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Mozambique in post-election turmoil: Economic policies that could make a difference
Turmoil following presidential and parliamentary elections in Mozambique has been severe. Preliminary official results from the 2024 elections...
Sam Jones
Research Fellow
Sam Jones is a Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER based in Mozambique, on extended leave from his position as an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen. He is a versatile economist with expertise in macroeconomic analysis, development finance (including foreign aid), microeconomic empirical methods, education and labour markets.
Sam’s work has been published in leading journals, such as Journal of Development Economics, World Bank Economic Review, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Food Policy, Social Science & Medicine, Journal of Economic Inequality, World Development, Journal of Development Studies, African Development Review, and Journal of African Economies.
Much of Sam’s academic research has focused on sub-Saharan Africa and he has previously worked extensively in Mozambique, spending seven years as an advisor in the Ministry of Finance.
124 articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Journal Article
The gendered impact of digital jobs platformsTHIS 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...
Journal Article
Firm profitability and forced wage labour in Portuguese AfricaARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | Forced wage labour (FWL) in colonial-era Portuguese Africa came to encompass a majority of working age men and persisted until the early 1960s. On the basis of reconstructed financial records from the Sena Sugar Estates in...
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 legacy of coercive cotton cultivation in colonial MozambiqueWe examine the long-term impact of forced labour on individual risk behaviour and economic decisions. For that, we focus on a policy of coercive cotton cultivation enforced in colonial Mozambique between 1926 and 1961. We combine archival sources...
Journal Article
Digital labour platforms as shock absorbersARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | Digital labour platforms have grown five-fold over the past decade, enabling significant expansion of gig work worldwide. We interrogate the critique that these platforms tend to amplify aggregate shocks for registered...
Journal Article
Employment mismatches drive expectational errors among Mozambican graduatesBiased 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...
Working Paper
Inequality and voting in fragile countriesThe political consequences of economic inequality have been debated in academic and policy circles for centuries. The nature of this relationship seems highly dependent on specific contexts, with empirical studies showing mixed evidence on how...
Working Paper
Cultivating change: the long-term impact of forced labour in MozambiqueFollowing the abolition of slavery, various forms of compulsory labour were adopted by colonial powers to develop their economies. This paper analyses the contemporary consequences of compulsory cotton production—a forced labour system that operated...
Working Paper
Sheepskin effects and heterogenous wage-setting behaviourUsing 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...
Journal Article
Africa’s lockdown dilemmaAs the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, sub-Saharan African countries faced the dilemma of how to minimize viral transmission without adversely affecting the poor. This study proposes an index of lockdown readiness, taking into account housing conditions...
Journal Article
Educational expansion and shifting private returns to educationWe examine how returns to education have evolved in the context of post-conflict reconstruction and economic growth in Mozambique over the period 1996–2015. We show that private rates of return to education have declined at lower levels of schooling...
Working Paper
The impact of COVID-19 on urban informal workers in MaputoInformal self-employed traders in developing countries are vulnerable to shocks as they often lack access to social insurance or formal finance. This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these urban traders in the capital of...
Working Paper
Structural features of the Mozambique economy through the lens of a 2019 social accounting matrixThis study presents and discusses structural features of the Mozambique economy through the lens of a recently constructed 2019 social accounting matrix (SAM). This is an important reality check of the SAM construction process since it brings...
Displaying 16 of 124 results