; the demographical background of the French situation these last years and the main orientation of the childcare policy. We will conclude by some reflections about the main challenges for the future and their links with intergenerational issues. 1. French investment in demographical issues: A permanent investment

Recently I set myself the task of learning the French language. I knew the undertaking would be fraught with frustration. I did not know it would provide me with insights into the demands made upon the child who is learning to read and write. Neither did I know it would so soundly reaffirm my

This paper considers the problem of fitting a finite Gaussian mixture with an unknown number of components to interest rates provided by a sample of credit institutions. Indeed, mixture models are able to represent arbitrarily complex probability density functions distributions, and hence outperform the usual non parametric kernel density estimates in several ways. Therefore, this tool enables us to improve our understanding of the credit market. The data are extracted from individual contracts and gathered on a quarterly basis. They provide a loan-by-loan disaggregation of average rates at bank level available in the monthly MIR reports. Loans to non-financial firms and to households are splitted up into eleven categories defined by instrument and maturity of loans. Each category is analyzed separately. Two major econometric issues are dealt with: how to estimate the number of components, and how to estimate the parameters defining the model. Several techniques are compared, which allows us to show how the results may be sensitive to the methodology used, especially when sample survey issues are properly taken into account: for instance, the model is enhanced in order to include discrete components which arise from clusters in the distribution. In a second step, this set-up allows us to estimate precisely the modes of the distribution. Then, these modes are interpreted as resulting from the segmentation of the credit market. We illustrate this topic through a kind of scoring of credit institutions based on ex-post probabilities for loans to be in the

In this paper, we draw on evidence from a case study to explore how to enable organizational creativity within a centralised information system. We argue that, even if the project leaders were seeking to enable organizational creativity using a centralized system they overlooked organizational climate factors. To understand these issues, we used the componential creativity theory to explain the influence of creativity encouragements, resources and management practice) toward organizational creativity. We conclude by suggesting that the case described might be an example of the actions to avoid when an organization wants to enable its creativity within a centralized information system.

Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. IZA Discussion Paper No. 5439

; they do not replace state licensing.) The NBPTS has just completed work on their World Languages Other Than English Standards. The organization is seeking practicing Texas LOTE teachers to pilot test assessments aligned with these new standards. Participants will be asked to videotape a lesson and

sketch ongoing knowledge source development and the relevant tools, as well as an evaluation procedure we intend to follow for quantifying performance of the French system. Throughout we mention some lessons learned in the process. 1

Abstract Since the first wave of nuclear reactors in 1970 to the construction of Generation III+ reactors in Finland and France in 2005 and 2007 respectively, nuclear power seems to be doomed to a cost escalation curse. In this paper we reexamine this issue for the French nuclear power fleet

This paper shows that geography matters to the effectiveness of place-based policies, using the French enterprise zone program as a case study. We build a series of original indicators of spatial isolation for treated and non treated neighborhoods. We show that only the least isolated treated

2 The Groupe URD evaluation team would like to thank the Strategic Affairs Directorate (DAS) who made this real-time evaluation in Haiti possible. We would also like to thank the people in Paris, New York and Haiti, who accepted to meet us and share with us their experiences and the lessons learned