Tackling Inequalities in Brazil, China, India and South Africa The Role of Labour Market and Social Policies


Book Description

This book focuses on the role of growth and employment/unemployment developments in explaining recent income inequality trends in Brazil, China, India and South Africa, and discusses the roles played by labour market and social policies in both shaping and addressing these inequalities.




Exports to Jobs


Book Description

South Asia has grown rapidly with significant reductions in poverty, but it has not been able to match the fast-growing working age population, leading to lingering concerns about jobless growth and poor job quality. Could export growth in South Asia result in better labor market outcomes? The answer is yes, according to our study, which rigorously estimates—using a new methodology—the potential impact from higher South Asian exports per worker on wages and employment over a 10-year period. Our study shows the positive side of trade. It finds that increasing exports per worker would result in higher wages—mainly for better-off groups, like more educated workers, males, and more-experienced workers—although less-skilled workers would see the largest reduction in informality. How can the benefits be spread more widely? Our study suggests that scaling up exports in labor-intensive industries could significantly lower informality for groups like rural and less-educated workers in the region. Also, increasing skills, and participation of women and young workers in the labor force could make an even bigger dent in informal employment. The region could achieve these gains by: (i) boosting and connecting exports to people (e.g., removing trade barriers and investment in infrastructure); (ii) eliminating distortions in production (e.g., by more efficient allocation of inputs); and (iii) protecting workers (e.g., by investing in education and skills).




World Development Report 2013


Book Description

Jobs provide higher earnings and better benefits as countries grow, but they are also a driver of development. Poverty falls as people work their way out of hardship and as jobs empowering women lead to greater investments in children. Efficiency increases as workers get better at what they do, as more productive jobs appear, and less productive ones disappear. Societies flourish as jobs bring together people from different ethnic and social backgrounds and provide alternatives to conflict. Jobs are thus more than a byproduct of economic growth. They are transformational —they are what we earn, what we do, and even who we are. High unemployment and unmet job expectations among youth are the most immediate concerns. But in many developing countries, where farming and self-employment are prevalent and safety nets are modest are best, unemployment rates can be low. In these countries, growth is seldom jobless. Most of their poor work long hours but simply cannot make ends meet. And the violation of basic rights is not uncommon. Therefore, the number of jobs is not all that matters: jobs with high development payoffs are needed. Confronted with these challenges, policy makers ask difficult questions. Should countries build their development strategies around growth, or should they focus on jobs? Can entrepreneurship be fostered, especially among the many microenterprises in developing countries, or are entrepreneurs born? Are greater investments in education and training a prerequisite for employability, or can skills be built through jobs? In times of major crises and structural shifts, should jobs, not just workers, be protected? And is there a risk that policies supporting job creation in one country will come at the expense of jobs in other countries? The World Development Report 2013: Jobs offers answers to these and other difficult questions by looking at jobs as drivers of development—not as derived labor demand—and by considering all types of jobs—not just formal wage employment. The Report provides a framework that cuts across sectors and shows that the best policy responses vary across countries, depending on their levels of development, endowments, demography, and institutions. Policy fundamentals matter in all cases, as they enable a vibrant private sector, the source of most jobs in the world. Labor policies can help as well, even if they are less critical than is often assumed. Development policies, from making smallholder farming viable to fostering functional cities to engaging in global markets, hold the key to success.




Digital Senegal for Inclusive Growth


Book Description

Senegal, like all African countries, needs better and more jobs for its growing population. The main message of Digital Senegal for Inclusive Growth is that broader use of productivity-enhancing technologies by households and enterprises can generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. Adoption of better technologies can support both Senegal’s short-term objective of economic recovery and its vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. But this is not automatic. This book leverages a novel survey instrument that measures adoption of technologies at the firm level. Results from this survey show that there is a large average technological gap in Senegal relative to firms in Brazil, in the range of 36 and 30 percent for extensive (whether firms use it at all) and intensive (the most frequently applied) uses of better technologies such as for business administration. Except for a small number of firms, enterprises still mostly use manual, analog technologies to perform general and sector specific business functions. Micro-size informal enterprises lag even further. The benefits from technology adoption are significant. Digital technologies are an enabler of economy-wide productivity and jobs growth by catalyzing adoption of complementary technologies, including many not accessible without digital infrastructure. For households, mobile internet coverage is associated with 14 percent higher total consumption, as well as a 10 percent lower extreme poverty rate—and jobs with higher earnings. Firms with better technologies have higher levels of productivity, generate more jobs, and increase the share of lower-skilled workers on their payroll, on average: an increase in technological sophistication across general business functions that the firm uses most intensively, such as using standard software rather than writing by hand for business administration, is associated with a 14 percent higher jobs growth rate. For these and other inclusive growth benefits to be realized, Senegal should focus on ensuring availability of affordable digital infrastructure and implementing targeted incentives to promote use by firms of better technologies as well as policies to narrow deepening digital divides across enterprises and households.




Women's Economic Empowerment


Book Description

This book investigates the barriers to women’s economic empowerment in the Global South. Drawing on evidence from a wide range of countries, the book outlines important lessons and practical solutions for promoting gender equality. Despite global progress in closing gender gaps in education and health, women’s economic empowerment has lagged behind, with little evidence that economic growth promotes gender equality. International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) programme was set up to provide policy lessons, insights, and concrete solutions that could lead to advances in gender equality, particularly on the role of institutions and macroeconomic growth, barriers to labour market access for women, and the impact of women’s care responsibilities. This book showcases rigorous and multi-disciplinary research emerging from this ground-breaking programme, covering topics such as the school-to-work transition, child marriage, unpaid domestic work and childcare, labour market segregation, and the power of social and cultural norms that prevent women from fully participating in better paid sectors of the economy. With a range of rich case studies from Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nepal, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Uganda, this book is perfect for students, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working on women’s economic empowerment and gender equality in the Global South.




Productivity Dynamics in Emerging and Industrialized Countries


Book Description

The world, of late, has seen a productivity slowdown. Many countries continue to recover from various shocks in the macro business environment, along with structural changes and inward looking policies. In contemporary times of growth slumps, various exits and protectionist regimes, this book engages with the study of productivity dynamics in the emerging and industrialized economies. The essays address the crucial aspects, such as the roles of human capital, investment accounting and datasets, that help understanding of productivity performance of global economy and its several regions. This book will be of interest to academics, practitioners and professionals in the field of economic growth, productivity and development studies. This will also be an important reference on empirical industrial economics in both India and the world.




The Labour Market Impact of the EU Enlargement


Book Description

Floro Ernesto Caroleo and Francesco Pastore This book was conceived to collect selected essays presented at the session on “The Labour Market Impact of the European Union Enlargements. A New Regional Geography of Europe?” of the XXII Conference of the Italian Association of Labour Economics (AIEL). The session aimed to stimulate the debate on the continuity/ fracture of regional patterns of development and employment in old and new European Union (EU) regions. In particular, we asked whether, and how different, the causes of emergence and the evolution of regional imbalances in the new EU members of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are compared to those in the old EU members. Several contributions in this book suggest that a factor common to all backward regions, often neglected in the literature, is to be found in their higher than average degree of structural change or, more precisely, in the hardship they expe- ence in coping with the process of structural change typical of all advanced economies. In the new EU members of CEE, structural change is still a consequence of the continuing process of transition from central planning to a market economy, but also of what Fabrizio et al. (2009) call the “second transition”, namely that related to the run-up to and entry in the EU.




Trade Integration as a Pathway to Development?


Book Description

After a period of rapid economic growth associated with high commodity prices, the Latin America and Caribbean region has again entered a phase of lackluster performance. Overall this slowdown seems more self-inflicted than imported, and the outlook for the region is not encouraging either. A tepid export response constrains the prospect of growing through external demand whereas limited fiscal space leaves little room to stimulate domestic demand. The outlook could deteriorate further if the international environment became less conducive. This report explores whether inward-looking development strategies could be one of the reasons for slow growth in Latin America and the Caribbean. Trade barriers are higher than in other developing regions, and while numerous preferential trade agreements have been signed, many of them are intra-regional. The report shows that South-North agreements are associated with increases in economic complexity and faster economic growth than South-South agreements. It illustrates the point by assessing the economic, social, spatial and environmental impacts of two major: South-North agreements signed over the last year.




The Routledge Handbook of Agricultural Economics


Book Description

This Handbook offers an up-to-date collection of research on agricultural economics. Drawing together scholarship from experts at the top of their profession and from around the world, this collection provides new insights into the area of agricultural economics. The Routledge Handbook of Agricultural Economics explores a broad variety of topics including welfare economics, econometrics, agribusiness, and consumer economics. This wide range reflects the way in which agricultural economics encompasses a large sector of any economy, and the chapters present both an introduction to the subjects as well as the methodology, statistical background, and operations research techniques needed to solve practical economic problems. In addition, food economics is given a special focus in the Handbook due to the recent emphasis on health and feeding the world population a quality diet. Furthermore, through examining these diverse topics, the authors seek to provide some indication of the direction of research in these areas and where future research endeavors may be productive. Acting as a comprehensive, up-to-date, and definitive work of reference, this Handbook will be of use to researchers, faculty, and graduate students looking to deepen their understanding of agricultural economics, agribusiness, and applied economics, and the interrelationship of those areas.




Global Economic Prospects, January 2015


Book Description

As in previous years, global growth disappointed in 2014, but a lackluster recovery is underway, with increasingly divergent prospects in major economies and developing countries. Looking ahead, growth is expected to rise slowly, supported by continued recovery in highincome countries, low oil prices, and receding domestic headwinds in developing economies. However, continued weak global trade growth and gradually tightening financial conditions will constrain the recovery. Risks to the outlook remain tilted to the downside. In addition to discussing global and regional economic developments and prospects, this edition of Global Economic Prospects includes four essays that analyze key challenges and opportunities currently confronting developing countries: fiscal policy as a countercyclical policy tool; causes and implications of cheap oil; weak trade that fails to act as an engine of growth; and remittances as a means of steadying consumption during sudden stops. Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report. On a semiannual basis (January and June), it examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on developing countries. The report includes analysis of topical policy challenges faced by developing countries through in-depth research in the January edition and shorter analytical pieces in the June edition.