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.
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...
ARTICLE 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...
High 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...
We 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...
ARTICLE 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...
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...
The 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...
Following 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...
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...
As 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...
We 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...
Informal 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...
This 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...
Forward-looking expectations are central to job search but often inaccurate. To test whether public information can help correct beliefs, we embed an experiment in a longitudinal survey of Mozambican graduates. We quantify responses of own-earning...
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