiency explanations are compared with the international and historical facts and used to derive implications for replacing the typical pay-as-you-go system with a forced savings plan. Most of the explanations suggest that forced savings does not increase welfare, and may decrease it.

Assesing the political viability of labour market reform: The case of employment protection

We analyze the political support for employment protection legislation.Unlike my previous work on the same topic, this paper pays a lot ofattention to the role of obsolescence in the growth process.In voting in favour of employment protection, incumbent employeestrade off lower living standards (because employment protectionmaintains workers in less productive activities) against longer jobduration. The support for employment protection will then depend onthe value of the latter relative to the cost of the former. Wehighlight two key deeterminants of this trade-off: first, the workers'bargaining power, second, the economy's growth rate-more preciselyits rate of creative destruction.

Resistance to reform: Reconsidering the role of individual-specific uncertainty

Individual-specific uncertainty may increase the chances of reform beingenacted and sustained. Reform may be more likely to be enacted because amajority of agents might end up losing little from reform and a minoritygaining a lot. Under certainty, reform would therefore be rejected, butit may be enacted with uncertainty because those who end up losing believethat they might be among the winners. Reform may be more likely to besustained because, in a realistic setting, reform will increase theincentives of agents to move into those economic activities that benefit.Agents who respond to these incentives will vote to sustain reform infuture elections, even if they would have rejected reform under certainty.These points are made using the trade-model of Fernandez and Rodrik (AER,1991).

The impact of firing costs on turnover and unemployment: Evidence from the Colombian labour market reform

Reductions in firing costs are often advocated as a way of increasingthe dynamism of labour markets in both developed and less developed countries. Evidence from Europe and the U.S. on the impact of firing costs has, however, been mixed. Moreover, legislative changes both in Europe and the U.S. have been limited. This paper, instead, examines the impact of the Colombian Labour Market Reform of 1990, which substantially reduced dismissal costs. I estimate the incidence of a reduction in firing costs on worker turnover by exploiting the temporal change in the Colombian labour legislation as well as the variability in coverage between formal and informal sector workers. Using a grouping estimator to control for common aggregate shocks and selection, I find that the exit hazard rates into and out of unemployment increased after the reform by over 1% for formal workers (covered by the legislation) relative to informal workers (uncovered). The increase of the hazards implies a net decrease in unemployment of a third of a percentage point, which accounts for about one quarter of the fall in unemployment during the period of study.

How "Doing Business" jeopardizes institutional reform

Simplifying business formalization and eliminating outdated formalities is often a good way of improving the institutional environment for firms. Unfortunately, the World Bank s "Doing Business" project is harming such policies by promoting a reform agenda that gives them priority even in countries lacking functional business registers, so that the reformed registers keep producing valueless information, but faster. Its methodology also promotes biased measurements that impede proper consideration of the essential tradeoffs in the design of formalization institutions. If "Doing Business" is to stop jeopardizing its true objectives and contribute positively to scientific progress, institutional reform and economic development, then its aims, governance and methodology need to change.

Beyond the Toledo agreement : the intergenerational impact of the spanish pension reform

The paper examines the intergenerational impact of the Spanish public pension system after the 1997 Pension Reform Act. Working within a Generational Accounting framework, we find that maintaining the new legal setting could leave future generations with liabilities as high as 176 percent of base year GDP. As the recent reform measures have been insufficient to achieve the sustainability of the current pension system, we also analyse the impact of alternative reform strategies. Within the current pay-as-you-go setting, a further improvement to tax-benefit linkage in line with the original spirit of the Toledo Agreement is shown to yield and intergenerationally more balanced outcome,than an increase in the retirement age or an expansion of public subsidies financed through indirect taxes. Finally, we examine the generational impact of a move toward a partially funded pension system which might restore theintergenerational balance

De la mano de Keynes: "A tract on monetary reform"

En Tract on Monetary Reform, John Maynard Keynes propuso utilizar la base monetaria y el coeficiente de reserva bancaria como variables instrumentales d¿una política monetaria que había sido considerada hasta entonces innecesaria. En este trabajo se intenta desvelar las primeras contribuciones de Keynes al progreso del análisis económico

De la mano de Keynes: "A tract on monetary reform"

En Tract on Monetary Reform, John Maynard Keynes propuso utilizar la base monetaria y el coeficiente de reserva bancaria como variables instrumentales d¿una política monetaria que había sido considerada hasta entonces innecesaria. En este trabajo se intenta desvelar las primeras contribuciones de Keynes al progreso del análisis económico

Beyond the Toledo agreement : the intergenerational impact of the spanish pension reform

The paper examines the intergenerational impact of the Spanish public pension system after the 1997 Pension Reform Act. Working within a Generational Accounting framework, we find that maintaining the new legal setting could leave future generations with liabilities as high as 176 percent of base year GDP. As the recent reform measures have been insufficient to achieve the sustainability of the current pension system, we also analyse the impact of alternative reform strategies. Within the current pay-as-you-go setting, a further improvement to tax-benefit linkage in line with the original spirit of the Toledo Agreement is shown to yield and intergenerationally more balanced outcome,than an increase in the retirement age or an expansion of public subsidies financed through indirect taxes. Finally, we examine the generational impact of a move toward a partially funded pension system which might restore theintergenerational balance

Copyright issues related to the implementation of Open Access policies

The presentation provides an overview of the copyright issues related to the implementation of Open Access policies. It focuses on the need to obtain permission to reproduce and disseminate a copy of any published paper taking into account any copyright transfer signed by authors. This permission is needed to implement Green Open Access policies through repositories. Moreover it explores the use of open content licenses in repositories and journals to move to the Gold Open Access model that offers not only free access to full text but full reuse of contributions.

Sharing Open Source License and Copyright Data with SPDX

Organizations across the globe are creating and distributing products that include open source software. To ensure compliance with the open source licenses, each company needs to evaluate exactly what open source licenses and copyrights are included - resulting in duplicated effort and redundancy. This talk will provide an overview of a new Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) specification. This specification will provide a common format to share information about the open source licenses and copyrights that are included in any software package, with the goal of saving time and improving data accuracy. This talk will review the progress of the initiative; discuss the benefits to organizations using open source and share information on how you can contribute.

Position Document of the Secretariat on System-Wide Coherence in the context of UN Reform Processes

The present document should be seen as one more contribution to the debate to the reform processes and a small guide to these processes and their latest outcomes.

Content value chains modelling using a copyright ontology

Existing digital rights management (DRM) systems, initiatives like Creative Commons or research works as some digital rights ontologies provide limited support for content value chains modelling and management. This is becoming a critical issue as content markets start to profit from the possibilities of digital networks and the World Wide Web. The objective is to support the whole copyrighted content value chain across enterprise or business niches boundaries. Our proposal provides a framework that accommodates copyright law and a rich creation model in order to cope with all the creation life cycle stages. The dynamic aspects of value chains are modelled using a hybrid approach that combines ontology-based and rule-based mechanisms. The ontology implementation is based on Web Ontology Language and Description Logic (OWL-DL) reasoners, are directly used for license checking. On the other hand, for more complex aspects of the dynamics of content value chains, rule languages are the choice.