New OECD releases

REALISING SOUTH AFRICA'S EMPLOYMENT POTENTIAL
ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT WORKING PAPER No. 662
By Geoff Barnard

Unemployment in South Africa is extremely high and unevenly distributed, being concentrated among young less skilled blacks. The legacies of apartheid can explain part of the increase in labour supply and inability of the economy to absorb it which produced the extreme levels of unemployment, but more could have been done to unwind those legacies and other policies and institutions have contributed to the dysfunction of the labour market.

This Working Paper relates to the 2008 OECD Economic Assessment of South Africa

Making the most of Norwegian schools

ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT WORKING PAPER No. 661
By Romina Boarini

Traditionally, the Norwegian compulsory education system has focused strongly on the linked goals of equal opportunities to learn, comprehensive and inclusive education. While some of these objectives have been met successfully, a number of educational outcomes, notably measures of pupil performance at the end of compulsory schooling, are unsatisfactory.