This report presents a comprehensive diagnostic assessment of Bulgaria's workforce development (WfD) policies and institutions. The results are based on a new World Bank tool designed for this purpose, SABER-WfD.
... See More + SABER-WfD is part of the World Bank's initiative on Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) whose aim is to provide systematic assessment and documentation of the policy and institutional factors that influence the performance of key areas of national education and training systems. The SABER-WfD tool encompasses initial, continuing and targeted vocational education and training that are offered through multiple channels and focuses largely on programs at the secondary and post-secondary levels.
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This report presents a comprehensive diagnostic assessment of Bulgaria's workforce development (WfD) policies and institutions. The results are based on a new World Bank tool designed for this purpose, SABER-WfD.
... See More + SABER-WfD is part of the World Bank's initiative on Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) whose aim is to provide systematic assessment and documentation of the policy and institutional factors that influence the performance of key areas of national education and training systems. The SABER-WfD tool encompasses initial, continuing and targeted vocational education and training that are offered through multiple channels and focuses largely on programs at the secondary and post-secondary levels.
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Economic prospects for the 11 European Union (EU) member states that joined after 2004 started to improve during 2013, as the situation in the Euro area stabilized and domestic policies bolstered growth.
... See More + Economic growth across the EU11 is expected to continue to pick up in 2014 and to become more balanced, with rising domestic demand. Fiscal adjustment will resume in 2014, with domestic demand helping to rebuild revenue, but at a relatively gradual pace in order to support economic growth. Rising global interest rates coupled with volatile capital markets, can slow the Euro area recovery and hamper domestic demand, particularly investment, in EU11. The bottom forty percent in the EU11 tends to be concentrated in low skilled, young or older unemployed, and minority groups. Countries will need to accelerate economic growth and job creation, in an environment in which fiscal and credit constraints are more binding and household coping mechanisms have been weakened by the crisis. This report covers economic developments, prospects, and policies in 11 EU member states- Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. The regular economic report (RER) comprises two parts: a macroeconomic report, and a special topic on an issue of economic policy interest in EU11.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 83426 DEC 01, 2013
This memorandum summarizes the outputs under the European Union (EU) equity and gender technical assistance (TA) task. The development objectives of the task are: (a) to support the Bank's clients in the Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltics (ECCU5) country grouping in managing the effects of the growth slowdown and fiscal consolidation, and (b) deepen the Bank's own understanding of the equity and gender implications of slower growth and budget tightening.
... See More + Although primarily a TA task, some of the activities also generate knowledge products (KP). As this was the first time in years for the Bank to have a poverty-focused task in the ECCU5 countries, activities were selected on the basis of three criteria: (i) support to country programs, (ii) diagnostics and analytical due diligence (shared prosperity note), or (iii) opportunistic engagement with clients (gender diagnostics and analysis). Based on the criteria identified, the team delivered a set of TA and KP analytical products based on demand from clients and country management units. The activities consisted of: (i) poverty and gender diagnostics for Croatia and Poland fed directly into the country partnership strategy (CPS) and development policy loans (DPL) documents, (ii) technical inputs to the government of Poland, including a study on the gender pay gap and contributions to a workshop on poverty measurement and distributional analysis, and (iii) a note analyzing well-being in the Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia (EU11) countries, focusing on the Bank's new shared prosperity goal.
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Romania's European Union accession in 2007 has resulted in a substantial reduction of the formal barriers to integration with the European Union Single Market.
... See More + This study takes stock of the progress by benchmarking product market policies in Romania to those of European Union countries, as measured by the OECD indicators of Product Market Regulation. These indicators allow for a comprehensive mapping of policies affecting competition in product markets. Comparison with European Union countries reveals that, for half of the policy areas covered by the study, Romania's product market policies are more restrictive of competition than most direct comparators in the region, whereas for other indicators Romania is on a par with the European Union average or has achieved best practice. Nonetheless, these results should be interpreted in light of the fact that the Product Market Regulation approach measures officially adopted policies and does not capture implementation. Future reforms should be directed both at improving official regulation and, where policies that favor competition are already in place, toward effective enforcement.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6698 NOV 01, 2013
De Rosa, Donato; Iootty, Mariana; Pirlea, Florina; Aprahamian, Arabela; Stanescu, Alexandru
The national severance pay scheme, its regulation in the law and in other sources, its practice and practical application, and all the amendments of the statutory basis are the consequence of considering individual and social implications of the termination of an employment contract or the termination of employment, in one of the ways regulated by the Labor Act.
... See More + The term 'severance pay' in the Republic of Croatia is most often defined as the pecuniary amount, which the employer pays to the worker, for whom it terminates the employment contract, besides the worker's salary. This amount belongs to the worker after the expiry of the period of notice, after the termination of the employment contract. Although it has be originally conceived as reward to the workers for their loyalty to the employer, in essence the severance pay should alleviate the negative consequences of the dismissal for the worker, and it is frequently considered a means of ensuring an income, or a replacement income, so that it contains elements of social security. Each change in the national severance pay scheme is necessarily connected with redefining and newly balancing worker's and employer's interests, with aspects of employment security and flexibility and it requires processing and analyzing various aspects of the national severance pay scheme. To this end, this report aims to present and analyze all the interconnected determinants of the national severance pay scheme, such as: overview of theoretical qualifications and determinants within the national severance pay scheme; overview of arrangements within the national severance pay scheme through legal and other regulatory arrangements; overview of arrangements in different comparable national severance pay schemes; special overview of the current reforms of the severance pay scheme in the context of other relevant countries; presenting the plan for the amendments to legal and other regulatory arrangements; assessing the practical implications of the planned amendments to legal and regulatory arrangements and their effects on the national severance pay scheme; and final proposals and comments. With this, the current definitions and arrangements within the severance pay scheme would be lost, and a new scheme would be set up, which is mostly based on the characteristics of a globally innovative model for a reformed severance pay scheme as exists in the Republic of Austria.
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The national severance pay scheme, its regulation in the law and in other sources, its practice and practical application, and all the amendments of the statutory basis are the consequence of considering individual and social implications of the termination of an employment contract or the termination of employment, in one of the ways regulated by the Labor Act.
... See More + The term 'severance pay' in the Republic of Croatia is most often defined as the pecuniary amount, which the employer pays to the worker, for whom it terminates the employment contract, besides the worker's salary. This amount belongs to the worker after the expiry of the period of notice, after the termination of the employment contract. Although it has be originally conceived as reward to the workers for their loyalty to the employer, in essence the severance pay should alleviate the negative consequences of the dismissal for the worker, and it is frequently considered a means of ensuring an income, or a replacement income, so that it contains elements of social security. Each change in the national severance pay scheme is necessarily connected with redefining and newly balancing worker's and employer's interests, with aspects of employment security and flexibility and it requires processing and analyzing various aspects of the national severance pay scheme. To this end, this report aims to present and analyze all the interconnected determinants of the national severance pay scheme, such as: overview of theoretical qualifications and determinants within the national severance pay scheme; overview of arrangements within the national severance pay scheme through legal and other regulatory arrangements; overview of arrangements in different comparable national severance pay schemes; special overview of the current reforms of the severance pay scheme in the context of other relevant countries; presenting the plan for the amendments to legal and other regulatory arrangements; assessing the practical implications of the planned amendments to legal and regulatory arrangements and their effects on the national severance pay scheme; and final proposals and comments. With this, the current definitions and arrangements within the severance pay scheme would be lost, and a new scheme would be set up, which is mostly based on the characteristics of a globally innovative model for a reformed severance pay scheme as exists in the Republic of Austria.
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This paper builds on the analysis of job creation developed in World Bank (2013) to provide an empirical investigation of the industry and firm-specific determinants of the job creation process in eleven new European Union (EU11) economies.
... See More + It relies on the Amadeus dataset of firms during 2002-2009. The main results indicate that during the years prior to the global financial crisis, traditional industries were crucial for the net creation of jobs in EU11. However, traditional industries were the ones most severely affected by the financial crisis. By contrast, services firms were less vulnerable to the economic downturn. At the firm level, small and young firms registered the highest employment growth rates. The empirical results also indicate that more productive firms tended to be less vulnerable to economic downturns. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the perceived quality of the business climate by the EU11 enterprises is correlated with not only the firms' employment growth, but also their productivity. In the post-crisis period, poor business restrictions were negatively associated with the creation of jobs. All these findings hold for the group of high-growth firms that disproportionately accounted for the creation of new jobs in the EU11 economies.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6533 JUL 01, 2013
European Council approved the Europe 2020 strategy, an economic growth and wellbeing improvement plan for the European Union (EU) in the ensuing decade.
... See More + The strategy includes five interrelated headline targets to be achieved by the year 2020, encompassing employment, innovation, education, poverty and social inclusion, and climate/energy. An overarching goal of the Europe 2020 strategy is to reduce the number of poor and social excluded people by 20 million, with national level targets set by each of the EU Member States. The European council used three measures of poverty and social exclusion: at risk of poverty rate, a measure of relative poverty defined as the percent of the population with incomes less than 60 percent of the national median income after social transfers; the index of severe material deprivation, a measure of the percent of people who cannot afford a number of necessities that are considered essential in order to live decent lives in Europe; and low work intensity, which is the percentage of people living in households in which adults worked less than 20 percent of their potential. This paper sheds light on the impact of improving employment and education conditions on poverty and social exclusion indicators. This paper is divided into eight sections. Section one introduction, section two provides background information on poverty and social exclusion indicators in the ten countries in the New Member States (NMS) group, including their evolution since 2005. Section three describes the data sources used and defines the key variables of interest. Section four outlines the methodology used to simulate indicators of poverty and social exclusion. Section five first presents the results from a validation exercise in which data from 2005 are used to simulate the likely outcomes in 2008, and then compares the simulated 2008 values to the actual 2008 values. Section six presents the results of the simulation exercise for the ten countries in the study. Section seven provides an illustration of how the simulation model has been adapted to address policies on pre-schools in Poland. And finally, section eight offers a set of overall conclusions.
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This economic report covers economic developments, prospects, and policies in 11 European Union (EU) countries. Throughout the report this group of eleven countries is referred to as EU11.The economic recovery of the EU11 countries was put on hold in 2012 as the external environment weakened and domestic demand subsided.
... See More + All EU11 countries, with the exception of Latvia, grew slower than in 2011. The overall Gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 0.8 percent in 2012 was just a quarter of the pace recorded the year before. Domestic demand, in particular investment, abated, leaving net exports as the sole driver of growth. In addition, the number of EU11 countries in recession doubled to four, after the Czech Republic and Hungary joined Slovenia and Croatia. Overall, this empirical result confirms that, in qualitative terms, the analyzed firm characteristics affect job creation both during recessions and economic recoveries. They indicate that the more productive firms tend to be less vulnerable to economic downturns. Accordingly, any type of activities that increase productivity can be expected to reduce the overall exposure of the EU11 economies to recessions and, therefore, should allow firms to compete more successfully with international competitors.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 78341 JUN 01, 2013
The health system in Bulgaria has undergone significant transformations since the transition and it continues to evolve. This policy note updates a similar document prepared in 2009.
... See More + It highlights some positive developments, particularly in the area of public health, but continues to find gaps that recent reforms have been unable to reverse. In particular: i) health status in Bulgaria is improving at a slower pace than in other European Union (EU) countries, and the burden of non-communicable diseases is particularly high; ii) coverage of preventive services is low and Bulgarians are much more frequently hospitalized than other Europeans, a sign that the system may not be producing the right mix of services; iii) Bulgarians are among the least satisfied Europeans when it comes to their health system; and iv) total health expenditure is comparable to that of countries with similar income, but the out-of pocket share is disproportionately large and has grown over time, and the financial protection provided by the system is incomplete. Whilst more public expenditure on health will be needed in the medium to long-term, any increases should be accompanied by improvements in efficiency and effectiveness in order to make the best use of resources and ensure the delivery of better health outcomes. This policy note thus primarily focuses on three areas where decisive and prompt action could rapidly bring results and improve the experience of Bulgarian citizens: hospitals, outpatient care, and drug policies. These issues are closely interlinked and tackling them is a key to the modernization of service delivery in all European countries. Indeed, in order to face the challenges brought about by ageing and non-communicable diseases and to meet the population's needs and expectations, new models of health and social care need to emerge that enable patients to stay out of hospital. This is possible through technological change, but can only happen if the outpatient sector delivers more and patients can manage diseases and risk factors through access to appropriate services and medicines.
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The health system in Bulgaria has undergone significant transformations since the transition and it continues to evolve. This policy note updates a similar document prepared in 2009.
... See More + It highlights some positive developments, particularly in the area of public health, but continues to find gaps that recent reforms have been unable to reverse. In particular: i) health status in Bulgaria is improving at a slower pace than in other European Union (EU) countries, and the burden of non-communicable diseases is particularly high; ii) coverage of preventive services is low and Bulgarians are much more frequently hospitalized than other Europeans, a sign that the system may not be producing the right mix of services; iii) Bulgarians are among the least satisfied Europeans when it comes to their health system; and iv) total health expenditure is comparable to that of countries with similar income, but the out-of pocket share is disproportionately large and has grown over time, and the financial protection provided by the system is incomplete. Whilst more public expenditure on health will be needed in the medium to long-term, any increases should be accompanied by improvements in efficiency and effectiveness in order to make the best use of resources and ensure the delivery of better health outcomes. This policy note thus primarily focuses on three areas where decisive and prompt action could rapidly bring results and improve the experience of Bulgarian citizens: hospitals, outpatient care, and drug policies. These issues are closely interlinked and tackling them is a key to the modernization of service delivery in all European countries. Indeed, in order to face the challenges brought about by ageing and non-communicable diseases and to meet the population's needs and expectations, new models of health and social care need to emerge that enable patients to stay out of hospital. This is possible through technological change, but can only happen if the outpatient sector delivers more and patients can manage diseases and risk factors through access to appropriate services and medicines.
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