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From the Editor's Desk (March 2012)![Placeholder](https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/styles/expert_45x45/public/tony_addison_87363af4b3de300e5211e81b8d521d70.png?itok=-MPVkzbW)
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...
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...
Using 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...
This 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...
Most 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...
Based 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...
This 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...
This 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...
This 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...
The 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...
This 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...
The 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...
This 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...
Employment 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...
Using a unique survey data set this paper documents a positive effect of self-employment in farming on subjective well-being. This direct effect is only partly offset by negative, indirect effects working through income and other variables. These...
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...
In the absence of adequate institutional mechanisms, trade unions can potentially promote higher wages and other worker benefits, yet limited data availability means little is known about the effect unions have on individual earnings in developing...
Since the beginning of the Chinese economic reforms in 1978, there has been a series of effort to reform the labour compensation practice in state- owned enterprises to strengthen the link between pay and productivity. Despite the reforms, however...
This paper uses data on individual earnings in manufacturing industry for five African countries in the early 1990s to test whether firms located in the capital city pay higher wages than firms located elsewhere, and whether such benefits accrue to...
This paper reviews empirical evidence for key matters concerning new patterns of corporate governance and the determinants of economic performance in transitional economies. Many findings reported draw on new and unusual data for large samples of...
In this paper we identify some of the drivers of changes in the distribution of earnings and earnings inequality in the South African labour market between 2000 and 2014. Although the overall level of earnings inequality between 2000 and 2011 was...
We investigate the evolution of wage levels, wage inequality, and wage determinants among urban residents in China using China Household Income Project data from 1988, 1995, 2002, 2007, and 2013. Average wage grew impressively between each pair of...
The overlapping wage contract model, known as the staggered contract model, is expanded in an open economy context to include wage indexation to add some more realism to the model. In addition the effects of alternative assumptions about availability...
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...
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.As an upper middle-income country within Africa, South Africa often attracts specific interest in terms of its economic growth and development dynamics. Often under-appreciated, is the...
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...
Part of Book The Job Ladder
This paper studies the unintended long-run effects of a permanent agricultural shock led by agro-terrorism in Brazil on the education and labour market. We explore the witches' broom outbreak in cocoa farms in the world's second most important cocoa...
Inaccurate expectations of future wages are found in many contexts. Yet, existing studies overwhelmingly refer to high-income countries, and there is little evidence regarding the sources of expectational errors.Based on a longitudinal survey of...
How does centralized bargaining affect the broader wage structure? And what does this tell us about the (non-)competitive dynamics of such labour markets? I study large contracted wage increases negotiated by centralized bargaining councils in South...
What type of business destroys proportionately more jobs during times of economic recessions and hires more in booms? This simple question motivates...
In this interview Professor Nora Lustig, Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics at Tulane University, talks about the importance of...
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...
Malawi’s farm input subsidy benefits the poor and can be part of a viable national development strategy. Agriculture is Malawi’s main economic sector...
This article is part of UNU’s “17 Days, 17 Goals” series, featuring research and commentary in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development...
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...
Very 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...
South African household surveys typically contain coarsened earnings data, which consist of a mixture of missing earnings values, point responses and interval-censored responses. This paper uses sequential regression multivariate imputation to impute...
Using a unique panel survey of final-year undergraduates at six of the largest universities in Mozambique, we study the wage premium associated with completing an undergraduate degree. Conditional on a very rich set of controls, including pre-degree...
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...
This paper is related to the literature on the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the labour market of host countries. Labour market literature has focused on the demand side of FDI; that is, increasing wage inequality by demanding more...
Part of Book Information Technology, Productivity, and Economic Growth
In South Africa, the manufacturing sector—important for growth and employment creation—has shown declining growth, poor productivity performance, decreased labour demand, and increased imports of intermediate goods (offshoring activities). Offshoring...
Part of Book Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in Vietnam
This chapter explores one aspect of the relationship between the system of production and the macroeconomic structure, namely, the role of profitability in determining investment demand and the level of economic activity. Within the system of...
The survey on the School-to-Work Transitions of University Graduates in Mozambique aims to respond to the concerns of the Government of Mozambique and development partners with respect to youth employment in the country. The focus is on the...
Before now, there has been no systematic study of the transition of university students as they finish their studies and enter the labour market. This Policy Brief summarises the findings of a baseline survey of such university students, who form the...
With the help of a simple model of production and trade, we examine the differential impact of tariff escalation on skilled and unskilled wages in an economy. Our findings provide a lobbying-based explanation of the prevalence of tariff escalation in...
As with many other developed and emerging economies, in recent decades Mexico has experienced a long-term decline in the labour income share. In other...
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 uses two unique panel data sets to study the causal effect that armed conflict has over entrepreneurial activity in Colombia. Using a fixed effect estimation methodology at the plant level and controlling for the possible endogeneity of...
This article evaluates the Chinese labour market by examining the role of human capital in wage determination. Using data from China’s Household Nutrition Survey, we estimate the returns to education in state-owned, collective-owned and private...
We examine the drivers of inequality change in Honduras between 1991-2007, trying to understand why inequality increased in Honduras until 2005, while it was falling in most other Latin American countries. Using annual household surveys, we document...
Labour market incomes have been a major contributor to the important fall in inequality in Latin America during the 2000s. Indeed, it was the main contributor in countries where inequality fell more dramatically. A proper understanding of the...
Racial wage inequality and discrimination have pervaded South African society for centuries. Apartheid legislation cemented these disparities by institutionalizing white job reservation and many other unfair practices. While racial wage gaps started...
Inequality in Mexico rose between 1989 and 1994 and declined between 1994 and 2010. We examine the role of market forces (demand and supply of labour by skill), institutional factors (minimum wages and unionization rate), and public policy (cash...
Part of Journal Special Issue Developing Countries in the WTO Regime
Part of Book Understanding Inequality and Poverty in China
Part of Book Spatial Inequality and Development
Part of Book Informal Labour Markets and Development
Successive governments in Nigeria have introduced reforms aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the civil service. Still, the service remains inefficient and incapable of reforming itself, let alone the rest of the economy...
Part of Journal Special Issue Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality in Latin America
Part of Book Falling Inequality in Latin America
Part of Book Falling Inequality in Latin America
Part of Book Falling Inequality in Latin America
Part of Book Falling Inequality in Latin America
Part of Journal Special Issue Entrepreneurship and Conflict
Part of Book The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue Small Business, Entrepreneurship, and Violent Conflict in Developing Countries
Part of Journal Special Issue Measuring Poverty Over Time
Kenya’s civil service expanded rapidly after independence, becoming by far the largest in East Africa. Following economic decline since the 1980s, however, it became difficult for the government to sustain a large and inefficient public sector. To...
This paper develops a theory of endogenous league formation and considers its implications for policy in developing countries. We generalize from features of the two most prominent European co-op leagues, Mondragón and La Lega, to develop the first...
The 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...
To be competitive in the global economy, some argue that Latin American countries need to reduce or eliminate labour market regulations such as minimum wage legislation because they constrain job creation and hence increase poverty. On the other hand...
This 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...
Since 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...
Part of Journal Special Issue Inequality and Multidimensional Well-being
Part of Book The Impact of EMU on Europe and the Developing Countries
In many developing countries the skill base is a cause of concern with respect to international competition. Firm-provided training is generally seen as an important tool for bridging the skills gap between labour force and private sector demand. Yet...
Employment 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...
This 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...
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...
This paper studies the incidence and heterogeneity of labour informality in six Latin American countries—Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru. We divide workers into five work statuses: formal wage-employed, formal self-employed...
The success of an economy’s manufacturing sector is often critical to economic growth and development. As a major contributor to exports, site of innovation, adopter of international best practices, and engine of job creation, an internationally...
Part of Journal Special Issue Income inequalities and redistribution in China
In this paper, we analyse the role of the changing nature of occupational employment and wages in explaining the trend in earnings inequality in Ghana between 2006 and 2017, a period in which there was a substantial transformation of the economy...
Part of Book Reforming Africa's Institutions
Biased beliefs about future labor-market earnings are commonplace. Based on a longitudinal survey of graduate work transitions in Mozambique, this study assesses the contribution of employment mismatches to a large positive gap between expected (ex...
Labour 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...