On Organization For Economic Co-operation And Development Research Articles

Breaking out of the efficiency box

Those of us who have been working at the interface between energy efficiency research and policy for a while share a double frustration. The first is that in spite of solid evidence that energy efficiency saves money, pollution and carbon, many sound policies and projects have long been collecting dust on the shelves of policy makers, energy suppliers, businesses and consumers. In other words, we still face the hugely important task of finding ways to get economically viable and technically feasible projects out into everyday practice. The second frustration derives from a timid reaction in the energy community to the increasing importance of environment and climate change. These lay down a gauntlet for deep changes in both energy policy and research agendas. We have been far too slow in adjusting our thoughts and actions to address these changes. For a long time, we have been held hostage by a peculiar form for economic thinking which, from the inside of its box, has viewed the resolution to the energy problem in optimising resources perceived as scarce in the short run but infinite in a long run. We should have moved out of this box earlier, but our imaginations have been captured by the promises of efficiency and optimisation. We have been slow to recognise that environmental carrying capacities are indifferent to efficiency but rather react to the volume of pollutants and emissions. For many categories of pollutants, especially CO2, these continue to increase in most parts of the world, or at least not decrease at rates necessary to avoid potential catastrophic changes. The onus is on Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries to reduce the use of conventional energy production. Substitution with renewable energy production will contribute to this, but as has so clearly been illustrated in the recent debates on biofuels, every form for energy production, renewable or not, has social and environmental consequences. The cleanest, cheapest and least intrusive way to free up more energy for basic needs is to reduce the consumption of energy for key ‘energy services’ such as heating and cooling, food chain refrigeration and (auto)mobility, to name a few. It is time to lift our heads out of the box which is built on assumptions about individual devices, atomEnergy Efficiency (2008) 1:105–106 DOI 10.1007/s12053-008-9014-x

Capacity Building in Educational Research: Sketching an International Picture

The paper approaches the analysis of capacity-building from a broad international perspective. Drawing mainly on Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data, it looks at overall investment in R&D (which covers development as well as research), including the movement of research capacity across borders; describes some innovations in capacity-building; and concludes by suggesting pathways for building a more accurate picture.

Factors Contributing to Global Digital Divide: Some Empirical Results

The present paper investigates the factors that contribute to the problem of digital divide in the global community. The global digital divide is defined as the difference in the value of IT index (comprised of four IT adoption data: the Internet, PC, Cell phone and telephone) of a nation from the U.S. A model is proposed that contains several new indicators, not tried in the literature before. The model is then tested on Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) over a period of time. Results indicate that some of these indicators explain the existence of global digital divide. The study also concludes that the factors that are responsible for such divide are not all common for OECD and ECLAC set of nations and that significances of these indicators also vary over time.

Globalization and the welfare state: a retrospective

There are basically three stories about the globalization-welfare state nexus. The first story argues that globalization is the cause of the chronic crisis of the welfare state. As national economies open to the international market, governments are forced to adapt to the imperatives of global competition, and this means cutting cost-intensive welfare programmes (globalization theory). The second story argues that, whatever the cause of the welfare state crisis, globalization is not part of it. There is neither theoretical reason nor empirical evidence to believe that national policy autonomy has decreased owing to increasing economic interdependencies (globalization sceptics). The third story holds that globalization, far from causing the welfare state's troubles, is a consequence of these troubles, and part of their solution (revisionism). The paper reviews each of these stories, and counterposes them to simple descriptive statistics on Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.