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Publications (47)
Working Paper
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Throughout 2021, fiscal stimulus packages were introduced to jump-start the COVID-19 ‘post-pandemic’ economic recovery process. While calls for economic recovery packages that promise to ‘build back better’ have come from many directions, the under-allocation of recovery resources directed at...
Almost everywhere, women are underrepresented in labour markets compared to men. While labour force participation among women of working age (FLFP) has increased in recent decades, the vast majority of women in South Asia remain out of the labour market. Traditional roles and gender norms still...
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The social and economic impact of COVID-19 has been deep, wide-ranging, and multi-dimensional. While anecdotal evidence of distress among the poor, particularly those with informal occupations, has been widespread, effective policy response has required real-time, researched data disaggregated for...
The opening keynote of the recent WIDER Development Conference, COVID-19 and development – effects and new realities for the Global South, was given by Oriana Bandiera, Sir Anthony Atkinson Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, an accomplished economist with several awards under...
The Hrishipara Daily Diaries Project has been tracking the daily spending of 60 poor households in rural Bangladesh for the last six years. Analysis of the data collected – especially the changes to spending patterns that have occurred during the pandemic – reveals four areas where policymakers...
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– A mixed-methods analysis of gender and labour market segmentation in Bangladesh
Data on female labour force participation in Bangladesh suggest that, despite the increase in female-intensive employment opportunities through microfinance, export garment manufacturing, and community-based services, the majority of working women are concentrated in home-based activities. There...
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– Insights from the Hrishipara diaries
In this paper, we examine the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihoods of the poor. We use an unusually rich data set from a ‘financial diaries’ study known as the Hrishipara Daily Diaries Project. The data set tracks the economic and financial transactions of 60 individuals and...
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Although microfinance started as a movement to improve women’s economic well-being through increased female entrepreneurship in particular, its impact on women’s attitudes toward and participation in the labour market is not fully understood. We fill this gap by combining data on branch locations of...
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– Evidence from Labour Force Survey data of Bangladesh
With structural changes in production coupled with technological progress, there have been shifts in modes of production and patterns of employment, with important consequences on task composition of occupations. This paper has utilized different rounds of Labour Force Survey data of Bangladesh and...
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Using detailed microdata, we document how migration-dependent households are especially vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic. We create pre- and post-COVID panel datasets for three populations in Bangladesh and Nepal, leveraging experimental and observational variation in prior migration...
With the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Bangladesh on 8 March 2020 and the initiation of a lockdown on 26 March 2020,1 the livelihoods of a significant number of people were under serious threat — with women most likely to suffer the worst impacts for a variety of reasons. First, women...
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The Bangladesh economy has undergone significant structural changes over the last four decades. The share of agriculture in GDP has declined, while the significance of industry and service sectors has increased. These structural changes have been associated with persistent challenges such as lack of...
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– The role of infrastructure development and gender norms
Traditional gender norms can restrict independent migration by women, preventing them from taking advantage of economic opportunities in urban non-agricultural industries. However, women may be able to circumvent such restrictions by using marriage to engage in long-distance migration—if they are...
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– Evidence from Bangladesh
We use a recent first-hand linked employer-employee survey covering the formal sector of Bangladesh to explain gender wage gaps by the inclusion of measures of cognitive attainment and personality traits. Our results show that cognitive skills have greater explanatory power than personality traits...
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– Examples from South Africa, Singapore, and Bangladesh
In this paper we consider four factors that shaped the development of migration policy intended to protect the rights of vulnerable migrant women. They are: the role players in the policy change process, the debates that shaped the policy change, the role that research played and the political...
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– Rethinking our approach to the world’s most fragile states
Those fragile states whose stagnation is so tenacious despite generous aid programs, and substantial and costly interventions, are stuck in a ‘fragility trap.’ Caught in a low-level equilibrium, trapped states appear to be in a perpetual political and economic limbo that can last for years and in...
Displaying 16 of 47 results