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From the Editor's Desk (March 2012)
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...
105 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Working Paper
The Happy FarmerUsing survey data from rural Vietnam, this paper documents a statistically significant, positive effect of self-employment in farming on subjective well-being. Wage workers are less happy than farmers across a range of different types of wage jobs...
Blog
Youth Employment: A Key Issue
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...
Working Paper
Trade Unions in an Emerging EconomyThis paper provides a historical overview of the South African trade union movement, followed by a brief discussion of the labour market legislation and institutions formed since 1994. Thereafter, a detailed evaluation of the impact of trade unions...
Working Paper
Spillover Effects of International StandardsMost studies focus on trade effects and organizational outcomes of international standards, neglecting the effect of standards on employees. Using a two-year matched firm–employee panel dataset, this paper finds that the application of standards...
Working Paper
On the Effects of Formalization on Taxes and WagesBased on a unique panel dataset consisting of both formal and informal firms surveyed every other year from 2005 to 2013, this paper explores the benefits of formalization to the government and firm employees in Vietnam. We find that formalization...
Working Paper
Education, Skill, and EarningsThis paper provides evidence on the nature of returns to education in Ghana and confirms the emerging empirical literature on the convexity of returns to education in Ghana. Using a basic Mincerian, model we find that returns to education more than...
Working Paper
Minimum Wage and Informality in EcuadorThis paper investigates if changes in the minimum wage have influenced changes on the formality and informality rates, and the level of wages in Ecuador. A 12-year panel was built. It allows to overcome the short time span of household data and so to...
Journal Article
On the Short- and Medium-Term Effects of FormalisationThis paper analyses the consequences of formalisation on the performance of informal firms, using a panel dataset from Vietnam. We find that switching firms (before switching) have higher profit and value added compared to non-switching firms...
Working Paper
Private Returns to Education for Wage-employees and the Self-employed in UgandaThe paper investigates the differences in private marginal returns to education between wage-employees and the self-employed in Uganda, using the Mincerian framework with pooled regression models. We use a two-wave household panel to estimate...
Working Paper
Impact of Education on Inequality Across the Wage Distribution Profile in Cameroon, 2005-10This paper evaluates the impact of education on measured inequality across the wage distribution using pooled records from the 2005 and 2010 Cameroon labour force surveys, wage equations and standard inequality measures. Returns to education...
Working Paper
Liberalized trade policy and inequalityThe phased elimination of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement has been one of the most compelling trade policy reforms of the early twenty-first century, and has brought in significant changes in the industrial structures of the countries of the global south...
Working Paper
Skills-Biased Labour Demand and the Pursuit of Inclusive Growth in South AfricaThis paper examines the changing nature of occupational labour-market trends in South Africa and the resulting impact on wages. We observe high levels of demand for skilled labour that have intensified a trend already established before 1994. Over...
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...
Working Paper
Uruguay’s Income Inequality and Political Regimes during 1981–2010This study assesses the evolution of inequality in Uruguay during 1981-2010, considered as subperiods built on the basis of the main policy regimes observed: extreme right (1981-84), centre-right (1985-89), right (1990-2004), and centre-left (2005-10...
Working Paper
Reform of the Malawian Public SectorSince the early 1990s, Malawi has tried to undertake economic reforms, including the restructuring of the public sector, even as it embraced democratic reforms. Paucity of human and financial resources has made the process difficult and drawn out...
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...
Working Paper
Labour demand and the distribution of wages in South African manufacturing exportersThis paper contributes to the understanding of the linkages between exporting, labour demand, and wages in South Africa. We disentangle labour market differences between exporters and non-exporters and find that exporters employ more people and pay...
Working Paper
Firm-level determinants of earnings in the formal sector of the South African labour marketLabour market analysis in the South African context provides a relatively robust understanding of the individual characteristics that influence wage differentials across workers (i.e. supply-side characteristics), but provides relatively little...
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...
Blog
Inequality in Latin America and the Importance of Data - An Interview with Nora Lustig
In this interview Professor Nora Lustig, Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics at Tulane University, talks about the importance of...
Working Paper
Wage Determination in Rural Labour MarketsThe nature of labour market in traditional rural societies has attracted a lot of attention in the recent years. One issue that has appeared particularly intriguing is the process of wage determination. After a good deal of theorising as well as...
Blog
From the Editor’s Desk (January 2015)
We are now into 2015, and the year is already gathering speed. 2015 is of course the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, and a major year in...
Blog
Regional Industrialization and Integration in Southern Africa - Reporting from TIPS Annual Forum
The white-painted cluster of traditional style buildings might suggest that this was a farm on the South African veldt. Not so however—it was Trade...
Blog
Malawi's Farm Subsidy Benefits the Poor but Doesn't Come CheapMalawi’s farm input subsidy benefits the poor and can be part of a viable national development strategy. Agriculture is Malawi’s main economic sector...
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...
Working Paper
The effects of minimum wage hikes on employment and wages in Vietmam’s micro, small, and medium enterprisesVery little is known about the extent to which wage and employment offsetting behaviours change by firm size to mitigate the detrimental effects of minimum wage regulation. Do micro establishments react more aggressively to minimum wage shocks...
Journal Article
Firm Exit and Armed Conflict in ColombiaPart of Journal Special Issue Entrepreneurship and Conflict
Book Chapter
Trade Liberalization, Employment Flows, and Wage Inequality in BrazilPart of Book The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
Displaying 32 of 105 results