Does aid create jobs? When and how do these jobs work? Are they sustainable? Do they promote development?
This plaintive question from a former Danish Development Minister trying to structure development policies based on evidence of success led the governments of Denmark and Sweden to commission UNU-WIDER to carry out ReCom - Research and Communication on Foreign aid - which aims to investigate what works in development.
This programme that Danida Director, Ib Petersen, says should be a catalyst for more effective aid. Now, a year and half or so down the line, it is time for the research results on Jobs and Development. This research is new and has potentially radical implications.
Jobs are critical everywhere but especially in developing countries. We are focused on practical results. News you can really use: if you are a policy maker in a donor country; if you are a practitioner in a recipient country; and very importantly if you are an aid recipient. But you don’t have to be in development to care about how your money is spent on development, or about how development policies are formulated.
We will be talking to some stars of the development world. Amongst them, Gary Fields, a world leader on employment and poverty reduction, whose latest book Working Hard, Working Poor has just come out. Also, the World Bank’s eagerly anticipated World Development Report 2013 - Jobs will be made public just days before we meet, and Martin Rama, the Director of the Report, will be joining us. According to Nobel Economics Laureate, George Akerlof: 'labour economists should read the report, and think about how, in light of it, the subject should be substantially rewritten'. In other words, a game changer.
Moderator Hilary Bowker, former CNN Senior European Anchor, will ensure a highly interactive discussion. Thanks to some of the most cutting edge conference communication technology in the world, you will be able to react almost immediately to what you are hearing from the panel and they will be able to react to you. We hope you can join us and help shape this exciting event. Register now and begin your contribution.
Assistant: Janis Vehmaan-Kreula
Communications: Carl-Gustav Lindén
There are over 900 million working people who earn less than US$2 a day, while 200 million people are unemployed. Unemployment is a bigger problem in high-income countries, in low-income countries unemployment is rarer as work is essential for...
While it has been increasingly recognized that efficient management holds the key to the development of micro and small enterprises in developing countries, we know very little about the managerial capacity of business owners and managers in these...
Aid providers frequently link supporting small firms to job creation. Small firms create about half of new jobs in Africa, but they also have higher failure rates. Ignoring firm exit exaggerates net employment growth. Using panel data for Ethiopia...
This paper argues that official development assistance (foreign aid) is partly responsible for the lack of structural change in Africa. Africa’s development partners have devoted too few resources and too little attention to two critical constraints...
Join the network
