Join the network
Blog
From The Editor's Desk (December 2012)
Tony Addison This year has rushed by at speed. For UNU-WIDER it’s been a year of big successes. We will have published some 110 working papers by the...
90 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
Filter by...
Reset all
Blog
Jobs Drive Development: An interview with Martin Rama
15 January 2013Martin Rama from The World bank discusses the process behind the World Development Report 2013 on jobs, which he directed.He emphasises...
Working Paper
The African LionsThis paper mainly analyses the drivers of economic growth in Kenya and the linkages to the labour market dynamics, with a focus on population growth, its structure, and the prospects of reaping a demographic dividend. This is in recognition that...
Working Paper
Informality, Growth, and Development in AfricaThe informal sector makes up an overwhelming share of both gross domestic product and total employment in Africa. In this paper, we lay out some of the basic characteristics of the informal sector in sub-Saharan Africa, relevant institutions, and...
Journal Article
Structural Transformation, Biased Technological Change and Employment in VietnamEmployment in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia has grown more slowly than GDP over the last several decades. This means GDP per capita is rising. Vietnamese policymakers, however, are concerned that ongoing structural transformation is creating too few...
Journal Article
How Fast Do Banks Adjust?This paper deals with a dynamic adjustment process in which adjustment of a key variable input (labor) towards its desired level is modeled in a panel data context. The partial adjustment type model is extended to make the adjustment parameter both...
Working Paper
Structural Transformation, Biased Technological Change, and Employment in VietnamEmployment in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia has grown more slowly than GDP over the last several decades. This means GDP per capita is rising. Vietnamese policymakers, however, are concerned that ongoing structural transformation is creating too few...
Book Chapter
Vulnerability, Poverty and Coping in ZimbabwePart of Book Vulnerability in Developing Countries
Working Paper
Gender differences in child investment behaviour among agricultural householdsWe examine the impacts of an unconditional cash transfer in Lesotho using an experimental impact evaluation design. We find that the cash transfer led to different outcomes for girls and boys, overall favouring secondary school-aged girls. Girls in...
Research Brief
Aid, Poverty, and the Working PoorThere are over 900 million working people who earn less than US$2 a day, while 200 million people are unemployed. Unemployment is a bigger problem in high-income countries, in low-income countries unemployment is rarer as work is essential for...
Blog
Out of the Poverty Trap Through Higher Aspirations?
Why does a mother from a poor African village not send her daughter to school, but instead marries her off to an old man as a second or third wife...
Blog
Job Creation and the Business Cycle in Brazil
What type of business destroys proportionately more jobs during times of economic recessions and hires more in booms? This simple question motivates...
Working Paper
Aid, Employment, and Poverty Reduction in AfricaGrowth and poverty reduction in Africa are weakly linked. This paper argues that the reason is that Africa has failed to create enough good jobs. Structural transformation―the relative growth of employment in high productivity sectors―has not...
Blog
Development Finance: The Role for Aid in Africa
Aid’s future, its history, and its impact were the topics of a policy workshop held by UNU-WIDER in co-operation with the Embassy of Denmark in Dar es...
Working Paper
Using legal empowerment for labour rights in IndiaThis paper brings labour back into the literature on legal empowerment against poverty. Employing a historical lens, I outline three waves of legal movements. Each wave is distinguished by its timing, the state-level target, and the actors involved...
Blog
Economic Lessons from Recent Research for Achieving SDG8
This article is part of UNU’s “17 Days, 17 Goals” series, featuring research and commentary in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (September-October 2015)
UNU-WIDER had a busy September. We celebrated our 30th birthday with some 600 people at our three-day conference on ‘Mapping the Future of Development...
Journal Article
Aid, Growth, and Employment in AfricaPart of Journal Special Issue Aid and Employment
Journal Article
Aid, Employment, and Poverty Reduction in AfricaPart of Journal Special Issue Aid and Employment
Journal Article
Is Small Beautiful? Small Enterprise, Aid, and Employment in AfricaPart of Journal Special Issue Aid and Employment
Journal Article
Priorities for Boosting Employment in Sub-Saharan AfricaPart of Journal Special Issue Aid and Employment
Book Chapter
Asia's Labour-Driven Growth, Flying Geese StylePart of Book The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
Book
Africa's LionsExamining the economic forces that will shape Africa’s future Africa’s Lions examines the economic growth experiences of six fast-growing and/or economically dominant African countries. Expert African researchers offer unique perspectives into the...
Journal Article
The Effect of the Liberalization of Investment Policies on Employment and Investment of Multinational Corporations in AfricaPart of Journal Special Issue Globalization-Poverty Channels and Case Studies from Sub-Saharan Africa
Research Brief
Structural Change – Critical for Poverty Reduction in AfricaEconomic growth has had a negative effect on unemployment and poverty reduction in Africa. The transition from low- to middle income requires within sector increases in productivity and a shift of labour resources from low productivity agriculture to...
Working Paper
Informed job entryHigh youth unemployment rates and long school-to-work transition times pose a threat to low-income countries’ sustainable growth prospects. Using a randomized control trial experiment conducted in Mozambique, we find strong evidence that providing...
Working Paper
The gendered effects of climate shocks on labour and welfare in ZambiaThis paper exploits several waves of two major nationwide representative surveys to document the impacts of climate shocks on individuals and households in Zambia. We merge these datasets with historical precipitation and temperature data at the...
Blog
Counting (on) the labour market to secure a just transitionThe climate stabilization imperative emerging from the Paris Agreement is, in so many ways, absolutely critical to securing the planet’s future for...
Working Paper
Winners and losers in industrial policy 2.0Large-scale business subsidies tied to national industrial development promotion programmes are notoriously difficult to study and are often inseparable from the political economy of large government programmes. We use the Tunisian national firm...
Policy Brief
Transition to labour market by university studentsThis brief summarizes the findings and implications of a survey of the school-to-work transition by Mozambican university students. No research of this kind had previously been conducted. Over the course of a year and a half, university graduates...
Journal Article
Precarization or protection?Part of Journal Special Issue What sustains informality
Blog
Supply or demand? Exploring the mechanisms behind the rise of female labour force participation in MexicoAt the global level, gender gaps in labour force participation have narrowed and over half a billion women have joined the workforce in the last 30...
Blog
African Lions - Tapping the potential of Kenya's economic growth
From 2000-2014, like many other sub-Saharan African countries, Kenya experienced high growth, at an average of 4.37 percent. Unfortunately, the 2007...
Working Paper
Informal freelancers in the time of COVID-19Despite the severe negative economic shock associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence from many contexts points to a surge in sales on online platforms, as well as shifts in the composition of demand. This paper investigates how the pandemic has...
Working Paper
Precarization or protection? The impact of trade and labour policies on informalitySeveral episodes of market-oriented reforms in developing countries have been accompanied by a significant rise in work outside of the formal economy. This paper investigates whether the impact of increased exposure to trade on formal employment is...
Working Paper
Who demands labour (de)regulation in the developing world?Contrary to the predictions of the insider–outsider model, we show that the large majority of outsiders in developing countries support, rather than oppose, protective labour regulations. This evidence holds across countries in different regions...
Working Paper
Southern Engines of Global GrowthThis article views the four economies of the South in a long run historical perspective of 1500-2000. It contrasts the history and the initial endowments of the two Northern hemisphere economies China and India which are land scarce and labour...
Journal Article
Foreign Capital, Skill Formation, and Migration of Skilled WorkersWe study the interaction between foreign capital inflow and international migration of skilled labor when a small open economy is subject to exogenous shocks. The presence of a skill formation sector is central to our analysis, such that import...
Working Paper
Comparative Advantage Patterns and Domestic Determinants in Emerging CountriesDuring the last two decades a number of emerging economies have become deeply engaged in technology-intensive production. This has been reflected in their international trade specialization shifting from labour-intensive goods towards capital...
Displaying 48 of 90 results