According to South Africa’s National Development Plan Vision 2030, serious action needs to be taken to reduce poverty and encourage economic growth. One of the main challenges involves reducing the unemployment rates in South Africa, particularly...
24 June 2013 Minister Gunilla Carlson Like every political agenda, the post-2015 agenda must be firmly based in a reality check. The current...
Economist Imed Drine recently left UNU-WIDER and headed with his family for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to take up a new position as a senior economist with...
Carl-Gustav Lindén The research project ReCom-Research and Communication on foreign aid, which is co-ordinated by UNU-WIDER with funding from the...
Imed Drine Many observers see youth unemployment as the major reason behind the recent popular uprisings in a number of Arab countries. Increasing...
Carl-Gustav Lindén One important part of ReCom–Research and Communication on Foreign Aid is the sharing of results. October saw the largest effort so...
For transition economies labour market flexibility is necessary for successful restructuring and reallocation of labour force and for coping with the requirements of the European Monetary Union. In this paper we apply a novel approach to the issue of...
This paper is a review and commentary, from both ethical and informational perspectives, of some known results in optimal anti-poverty budgetary rules for two kinds of intervention, direct income transfers and wage employment programmes.
The youth have long represented an important constituency for electoral mobilization in Africa. Today, as the region faces a growing ‘youth bulge’ that is disproportionately burdened by un- and underemployment, capturing the votes of this demographic...
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | This study examines the impact of digital labor-market platforms on jobs outcomes using a randomized encouragement design embedded in a longitudinal survey of Mozambican technical-vocational college graduates. We...
This paper examines the current interest in addressing the problem of young people’s unemployment in Africa through agriculture. Using notions of transitions and mobilities we set out a transformative work and opportunity space framework that...
Danielle Resnick The victory of the opposition party, the Patriotic Front (PF), in Zambia’s presidential elections this month heralds a new era in...
South Africa is considering introducing a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Following a discussion of the motivations for considering a carbon tax, we evaluate potential impacts using a dynamic economywide model linked to an energy...
Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen In October the London School of Economics and Political Science hosted the launch of Urbanization and Development...
Charles S. Maier When the Berlin Wall fell, twenty years ago, on 9 November 1989, many expected that the East German (German Democratic Republic - DDR...
This paper studies individual-level labour market transitions and their determinants in South Africa during the zenith and aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis using 2008 to 2010-2011 panel data from the National Income Dynamics...
By Imed Drine Whilst having a global impact, the current financial and economic crisis is clearly affecting certain regions more severely than others...
The dispersion of racial incomes in South Africa has been declining since the mid 1970s. This has been accompanied by rising within-group inequality, especially amongst blacks, driven by growing unemployment. Consequently, there has been little...
Through the use of administrative tax data, this study attempts to identify the characteristics of firms that employ relatively large numbers of young people. The policy objective of this exercise is to use these insights to inform policy and...
The rapid diffusion of computers has widely changed the consequences of computer use on the labour market. While at the beginning of the eighties knowledge of computers was an obvious advantage in a career, this same knowledge is now so commonplace...
A sharp rise in unemployment and a sharp rise in mortality have been two recurrent aspects of the process of transition. In response to the unemployment challenge transitional economies have equipped themselves with labour market policies (LMPs)...
Macroeconomic strategies and policies have differed significantly among Asian countries over the last fifty years, and yet some common issues recur despite their immense diversity in inherited historical initial conditions, differences in political...
Tony Addison With the ice floes now gone from the harbour outside the UNU-WIDER building, and with the snow replaced by an icy hail, there is a...
Technical, vocational education, and training has remained an explosive topic because it can create a divided society in terms of education and the benefits associated with it. Internationally, it has always been a complex and controversial topic...
Vocational training programmes, like South Africa’s learnership programme, which combine classroom learning and on-the-job training seem like the type of intervention which can create skills, get young people into jobs quicker, and reduce youth...
The youth have long represented an important constituency for electoral mobilization in Africa. Yet, despite their numerical importance and the historical relevance of generational identities within the region, very little is really known about the...
Many observers see youth unemployment as the major reason behind the recent popular uprisings in a number of Arab countries. Increasing unemployment over the past two decades has led to frustration among young people, especially among university...
The purpose of this paper is to study the determinants of the inefficient functioning of the Tunisian labour market. The study takes advantage of the recent development in the stochastic frontier techniques and estimates, the matching function for...
This paper examines the macroeconomic policies and outcomes experienced by the Latin American economies during the period 1990-2010. Macroeconomic policies refer to exchange rates, monetary and aggregate fiscal policies, while macroeconomic outcomes...
Food-for-work (FFW) programmes have been widely heralded as a means of providing self-targeting transfers coupled with investment in public goods. This paper reviews the changing context that has sparked such interest in FFW, the simple theory that...
Employment has been adopted as a leading concern for the United Nations World Social Summit in March 1995. This important study, prepared for the Summit by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, comprises a wide-ranging set of...
On the 10th of April, 2012, the African Development Bank and UNU-WIDER organized a research workshop on the theme of ‘Employment in Tunisia: What Do We Know? What is the Way Forward?’. The aim of this workshop was to bring together universities and...
Part of Book Information Technology, Productivity, and Economic Growth
Why do some states, with foreign assistance, transition from ‘fragile’ to ‘robust?’ Scholars in state-building have argued that neotrusteeship is an effective strategy by which external organizations might build post-conflict states. This working...
We study the relationship between product market competition and labour market outcomes in South Africa. We combine firm-level data from tax records with individual-level data from the labour force survey. We estimate markups across sectors, and...
IntroductionThe South African youth wage subsidy started in 2014 to increase employment and create jobs for low-wage youth. The subsidy was temporarily raised in value and expanded to reach more workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the...
Can digital labour market platforms reduce search frictions in either formal or informal labour markets? We study this question using a randomized experiment embedded in a tracer study of the work transitions of graduates from technical and...
The paper uses the Lewis model as a framework for examining the labour market progress of two labour-abundant countries, China and South Africa, towards labour shortage and generally rising labour real incomes. In the acuteness of their rural-urban...
Digital technologies can be deployed to improve job search, but their effectiveness in practice is disrupted. This column uses experimental data to...
This note describes methods to derive employment-to-unemployment transition shares across industries during the COVID-19 pandemic and to use these shares in SOUTHMOD tax-benefit microsimulation models to adjust relevant labour market variables. The...
South Africa is considering introducing carbon taxes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We evaluate potential impacts using a dynamic economy-wide model linked to an energy sector model. Simulation results indicate that a phased-in carbon tax that...
Part of Book The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
Part of Book The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
The former German Democratic Republic underwent a unique post-communist transition because it was absorbed into the wealthy Federal Republic of Germany and has received massive subsidies. Nonetheless, serious difficulties have persisted, including...
This paper investigates the determinants of migration from 45 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1965–2005. The significant determinants are armed conflict and lack of job opportunities. An additional year of conflict is estimated to...
This paper studies the determinants of the inefficient functioning of the Tunisian labour market. The study takes advantage of recent developments in the stochastic frontier techniques and estimates the matching function for Tunisia using...
Part of Journal Special Issue FDI, Employment, and Growth in China and India
Part of Book Falling Inequality in Latin America
Using nationally representative, economy-wide data, this paper investigates the relative importance of trade-mandated effects on industry wage premiums; industry and economy-wide skill premiums; and employment flows in accounting for changes in the...
South Africa’s transition to democracy in 1994 created new possibilities for economic policy. Economic liberalization brought sustained, if unspectacular, growth that reversed the long decline in per capita incomes, but left its scars in much job...
While globalization is viewed as a key to future economic development, it is also argued that it increases poverty, threatens employment and living standards of the poor. Like many other developing countries, Pakistan also attempted to integrate its...
South Africa's high unemployment and small informal economy has been attributed to barriers to entry in informal labour markets. We develop a general equilibrium model based on a typology of informal activities that captures formal/informal linkages...
Part of Book African Youth and the Persistence of Marginalization
Part of Book African Youth and the Persistence of Marginalization
Part of Book African Youth and the Persistence of Marginalization
Part of Book Insurance Against Poverty
Part of Book Inequality, Growth and Poverty in an Era of Liberalization and Globalization
Part of Book Golden Age of Capitalism
This paper investigates evidence of a possible spatial mismatch in South Africa’s metropolitan labour market that could contribute towards explaining why black unemployment rates are significantly higher than white unemployment rates. The spatial...
Part of Book The Impact of EMU on Europe and the Developing Countries
Part of Book The Impact of EMU on Europe and the Developing Countries
Employment has been adopted as a leading concern for the United Nations World Social Summit in March 1995. This important study, prepared for the Summit by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, comprises a wide-ranging set of...
Employment has been adopted as a leading concern for the United Nations World Social Summit in March 1995. This important study, prepared for the Summit by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, comprises a wide-ranging set of...
Part of Book The Mortality Crisis in Transitional Economies
Part of Book The Mortality Crisis in Transitional Economies
Part of Book The Mortality Crisis in Transitional Economies
Part of Book The Mortality Crisis in Transitional Economies
Part of Book The Mortality Crisis in Transitional Economies
Part of Book The Mortality Crisis in Transitional Economies
Part of Book The Mortality Crisis in Transitional Economies
Part of Book Global Employment
Part of Book Global Employment
Part of Book Global Employment
Part of Book Global Employment
Part of Book Global Employment
Part of Book Global Employment
Part of Book Global Employment
Part of Book Global Employment
Part of Book Global Employment
Part of Book Global Employment
Employment has been adopted as a leading concern for the United Nations World Social Summit in March 1995. This important study, prepared for the Summit by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, comprises a wide-ranging set of...
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