Search

Begin New Search Topic Labor Issues Content Type Working Paper Publication Year within 10 Years

1. Why Morocco’s Youth Employment Policies Continue to Fail

Author:
Ismail Ait Bassou
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Although Morocco has launched several programs designed to provide job opportunities for young people, youth unemployment rates remain high. This paper argues these programs have proven ineffective and are compounded by an unsustainable business environment, and presents some recommendations to ensure the planned reforms in the youth employment sector deliver on what they promise.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, Youth, and Job Creation
Political Geography:
Africa and Morocco

2. Rethinking Monopoly as a Power Relation: The Shift from Market to Intellectual Monopoly

Author:
Cecilia Rikap
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC), University of London
Abstract:
The critical literature on monopolies, from monopoly capital to recent contributions, focuses on the organization that concentrates either market power, capital or property rights. I complement this literature by conceptualizing monopolies as a power relation, which enables me to integrate different ways in which the term is used, from capitalists’ monopoly over the means of production to intellectual monopolization. As I explain here, some firms have developed greater capacities to systematically monopolize intangibles that are essential for organizing labour beyond their owned assets and for controlling demand. Coupled with institutional, political and technological changes, larger absorptive and management capacities to produce and capture knowledge and information resulted in firms’ technological differentiation. The systematic winners of the innovation race hold persistent intellectual monopolies while other firms become subordinate due to their lack of technical autonomy. From this perspective, (intellectual) monopoly power is essential for understanding the distribution of value in capitalism.
Topic:
Political Economy, Labor Issues, Capitalism, Monopoly, Capital, Power Relations, and Value Capture
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Fossil Fuel Industry Phase-Out and Just Transition: Designing Policies to Protect Workers’ Living Standards

Author:
Robert Pollin
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
This paper focuses on just transition policies targeted at supporting workers now employed in the fossil fuel industries and ancillary sectors within high-income economies. As a general normative principle, I argue that the overarching aim of such policies should be to protect workers against major losses in their living standards resulting through the fossil fuel industry phase-out. The impacted workers should be provided with three critical guarantees to accomplish this, in the area of jobs, compensation and pensions. Just transition policies should also support workers in the areas of job search, retraining and relocation, but these forms of support should be understood as supplementary. Within the framework of these broad principles, the paper first reviews experiences with transitional policies in Germany, the UK, the EU and, more briefly, Japan and Canada. A critical point that emerges is that these just transition policies do not provide the needed guarantees for assuring workers that they will not experience major living standard declines. The paper then describe an illustrative just transition program for workers that includes reemployment, income and pension guarantees, focusing on a case study for the U.S. state of West Virginia. The results show that the costs of the just transition program for West Virginia’s fossil fuel industry dependent workers will amount to an annual average of about $42,000 per worker, equal to about 0.2 percent of West Virginia’s GDP. I briefly summarize results from the seven other studies of U.S. states and for the overall U.S. economy. For the U.S. economy overall, the just transition program’s costs would total to about 0.015 percent of GDP. These findings demonstrate that providing a generous just transition program does not entail unaffordable levels of public spending. Robust just transition policies should therefore be understood as an entirely realistic prospect for all high-income economies.
Topic:
Political Economy, Labor Issues, European Union, GDP, Economy, and Fossil Fuels
Political Geography:
Japan, United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, and Germany

4. The Political Economy of the Cost of Living Crisis in the UK: What Is to Be Done?

Author:
Ozlem Onaran
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the political economy of the cost of living crisis in the context of the United Kingdom. The paper presents the long-term trends in the wage share, wealth inequality, labour’s bargaining power, and real wages in the UK. The first and second waves of inflation in 2021-22 are discussed presenting the trends in the profit margins. The policy responses by the conservative governments and the Bank of England are analyzed, and their limitations are assessed. The paper concludes with short-run and medium-run policy alternatives to the cost of living crisis
Topic:
Political Economy, Labor Issues, Inequality, Inflation, and Cost of Living
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

5. Structural transformation and sources of growth in Turkey

Author:
Ahmet Ihsan Kaya and Cumhur Çiçekçi
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the supply and demand side of structural transformation in Turkey. Using the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database, we find that labour productivity improvements explain more than half of economic growth in the period 1980–2021. This is mainly thanks to within-sector productivity improvements, while the contribution of structural change declines over time. Time-series regression analysis shows that structural change is driven by per capita income growth and financial openness but is halted by trade integration. Furthermore, decomposition analysis from input– output tables demonstrates that domestic final demand has been the main source of output growth since 1980 and the contribution of export expansion has increased over time, but import dependency has persisted. The intermediate goods industry stands out as the locomotive sector in the economy throughout the entire period according to forward and backward linkage analysis.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Economic Growth, Productivity, Income, Supply and Demand, and Structural Transformation
Political Geography:
Turkey and Middle East

6. Structural change and the National Initiative for Human Development in Morocco

Author:
Al-mouksit Akim and Wissal Sahel
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper aims to revisit the pace and patterns of structural change in Morocco with a renewed perspective focusing on subnational trends to document the macro patterns. In that perspective, we first build a within-country sectoral longitudinal dataset covering employment and value added (VA) that expands the international databases mostly used in the literature. Based on this novel dataset, our results shed light on the different contributions of subnational units (regions) to labour productivity growth and, subsequently, structural change. Taking advantage of this novel dataset, we use an instrumental variable (IV) strategy to estimate the impact of the National Initiative for Human Development (NIHD) programme on labour productivity growth and both of its components: the between (structural change) and the within components. We find that the NIHD programme positively affects productivity growth overall, mainly through structural change. The results are driven by urban areas and the participation of local actors such as associations or cooperatives in the management of NIHD projects.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Economy, Human Development, Productivity, and Structural Transformation
Political Geography:
North Africa and Morocco

7. Trade sanctions and informal employment

Author:
Ali Moghaddasi Kelishomi and Robert Nisticò
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper examines how trade sanctions affect the allocation of workers across formal and informal employment. We analyse the case of the unexpected and unprecedented trade sanctions imposed on Iran in 2012. We use a difference-in-differences approach and compare the probability of working in the informal sector before and after 2012 for individuals employed in industries with pre-existing different levels of exposure to international trade. Combining employment data from the Iranian Labour Force Survey and trade data from Iran’s Customs Administration database for the years 2008–14, we find that workers employed in industries initially facing higher exposure to trade are significantly more likely to experience informal employment in the years after 2012 than workers employed in industries with lower trade exposure. This result suggests that, in the short run, the informal sector may absorb a significant fraction of workers displaced by the trade shock caused by the sanctions. We estimate that the increase in informal employment is highest for poorly educated workers, highlighting the unequal labour market consequences of trade sanctions. We exclude that industries differentially exposed to international trade were already following a different trend in the share of informal employment in the years prior to 2012, thus providing empirical support for the validity of our identification strategy. Moreover, we show that our main result holds when accounting for potential sorting issues by an instrumental variable approach. Our findings shed light on a potentially important dimension of labour reallocation whereby trade sanctions can affect the economy of the target country. They also provide important implications for policies designed to address informal employment and to assist trade-displaced workers.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Sanctions, Employment, Trade, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
Iran and Middle East

8. The hidden inequalities of digitalisation in the post-pandemic context

Author:
Cristiano Cadagnone and Maria Savona
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Bruegel
Abstract:
Digitalisation has a ‘hidden’ impact on employment, particularly on the invisible conditions of some jobs, as perceived by workers, that are relatively less explored in the literature and that could represent a substantial social cost, particularly in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. We start by summarising a few main challenges of digitalisation, with a focus on the additional challenges brought about by the pandemic, the rise of platforms and alternative work arrangements, and the current attempts to regulate these. We then discuss the hidden aspects of inequality linked to the unmeasured side effects of digitalisation. Mental health in particular should be taken into account, particularly in the post-pandemic context, which has led to a significant amount of working from home. Also, the reduction of tasks previously done in the workplace in favour of remote working might limit social interactions, creativity and innovation potential. We conclude by suggesting areas for policy interventions.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Economy, Automation, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Europe and Global Focus

9. Employment Effects of Offshoring, Technological Change and Migration in a Group of Western European Economies: Impact on Different Occupations

Author:
Michael Landesmann and Sandra Leitner
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper estimates conditional demand models to examine the impact of offshoring, technological change, and migration on the labour demand of native workers differentiated by four different types of occupational groups: managers/professionals, clerical workers, craft (skilled) workers and manual workers. The analysis is conducted for an unbalanced panel of five economies Austria, Belgium, France, Spain, and Switzerland covering the period 2005-2018. Our results point to important and occupation-specific effects: offshoring seems to have beneficial employment effects for native craft workers in this set of economies, while negative effects for native manual workers across a wide set of industries (including manufacturing and services industries) and managers/professionals in manufacturing. Furthermore, there are important distinctions whether offshoring occurs in other advanced economies, in the EU13 or in developing countries. The analysis of the impact of technological change shows the strong positive impact which the additional IT equipment has on most occupational groups of native workers (with the exception of manual workers), while robotisation in manufacturing showed strongly negative impacts on the employment of all groups of workers and especially of craft workers. Increasing immigrant shares in the work forces showed strongly negative impacts on native workers – however, considering only the partial substitution effects and not including the potential for productivity and demand effects – and this is mostly accounted for by immigration from low- to medium-income source countries.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Migration, Labor Issues, Immigration, Foreign Direct Investment, Employment, Competition, Income Distribution, and Offshoring
Political Geography:
Europe, France, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, and Austria

10. Functional Specialisation and Working Conditions in Europe

Author:
Sandra Leitner, Roman Stöllinger, and Zuzana Zavarská
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
Specialisation in value-chain functions is one of the new phenomena introduced by global value chains (GVCs). This report investigates the effects of functional specialisation on labour markets in fabrication and R&D activities as the two polar cases of value-chain functions, whereby the former is associated with factory economies, while the latter is characteristic of headquarter economies. More precisely, a metric similar to revealed comparative advantage is used to study the effect of relative functional specialisation on wages and non-wage working conditions. In line with the GVC literature emphasising power relations and organisational aspects of production networks, we are able to identify differentiated effects for functional specialisation patterns on wages in EU member states at the industry level across time. While relative functional specialisation in fabrication tends to hold back wages, functional specialisation in R&D has a positive effect on wage progression, controlling for labour productivity, GVC participation and numerous labour supply- and labour demand-side factors. The use of a constructed ‘sharp’ instrument allows giving these results a causal interpretation. Conversely, both functional specialisation measures are found to improve some non-wage working conditions, namely workers’ physical environment and their work intensity, which is evidence against a potential ‘race to the bottom’ effect of functional specialisation along GVCs. The effect is stronger for relative specialisation in fabrication than for relative specialisation in R&D.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Labor Issues, Foreign Direct Investment, European Union, Labor Market, Value Chains, and Wages
Political Geography:
Europe

11. Striking evidence: The impact of railway strikes on competition from intercity bus services in Germany

Author:
Matthias Beestermöller, Levke Jessen-Thiesen, and Alexander Sandkamp
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
Abstract:
This paper investigates the impact of the largest rail strikes in German history on intercity buses – a then newly liberalised market. Using unique booking data of bus services, we exploit variation in rail service cancellations across routes to show that the disruption in rail transport increases bus ticket sales. Crucially, the effect persists beyond the strike, indicating that travellers do not return to their originally preferred mode of transport. It is particularly pronounced for passengers travelling on weekends. The findings suggest that customers were previously under-experimenting. Beyond transportation, our results highlight the importance of service reliability, as temporary disruptions can cause customers to permanently switch to competitors.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Business, Transportation, and Labor Strike
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

12. Does the Skill Premium Influence Educational Decisions? Evidence from Viet Nam

Author:
Ian Coxhead and Nguyen Vuong
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
Viet Nam’s economy has grown and changed in dramatic ways since WTO accession in 2007. Much of the growth and change is due to expanded international trade and FDI. These in turn have greatly increased domestic labour demand. However, growth that exploits the country’s abundant supply of low-skill labour may depress the relative demand for skills. In this paper we ask whether the skill premium – the relative price of skills, which also measures the gross economic benefit to schooling at high school and beyond – plays an influential role in schooling decisions amongst teenagers for whom wage-work is an alternative to continued education. We first use event study methods to clarify trends in wages and skill premia. We then decompose influences on upper secondary school enrolments from income growth, demographic change, and skill premia. We find that the college skill premium has a positive influence on enrolments, whereas the premium from upper secondary completion has no significant effect. Our conclusions explore implications for future productivity growth as well as economic and educational policies.
Topic:
Education, Labor Issues, Human Capital, Productivity, Skills, and Competition
Political Geography:
Vietnam and Southeast Asia

13. Cooperative Federalism in India: Towards an Inter-State Migration Council

Author:
Chinmay Tumbe
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Migration in India has tended to create friction—between the Union government and State governments, and between different State governments. This chapter reviews the nature of migration in India and its relationship with nativist sentiments and political conflicts. It argues for the establishment of an inter-State migration council, either nested within the existing framework of the Inter-State Council or led by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, that would uphold the constitutional provisions on mobility, lead on the collection and dissemination of statistics on inter-State migration, promote the portability of social security benefits, and work towards resolving migration-related disputes in the federal system
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, Employment, and Cooperative Federalism
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

14. Cooperative Federalism in Indi: Federal Aspects of India's Emerging Internal Migration Governance Frameworks

Author:
Mukta Naik
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
The exodus of millions of migrants during the 2020 Covid lockdowns resulted in an uptick in migrant-inclusive policy initiatives. Leaning on concepts developed in migration studies and organizational theory, this paper analyses emergent policy responses with a focus on the role of government. Without a coherent and explicit approach to governing migration from the Centre, State governments have actively worked towards improving governance responses to migrants. The location of initiatives outside of the nodal State labour department, convergence between departments and bilateral arrangements between States demonstrate how horizontal and vertical boundaries within the governance system were bridged innovatively by temporary orders, enterprising bureaucrats, state-society collaborations and by leveraging hitherto under-utilized provisions in existing schemes. The paper highlights migration governance as an example where the rearrangement of federal relationships under crisis conditions has offered new policy imaginations. A nascent transition away from a centralist model of migration governance has emerged, which can be accelerated and sustained by institutionalizing successful initiatives, including boundary-spanning mechanisms.
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, Governance, and Cooperative Federalism
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

15. Understanding Enablers and Barriers to Social Protection of Sanitation Workers

Author:
Anju Dwivedi, Abhinav Kumar, and Shubhagato Dasgupta
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
There has been a strong focus on improving the sanitation situation in the last decade in India due to the Government of India’s flagship program called Swachh Bharat Mission. In the last decade, the country witnessed an increase in the number of toilets, Sewer Treatment Plants and Faecal Sludge Treatment plants. The demand for sanitation services has spotlighted the issue of sanitation workers too. Sanitation workers are vital to the provision of safe sanitation for all the residents in the city. However, hazardous work conditions and low social status, coupled with discrimination, long working hours, and lack of social protection, accentuate their vulnerabilities. Recognizing the high level of social and economic vulnerability and discrimination faced by sanitation workers, the Government of India (GoI) and several state governments have initiated many programs and schemes, including social protection measures for Sanitation workers. The main objective of the research is to identify the enablers and barriers to availing social protection benefits (in the form of healthcare, insurance, pensions, and allowances) for sanitation workers. The study examines the social protection coverage of formal and informal sanitation workers in Dhenkanal, Odisha. Semi-structured interviews with Sanitation workers employed with ULB, private contractors and Area Level Federation were conducted to understand the challenges faced by Sanitation workers in accessing social protection. In addition, key informant interviews were also carried out with leaders from employee unions of sanitation workers, ULB officials, and other stakeholders, including private contractors. The study recognizes enablers such as a favourable policy environment, capacity enhancement, collaboration with other stakeholders, and barriers like low awareness, inadequate capacities, and lack of institutional convergence mechanisms to improve socioeconomic well-being and promote sanitation workers’ safety, dignity, and social protection. This study highlights the disparity in working conditions and employment benefits received by regular and contractual sanitation workers, the need for creating a formal grievance redressal mechanism and undertaking measures to build the capacity of sanitation workers. The report presents key recommendations emerging from the study, such as greater involvement of employee unions, convergence with other departments providing welfare benefits to sanitation workers, improving grievance redressal mechanisms, and creating more awareness and information dissemination to sanitation workers on different social protection measures.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Protection, and Sanitation Workers
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

16. Local Voices, Global Action: Transnational Organizing in Apparel Supply Chains

Author:
Judy Gearhart
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Accountability Research Center (ARC), American University
Abstract:
This working paper discusses transnational organizing in apparel supply chains. It learns from labor rights advocates in the global South who are building social movements, advocating for national reforms, and promoting new forms of accountability in the apparel industry. In particular, the paper examines how the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS) and Cambodia’s Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL) have each played a critical role in advancing new agreements and monitoring their implementation. They have increasingly influenced and become leaders in the Clean Clothes Campaign Network. Based on multiple interviews with CENTRAL’s Tola Moeun and BCWS’s Kalpona Akter, the paper traces how they have worked with international allies to expose flaws in supply chain monitoring in the apparel industry. It discusses how they worked with independent trade unions to build grassroots campaigns that often preceded or inspired international campaigns. At the same time as Moeun and Akter came under threat for their national advocacy, they engaged international allies and became experts on trade policy and global supply chains. They are now not only leading proponents of enforceable, multiparty agreements between multinational corporations (MNCs) and independent trade unions, but also advocates for more effective mandatory human rights due diligence laws (MHRDD). Balancing this international advocacy with organizing for national policy reforms is a strategy made all the more necessary by the context of shrinking civic space in Bangladesh and Cambodia. Many companies are seeking to strengthen their human rights due diligence in supplier countries and to engage stakeholders in that process. At this time, the perspectives and experience of BCWS and CENTRAL help identify what is needed to advance more worker-centered approaches. Three sets of lessons emerge about what is needed to sustain transnational supply chain advocacy movements. Firstly, movement-building and trust are vital ingredients in effective supply chain advocacy. Secondly, it is important for human rights due diligence processes to take into account risks to worker rights. Thirdly, strengthening worker voice in global supply chains requires more effective scrutiny and regulation of MNCs.
Topic:
Human Rights, Labor Issues, Supply Chains, Trade Unions, Community Organizing, and Textile Industry
Political Geography:
Bangladesh, South Asia, Cambodia, and Southeast Asia

17. Equality Denied: Tech and African Americans

Author:
William Lazonick, Philip Moss, and Joshua Weitz
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
Thus far in reporting the findings of our project “Fifty Years After: Black Employment in the United States Under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,” our analysis of what has happened to African American employment over the past half century has documented the importance of manufacturing employment to the upward socioeconomic mobility of Blacks in the 1960s and 1970s and the devastating impact of rationalization—the permanent elimination of blue-collar employment—on their socioeconomic mobility in the 1980s and beyond. The upward mobility of Blacks in the earlier decades was based on the Old Economy business model (OEBM) with its characteristic “career-with-one-company” (CWOC) employment relations. At its launching in 1965, the policy approach of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission assumed the existence of CWOC, providing corporate employees, Blacks included, with a potential path for upward socioeconomic mobility over the course of their working lives by gaining access to productive opportunities and higher pay through stable employment within companies. It was through these internal employment structures that Blacks could potentially overcome barriers to the long legacy of job and pay discrimination
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, Discrimination, Models, and Equality of Opportunity
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

18. Investing in Innovation: A Policy Framework for Attaining Sustainable Prosperity in the United States

Author:
William Lazonick
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
“Sustainable prosperity” denotes an economy that generates stable and equitable growth for a large and growing middle class. From the 1940s into the 1970s, the United States appeared to be on a trajectory of sustainable prosperity, especially for white-male members of the U.S. labor force. Since the 1980s, however, an increasing proportion of the U.S labor force has experienced unstable employment and inequitable income, while growing numbers of the business firms upon which they rely for employment have generated anemic productivity growth.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Economic Inequality, and Sustainability
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

19. Working Paper Permanent Scars: The Effects of Wages on Productivity

Author:
Claudia Fontanari and Antonella Palumbo
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
This paper explores how stagnating real wages may have contributed to the slowdown of US productivity. Through shift-share analysis, we find that after a sharp change in distribution against wages, some historically high-productivity sectors (like manufacturing) switched towards slower productivity growth. This supports our hypothesis that the anemic growth of productivity may be partly due to the trend toward massive use of cheap labor. Our estimation of Sylos Labini’s productivity equation confirms the existence of two direct effects of wages, one acting through the incentive to mechanization and the other through the incentive to reorganize labor use. We also show that labor ‘weakness’ may exert a further negative effect on labor productivity. On the whole, we find that a persistent regime of low wages may determine very negative long-term consequences on the economy.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Economic Theory, and Wages
Political Geography:
Global Focus

20. Youth unemployment in the South of the Mediterranean: A chronic challenge to development and stability

Author:
Hussein Suleiman
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
IEMed/EuroMeSCo
Abstract:
Unemployment among youth, aged 15 to 24 years old according to the International Labour Organization (ILO)’s definition, is the highest in the south of the Mediterranean, and in the larger Middle East and North Africa (MENA), compared to other regions in the world. This problem is exacerbated by very low labour force participation rates for this age group in the region, also compared to other regions. Furthermore, this issue of high youth unemployment is not a recent development but has been chronic in the region for at least the last three decades, as shown in detail further on. Youth unemployment south of the Mediterranean is a major challenge, and a symptom of deeply-rooted problems in the region’s labour markets. Unemployment is largely a youth unemployment issue. The problem is mainly one of new entrants’ transition from school age to work (Assaad & Krafft, 2016) but with consequences that could easily shape the entire life trajectories of individuals in the region and also have widespread impacts on their societies and even neighbouring countries. Such worrying and chronic challenges in the region’s labour markets have been largely shaped by structural deeply-rooted issues, reflected in the rise of work informality as a result of falling public employment, and a slow growth of formal private employment in the region throughout the last few decades, which will be discussed in detail in the paper. This paper aims to provide policy recommendations to address such chronic problems in the region, focusing mainly on Southern Mediterranean countries in North Africa, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, excluding Libya because of the exceptional impact of the civil war on its labour market during the last decade. The paper first explores some prominent implications of low employment among the youth, for their own lives and their societies. It then proceeds to examine the magnitude of the problem in the selected countries and its development across the last three decades, relying mostly on ILO estimates, which, unlike national estimates, have a few missing entries in that extended period, and also allow for disaggregation by age groups and gender that might not always be available for national estimates. Next, the paper highlights the now-established explanation of the youth employment problem in the region and how it developed, before finally moving to the recommended policy measures, both domestic and through regional cooperation, to address this chronic problem that has played a major role in the radical political and social shocks in the region in the last decade.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, Youth, and Unemployment
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Middle East, and Mediterranean

21. Building Resilience Blocks: How to Improve the Quality of Work for the Egyptian Construction Precariat?

Author:
Hanaa Ebeid and Salma Hussein
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
IEMed/EuroMeSCo
Abstract:
The past two years have revealed the difficult living conditions of millions around the world experiencing compounded insecurities, especially of work and income. Within this context, this paper explores how the notion of precarity applies to informal construction workers in Egypt. It argues that their working conditions fail to satisfy the decent work indicators recommended by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and relevant literature. The paper also assesses the Egyptian government’s intervention during the COVID-19 pandemic regarding informal irregular workers. The government pushed forward infrastructure projects in order to cushion the impact of the pandemic on unemployment. It also distributed cash transfers to irregular informal workers for six months. The paper explains why these measures were not enough. Based on focus group discussions, an in-depth interview and an extensive study of ILO literature, the paper puts forward a set of recommendations with the aim of improving the quality of work under which the majority of workers in the construction sector in Egypt live.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Resilience, and Construction
Political Geography:
Africa and Egypt

22. International Production Network in the Next Generation and the Role of RCEP

Author:
Mitsuyo Ando, Fukunari Kimura, and Kenta Yamanouchi
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
This paper attempts to discuss the potential role of RCEP from the perspective of two kinds of international division of labor, i.e., machinery international production networks (IPNs) and digital-related services trade. To consider the possible contribution of RCEP to the widening and deepening of IPNs, we first provide an overview of machinery IPNs in ASEAN and East Asia by employing international trade data, a value-added based index for global value chain (GVC) activities using international input–output tables, and a gravity equation exercise. Then, we focus on trade in two global innovator services – information and communication technology (ICT) services and other business services exports – to foresee the future of the new international division of labour and highlights some policy issues. RCEP should be an evolving, living one. In terms of liberalisation and facilitation as well as international rule-making, which cover the whole region, RCEP is expected to revise and upgrade the contents to support the dynamic international division of labour in East Asia. At the same time, RCEP may play an important role in reducing policy risks due to ad hoc trade policies based on political intension and defending the rules-based trading regime for the regional economy.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Labor Issues, and Digital Economy
Political Geography:
Asia and ASEAN

23. Economic Integration of Venezuelan Immigrants in Colombia: A Policy Roadmap

Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
This paper studies the formal labor market integration and firm creation of Venezuelan immigrants and refugees in Colombia between late 2019 to late 2021. It applies a novel framework to identify segments of the Colombian economy where Venezuelan immigrants and refugees are lagging behind. When it comes to labor market dynamics, we identify professional services as one of the sectors where Venezuelan workers are not integrating fast enough consistently across different parts of the country, hinting that the recognition of professional credentials might be an important bottleneck to effective integration. As for entrepreneurship, we find that sectors where there are fewer firm creations by foreigners as compared to locals include commerce and service industries all across the nation. This paper is accompanied by a set of downloadable files which list sectors of the economy in each geographic department with poor integration of Venezuelan immigrants both for labor markets and firm creation. These lists are meant to be used by national and local policymakers for further investigation of possible market failures or distortions hindering immigrant integration, given our results.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Immigration, and Economic Integration
Political Geography:
Colombia, South America, and Venezuela

24. Pathways for Labor Migration from Northern Central America: Five Difficult but Necessary Proposals

Author:
Michael A. Clemens
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Very few labor-based pathways for regular migration are available for people in Northern Central America, often called the “Northern Triangle” of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. This paper briefly summarizes the state of labor-based migration channels in the region. It then argues that extending those channels is a necessary complement to asylum reform even for the goal of humanitarian protection. It concludes by arguing that five recommendations for long-term reform, though difficult, are needed to unleash the maximum shared benefit of these pathways.
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, Asylum, and Immigration Policy
Political Geography:
Central America, North America, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

25. Why and How Development Agencies Facilitate Labor Migration

Author:
Helen Dempster and Beza Tesfaye
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Development agencies in high-income countries spend a large amount of both official development assistance (ODA) and other forms of financing on migration programming. While most of this spending is aimed at deterring migration, increasingly more is being focused on facilitating migration: to the high-income country itself; within and between low- and middle-income countries; and supporting people on the move and the diaspora. This paper, written by the Center for Global Development and Mercy Corps, aims to explore why and how development agencies in high-income countries facilitate labor, or economic, migration, and how they have been able to justify and expand their mandate in this area. Based on interviews with nine development agencies, we find that development agencies use a range of arguments to justify their work in this area, including supporting economic development and poverty reduction in partner countries while also meeting labor market demands at home or other countries. Yet expanding a mandate in this area requires substantial cross-government coordination and political buy-in, both of which are difficult to achieve. It also requires the ability to be able to use ODA to facilitate labor migration, which is currently up for debate. As development agencies seek to expand their work on labor migration, it will be necessary to define shared goals and start with pilot projects that focus on low-hanging fruit, while maintaining a focus on development and poverty reduction.
Topic:
Development, Migration, Diaspora, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
Global Focus

26. COVID-19, Long-Term Care, and Migration in Asia

Author:
Azusa Sato and Helen Dempster
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Countries throughout Asia are experiencing rapidly aging populations and increasing life expectancy, leading to a large and growing demand for long-term care (LTC) services. Despite the shift to providing care within communities and at home, governments are struggling to provide enough LTC to meet demand. A large part of the constraint is the lack of available workers. While many countries in the region have migration schemes to bring in LTC workers, they are insufficient. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an outsized impact on older people throughout the region, and has exposed deficiencies in the structure of migrant care labor. This report explores the impact of these three dynamics—LTC, migration, and COVID-19—on the current and future LTC workforce in the Asian region. It showcases 11 countries of origin and destination, including the demand for and supply of LTC, how it is financed and resourced, and where and how migrant workers are sourced. It puts forward recommendations for how governments throughout Asia can ethically and sustainably increase LTC worker migration; improve wages, working conditions, and recruitment processes within the sector; and learn lessons from COVID-19.
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Asia

27. Labour market effects of digital matching platforms: Experimental evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

Author:
Sam Jones and Kunal Sen
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Can digital labour market platforms reduce search frictions in either formal or informal labour markets? We study this question using a randomized experiment embedded in a tracer study of the work transitions of graduates from technical and vocational colleges in Mozambique. We implement an encouragement design, inviting graduates by SMS to join one of two local digital platforms: Biscate, a site to find freelancers for informal manual tasks; and Emprego, a conventional formal jobs website. In contrast to positive estimates of the contribution of both platforms to job outcomes from naïve (per-treatment) estimates, both intent-to-treat and complier average treatment effects are consistently zero in the full sample, while the impact on life satisfaction is negative. However, use of the informal jobs platform leads to better work outcomes for women, especially those with manual qualifications, for whom earnings rise by over 50 per cent.
Topic:
Education, Labor Issues, Digital Economy, and Unemployment
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique

28. Female labour supply and informal employment in Ecuador

Author:
H. Xavier Jara and Pia Rattenhuber
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Low- and middle-income countries face a trade-off between raising tax revenue to strengthen social protection and creating incentives for the population to enter formal employment. However, empirical evidence on labour supply elasticities in the presence of informal employment remains scarce. This paper analyses female labour supply behaviour and the choice between formal and informal employment in Ecuador, a middle-income country characterized by persistent levels of informal employment particularly among women. We use two methods to estimate and compare formal employment elasticities: (i) a discrete choice model of labour supply with informality and (ii) grouped-data estimation techniques. For identification, we exploit variation in tax–benefit policies covering the period 2011–19, using microsimulation techniques applied to household survey data. Our results show that, on average, formal employment elasticities for single women are low regardless of the approach chosen. However, for women in couples, formal employment elasticities are larger under the discrete choice approach whereas they are low and non-significant under the grouped-data estimations.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Women, Employment, and Tax Systems
Political Geography:
Central America and Ecuador

29. Trade Liberalization, Collective Bargaining and Workers: Wages and Working Conditions

Author:
Bastien Alvarez, Gianluca Orefice, and Farid Toubal
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales (CEPII)
Abstract:
Using large scale data on Eastern European workers, we show significant and sizable deteriorations of their wages and working conditions in regions that faced large tariff liberalization and strong erosion of collective bargaining over the process of accession to the European Union. Import tariffs liberalization reduces workers' wages. The deterioration of working conditions is mostly driven by increased labor demand due to the improvement of Eastern countries' international market access. The erosion of collective bargaining worsens wages and working conditions.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Tariffs, Collective Bargaining, and Wages
Political Geography:
Europe and Eastern Europe

30. The Heterogenous Effects of Employers’ Concentration on Wages: Better Sorting or Uneven Rent Extracting?

Author:
Axelle Arquie and Julia Bertin
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales (CEPII)
Abstract:
We show empirically for France that labor market concentration decreases wages heterogeneously, with the lowest earners being the most vulnerable, and increases local wage inequality within occupations. If concentration allows employers to improve worker selection, both inequality and efficiency gains could materialize. However, based on a simple formalization, we interpret the findings that employer concentration increases within-firm inequality and decreases between-firm inequality as evidence against such a sorting mechanism. We also find evidence that employer concentration does not increase positive assortative matching. The results therefore suggest that concentration increases inequality through the relatively reduced bargaining position of the lowest earners.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Inequality, Labor Market, and Wages
Political Geography:
Europe and France

31. Stolen decades: the unfulfilled expectations of the Belarusian economic miracle

Author:
Aleś Alachnovič and Julia Korosteleva
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Social and Economic Research - CASE
Abstract:
The case of the Belarusian economy has puzzled many academic scholars for years. Belarus has often been referred to as a transition outlier, given its relatively fast recovery in 1996 and spectacular growth prior to the global financial crisis without much transformation of its economy. Three decades after gaining its independence, the state control of the economy still remains considerably high. Subsidized financing of state-owned enterprises allowed to preserve production capabilities over the first decade, to achieve some productivity gains in the late 1990s–early 2000s, and to avoid social destabilization. However, with a delay in structural reforms, this economic model, also heavily dependent on the Russian subsidies and foreign debt, has become fatigue, driving the economy into stagnation in the 2010s. The Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 post-presidential political crisis and Russia’s war in Ukraine in 2022 put further strains on the economy, calling for change. This working paper gives an overview of the Belarusian economic developments before the presidential elections to have a better understanding of how various rigidities of the Belarusian economic model have amplified the detrimental effect of the political unrest for the economy and the Belarusian society overall, and discusses the anticrisis and mid-term economic reforms Belarus will have to undergo.
Topic:
Demographics, Labor Issues, Economy, Social Policy, and Trade
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe and Belarus

32. Frontline Workers and the Covid-19 Pandemic

Author:
Gokulnath Govindan
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic proved to be a global disaster that took countless lives, many of whom were frontline functionaries deployed to contain this crisis. As a result, the Indian state, unlike before, had to acknowledge the risk that accompanied their workers in this crisis. They promised them vaccination, health & life insurance, amongst other material benefits to protect, insure and motivate such cadres. The paper attempts to study these promises, in particular its vaccination and insurance policies, to better understand what it meant to be a frontline worker in this crisis. Did the Indian administration account for all at-risk workers and their context, or did they simply exclude many of them in their policies ? The essay, at its core, will answer this question as it examines the Indian state’s capacity to celebrate its frontline workers.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Crisis Management, Risk, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

33. Time Use Data in Feminist Political Economy Analyses: Gender and Class in the Indian Time Use Survey

Author:
Sirisha Naidu and Smriti Rao
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
The literature on agrarian change in India has largely employed class categories based upon data on land, assets and occupational status. Land and asset data tend to exist at the level of households, while occupation categories have neither fully counted reproductive labour nor accounted for diversified livelihood strategies. As a result, categorizations of class in the literature on agrarian change tend to collapse women’s class relations into those of male household heads. The recent completion of India’s first ever national time use survey provides an opportunity to address these longstanding gaps. This paper examines whether and how the 2019 Indian Time Use data lends itself to an understanding of class relations that i) can better accommodate an expanded conception of work as including reproductive labor ii) better accommodate the highly diversified livelihoods of rural Indians iii) better grasp the articulation of caste and gender differentiated labor processes with capital. In this paper, we are able to show i) and ii). The third goal is somewhat stymied by the absence of qualitative data that contextualize time use data. We compare the class relational mapping obtained from time use data with that obtained from land and occupational data and examine the possibilities and limits of employing time use data to deepen feminist political economy analyses of agrarian change.
Topic:
Agriculture, Political Economy, Labor Issues, Feminism, Caste, and Gender
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

34. A Call to Action: The Federal Government’s Role in Building a Cybersecurity Workforce for the Nation

Author:
Daniel Chenok and Karen S. Evans
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The National Academy of Public Administration
Abstract:
Cybersecurity is a significant concern for governments, businesses, universities, service providers, and citizens throughout the country. Ransomware attacks and other cyber intrusions are featured in the news almost daily, and there is a growing demand for cybersecurity workers who can protect the electronic systems that enable so many aspects of our lives and our economy. In recognition of these vulnerabilities, the Academy identified as one of its twelve Grand Challenges in Public Administration the need to Ensure Data Security and Privacy Rights of Individuals. Yet only recently has the federal government begun to bring together key federal and nonfederal actors to address cybersecurity workforce problems. As part of the FY 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act, Congress directed the Department of Homeland Security to contract with the National Academy of Public Administration (or a similar organization) to review the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) programs (primarily housed within the Cybersecurity Defense Education and Training [CDET] branch) to build a national cybersecurity workforce. The task was to assess the excellence, scalability, and diversity of select CISA/CDET workforce-development programs and to consider alternative models for building a cyber workforce. Our study Panel of Academy Fellows also looked at additional efforts across the government aimed at ensuring the nation’s cybersecurity workforce needs are being met. The Academy’s Study Team staff performed the research and analysis to inform Panel member analysis and recommendations. I deeply appreciate our Panel members, who provided valuable guidance and introductions to federal and nonfederal leaders in the cybersecurity workforce development field. The views expressed in this report are those of the Panel. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the time and contributions as subject matter experts of Academy Fellows Franklin Reeder, Director Emeritus and Founding Chair, Center for Internet Security, and Ronald Sanders, Staff Director, The Florida Center for Cybersecurity at the University of South Florida. Both went above and beyond to provide information, context, contacts, and other guidance to the Study Team and Panel. Last, but far from least, I appreciate the constructive engagement with CISA leaders and experts— including those in CDET—along with current and former federal officials and numerous private sector leaders in related federal, academic, and private sector fields who contributed to the development of this report. The Panel’s report presents findings and recommendations that support the development of an effective cybersecurity workforce for the government and for the nation. The report acknowledges that this can be done only through strong, ongoing national coordination and leadership reaching across federal agencies and the larger economy. I hope these recommendations help build a more robust and resilient cybersecurity workforce to better support the nation’s long-term security posture and capabilities.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Labor Issues, Cybersecurity, and Leadership
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

35. The COVID-19 Pandemic in Latin American and Caribbean countries: The Labor Supply Impact by Gender

Author:
Mariana Viollaz, Mauricio Salazar-Saenz, Luca Flabbi, Monserrat Bustelo, and Mariano Bosch
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
We study the labor supply impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by gender in four Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries: Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, and Mexico. To identify the impact, we compare labor market stocks and labor market flows over four quarters for a set of balanced panel samples of comparable workers before and after the pandemic. We find that the pandemic has negatively affected the labor market status of both men and women, but that the effect is significantly stronger for women, magnifying the already large gender gaps that characterize LAC countries. The main channel through which this stronger impact is taking place is the increase in child care work affecting women with school-age children.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Markets, Labor Issues, Inequality, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Latin America and Caribbean

36. Gazan Workers in Israel: Implications for Employment Regulations

Author:
Haggy Etkes and Wifag Adnan
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for National Security Studies (INSS)
Abstract:
New arrangements for the employment of Gazan workers in Israel in construction and agriculture began on August 1. This article presents the findings of a study on employment of Gazans in Israel: it demonstrates the rise in income among Gazans who work in Israel, while showing the difficulty related to regulation for workers employed in the manufacturing and service industries, which did not receive permits to employ Gazans
Topic:
Labor Issues, Regulation, COVID-19, and Migrant Workers
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Gaza

37. Undocumented Palestinian workers in Israel: Did the Israeli COVID-19 Policy Boost their Employment?

Author:
Haggy Etkes and Wifag Adnan
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for National Security Studies (INSS)
Abstract:
Three of the terrorist attacks that occurred in recent weeks in Israel were carried out by undocumented workers – a phenomenon that has grown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. How did the pandemic lead to a rise in the number of undocumented workers and how can the phenomenon be reduced?
Topic:
Labor Issues, Pandemic, COVID-19, Migrant Workers, and Undocumented Population
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

38. Industrial Robots, and Information and Communication Technology: The Employment Effects in EU Labour Markets

Author:
Stefan Jestl
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper explores the effects of industrial robots and information and communication technology (ICT) on regional employment in EU countries. The empirical analysis relies on a harmonised comprehensive regional dataset, which combines business statistics and national and regional accounts data. This rich dataset enables us to provide detailed insights into the employment effects of automation and computerisation in EU regions for the period 2001-2016. The results suggest relatively weak effects on regional total employment dynamics. However, employment effects differ between manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries. Industrial robots show negative employment effects in local manufacturing industries, but positive employment effects in local non-manufacturing industries. While the negative effect is concentrated in particular local manufacturing industries, the positive effect operates in local service industries. IT investments show positive employment effects only in local manufacturing industries, while CT investments are shown to be irrelevant for employment dynamics. In contrast, software and database investments have had a predominantly negative impact on local employment in both local manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries.
Topic:
Labor Issues, European Union, Employment, Industry, Robotics, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
Europe

39. Does my Computer Protect me from Burnout? Cross-country Evidence on the Impact of ICT use within the Job Demands-Resources Model

Author:
Sandra Leitner and Roman Stöllinger
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper uses a large sample of employees from 35 European countries to study the direct and indirect effects of ICT use on burnout and work engagement as two opposite poles of employee psychological health, where the former comprises the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy. It applies the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model and analyses the mediating role of three job demands (work extensity, work intensity, social demands) and four job resources (social support from management or colleagues, job control, rewards) on workers’ psychological health. It accounts for the importance of the place of work for the effect of ICT use on workers’ psychological health by differentiating between four types of workers: home-based workers, highly mobile workers, occasionally mobile workers, and workers who always work at the employer’s premises. The results show that ICT use is associated with lower levels of exhaustion but is unrelated to work engagement. Furthermore, work intensity, work extensity, social demands and rewards mediate the effect of ICT use on exhaustion, while job control and rewards mediate the effect of ICT use on work engagement. Our multi-group analysis attributes the negative effect of ICT use on exhaustion mainly to occasionally mobile workers and to workers who always work at the employer’s premises and highlights that the factors that mediate the effect of ICT use on workers’ psychological health differ across the four types of workers. Home-based workers stand out in two important respects: first, ICT use per se is unrelated to burnout; second, only one factor – work intensity – mediates the effect of ICT use on burnout, but its effect is especially strong.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Work Culture, Engagement, Computers, and Burnout
Political Geography:
Europe

40. The Impact of ICT and Intangible Capital Accumulation on Labour Demand Growth and Functional Income Shares

Author:
Robert Stehrer
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper investigates whether the diffusion of tangible IT and CT capital and intangible capital asset types has an impact on labour demand growth and the share of labour income in total income at the industry and country level. The econometric analysis is derived from a Cobb-Douglas production function taking empirical stylized facts into account. The effects of technical progress embodied in the various forms of capital impact along inter-industry and intercountry production linkages, which are considered by using global value chain indicators. The analysis is broken down to examine the influence on different types of labour, including the dimensions of gender, age, and educational attainment. Accumulation of ICT assets have generally insignificant and in some cases small positive effects on labour demand and income shares, though patterns differ across types of labour. Intangible assets show a positive relation with respect to labour demand growth.
Topic:
Labor Issues, European Union, Capital, Income, and Capital Accumulation
Political Geography:
Europe

41. How Comparable are India’s Labour Market Surveys?

Author:
Rosa Abraham and Anand Shrivastava
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s (CMIE) Consumer Pyramid Household surveys have emerged as an important source of regular labour market data for India. Given the differences in methods in data collection between the CMIE and official employment sources, it becomes exceedingly important to establish some comparability between the government and the CMIE datasets. With the release of the official labour surveys, Periodic Labour Force Surveys for 2017-18, we now have an overlap between the official datasets and CMIE datasets. In this paper, we examine the extent of comparability of labour force estimates from these two datasets. We find that employment estimates for men are broadly comparable. However, for women, there is a consistent divergence with CMIE estimates of women’s workforce participation lower than that of NSS-PLFS. We explore the points of divergence in the measurement of women’s work and hypothesise some potential reasons for this difference. We find that irrespective of the reference period used in the PLFS estimation of employment statuses, there is no convergence with the CMIE employment estimate for women’s employment. Moreover, the mismatch in CMIE-PLFS estimates occurs across all types of women’s employment and irrespective of what reference period of employment (in official data) is used.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Women, and Employment
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

42. Labour incomes in India: A comparison of PLFS and CMIE-CPHS data

Author:
Mrinalini Jha and Amit Basole
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic has created a need for high frequency employment and income data to gauge the nature and extent of shock and recovery from month to month. Lack of such high frequency household-level data from official sources has forced researchers to rely almost entirely on the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS) conducted by the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE). Recently, the CPHS has been criticised for missing poor and vulnerable households in its sample. In this context, it becomes important to develop a detailed understanding of how comparable CPHS estimates are to other more familiar sources. We examine the comparability of monthly labour income estimates for the pre-pandemic year (2018-19) for CPHS and the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS). Across different methods and assumptions, as well as rural/urban locations, CPHS mean monthly labour earnings are anywhere between 5 percent to 50 percent higher than corresponding PLFS estimates. In addition to the sampling concerns raised in the literature, we point to differences in the way employment and income are captured in the two surveys as possible causes of these differences. While CPHS estimates are always higher, it should also be emphasized that the two surveys agree on some stylized facts regarding the Indian workforce. An individual earning INR 50,000 per month lies in the top 5 percent of the income distribution in India as per both surveys. Second, both PLFS and CPHS show that half the Indian workforce earns below the recommended National Minimum Wage.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Survey, Data, COVID-19, and Income
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

43. Loss, Recovery and the Long Road Ahead: Tracking India’s Informal Workers Through the Pandemic

Author:
Paaritosh Nath, Nelson Mandela, and Aishwarya Gawali
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Drawing on results from a panel of 2778 workers interviewed during and after the 68-day hard lockdown imposed in India, the following study examines the livelihood impact of the pandemic and the extent of subsequent recovery or lack thereof. Focussing specifically on workers located in the informal economy, the study is a useful addition to the burgeoning body of work on the economic impacts of Covid-19 by providing an insight into the employment and earnings recovery of those located at the margins. These findings are spliced across socio-economic groups to showcase the differential impact of the pandemic on different demographics within the informal sector. Our results show that six months after the hard lockdown, one out five persons were still out of work. Conditioned on being employed prior to the lockdown and having lost work during the lockdown, we find that urban respondents, women, workers above sixty and graduates were significantly less likely to recover from the shock. A similar exercise carried out for women workers showed that middle aged women, never married women and women who were not-literate women or educated up until primary and middle school were significantly more likely to recover from job loss. Older women, those located in urban areas and Muslim women were on the other hand significantly less likely to recover from the job loss. Earnings on the whole were half of what they used to be prior to the pandemic. Some better off workers shifted to more precarious types of employment. Given the fall in earnings poorer worker households were forced to borrow and the amount of loan taken was multiple times their average monthly income. In the context of loss in employment and reverse migration, the survey results show a substantial unmet demand for work under the MGNREGA programme even after the lockdown was lifted. We conclude that despite a partial recovery in the subsequent period, the pandemic induced lockdown has undermined the material conditions for subsistence for a large segment within the informal economy. Moreover, any attempts made to re-imagine what a social protection programme for the informal economy should look like must take into account the segments most susceptible to an economic shock on their livelihoods.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, Survey, COVID-19, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

44. Did the nation-wide implementation of e-FMS in MGNREGS result in reduced expenditures? A re-examination of the evidence

Author:
Deepti Goel, J. V. Meenakshi, and Zaeen De Souza
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper revisits a part of the analysis by Banerjee et al. (2020), in which they examine the consequences of the nation-wide scale up of reforms to the funds management system (e-FMS) in India’s national workfare programme, using a two-way fixed effects specification. They report a substantial 19 percent reduction in labour expenditures. We exploit the recent literature that highlights the limitations of the TWFE estimator in the presence of staggered roll out and effect a Goodman-Bacon decomposition of the TWFE coefficient, to pinpoint sources of identifying variation. We undertake a detailed examination of subsamples of six constituent and valid DiDs based on timing of treatment that are averaged into the TWFE coefficient to identify heterogeneity in treatment effects. This disaggregated subsample analysis does not support the conclusion of any reductions in MGNREGS labour expenditures, suggesting that the TWFE coefficient based on the full sample is indeed biased.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Governance, Public Finance, and E-Government
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

45. Reigniting labour productivity growth in developing countries: Do structural reforms matter?

Author:
Kwamivi Gomado
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
While the negative effects of the 2008 global financial crisis on labour productivity are still fresh in people’s minds, the COVID-19 pandemic raises concerns that productivity will continue to decline. To boost labour productivity and regain economic performance, there is an empirical consensus on the role of structural reforms that allows an efficient reallocation of resources such as labour by reducing rigidities in markets. This study analyses the role of certain structural reforms in improving labour productivity in 35 developing countries over the period of 1990–2014. From the local projection method, our results show that structural reforms have a positive impact on productivity growth in the short and medium terms. The results also illustrate that reforms induce an efficient reallocation of resources within but not between sectors. Taking the business cycle into account in estimates shows that structural reforms stimulate labour productivity growth better in periods of low economic growth.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Financial Crisis, Reform, Business, Economic Growth, and Productivity
Political Geography:
Global Focus

46. The Political Economy of the Landscape of Trade Unions in Bangladesh: The Case of the RMG Sector

Author:
Mirza M. Hassan, Syeda Salina Aziz, Raeesa Rahemin, Insiya Khan, and Rafsanul Hoque
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), Brac University
Abstract:
The paper explores the political economy landscape of trade unionism in Bangladesh. The focus is on the Ready-Made Garments (RMG) sector, where trade unions (TU) are highly salient and relatively more operational because of the sector’s economic importance, numerical strength of the labour, high degree of concentration of the industries, and TU’s global network, among other factors. Relying predominantly on primary data, we look at both the formal and informal dimensions of industrial relations and their implications for the state-capital-labour interactions as well as governance of TUs. Literature on RMG-related TUs in Bangladesh generally examines it from a social movement perspective. We take a slightly different approach in this paper by making a modest attempt to fulfil the knowledge gaps in TU research. We do this by exploring the formal and informal aspects of relations between the regulatory institutions and the TUs and, more importantly, the internal governance of the TUs themselves as noted above. Additionally, we explore the two-way relational dynamics of TU leaders and the garment workers. These areas have not received much attention in the extant literature. By adopting a politico-sociological perspective, the paper reflects on the collective action dynamics of industrial labour in the context of the global south.
Topic:
Political Economy, Labor Issues, Economy, Trade Unions, and Textile Industry
Political Geography:
Bangladesh and South Asia

47. Picture This: Social Distance and the Mistreatment of Migrant Workers

Author:
Toman Barsbai, Vojtech Bartos, Victoria Licuanan, Andreas Steinmayr, Erwin Tiongson, and Dean Yang
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
Abstract:
We experimentally study an intervention to reduce mistreatment of Filipino over?seas domestic workers (DWs) by their employers. Encouraging DWs to show their employers a family photo while providing a small gift when starting employment reduced DW mistreatment, increased their job satisfaction, and increased the likeli?hood of contract extension. While generally unaware of the intervention, DWs’ fam?ilies staying behind become more positive about international labor migration. An online experiment with potential employers suggests that the effect operates through a reduction in employers’ perceived social distance from their employees.
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, Labor Market, Migrant Workers, and Contracts
Political Geography:
Philippines and Global Focus

48. A Rights-Based Approach to Governing Online Freelance Labour: Towards Decent Work in Digital Labour Platforms

Author:
Julius Caesar Trajano
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
The emergence of cross-border, web-based digital labour platforms has been among the major transformations in the world of work over the past decade. Through these platforms, tasks are performed online and remotely by freelance workers. Digital labour platforms facilitate the real-time hiring of freelance workers for a plethora of tasks, such as IT programming, language teaching, virtual assistance, marketing, graphic designing, project management, and even research and development. The global trend is that jobs are outsourced on these platforms by businesses located in the global North and performed by freelance workers residing in the global South. This NTS Insight offers a preliminary study on the emergence of web-based, cross-border digital labour and its impact on labour rights and social protection, with a special focus on online freelance workers from Southeast Asia. It reviews the efforts of ASEAN and national governments in the region to promote social protection of these workers and address challenges to rights-based governance for digital labour platforms. This Insight offers possible areas for action by Southeast Asian countries to promote rights and social protection for their workers who are engaged in web-based digital freelance labour.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Governance, Digital Economy, and Digitalization
Political Geography:
Global South

49. A Pacific Skills Visa: Improving Opportunities for Skilled Migration Throughout the Pacific Region

Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The demand for skills exceeds supply, both within the Pacific Islands and the high-income countries of the Pacific Rim. Enhancing skilled migration therefore has the potential to generate large economic gains. The Global Skill Partnership is a migration model that can support such mutually beneficial mobility by moving training into the country of origin. In this paper, we outline its regional application to the Pacific. To assess the potential economic gains from such a Pacific Skills Partnership, we present new data on earnings and the cost of training in the Pacific Islands for three qualifications—accountants, computer science graduates, and chefs—and explore how such training could be financed through loan schemes. Graduates could be provided with internationally accredited qualifications and a new Pacific Skills Visa, facilitating their access to work opportunities abroad, particularly in the regions’ high-income countries. This Pacific Skills Partnership could bring large economic benefits to countries of origin, destination, and the migrants themselves.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Labor Issues, and Migrant Workers
Political Geography:
Asia-Pacific

50. Expanding Legal Migration Pathways from Nigeria to Europe: From Brain Drain to Brain Gain

Author:
Samik Adhikari, Michael Clemens, Helen Dempster, and Nkechi Linda Ekeator
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The youth population within Nigeria is rapidly increasing, but despite their high levels of education and skills, many are struggling to find meaningful work opportunities at home. At the same time, Europe’s working-age population is declining, resulting in employers in these countries facing large and persistent skill shortages within a range of mid-skill professions. Despite the large benefits that facilitating migration between Nigeria and Europe could bring, and despite the overtures of both European governments and the European Union, few mutually beneficial migration partnerships exist. This report, a joint production between the World Bank and the Center for Global Development (CGD), outlines how the Global Skill Partnership model could be used to meet needs on both sides. It explores the growing youth unemployment rate in Nigeria, the increasing emigration pressure, and the structures that have been set up to manage this movement. It also explores the large skill shortages persistent within Europe, its migration management relationship with Africa, and the potential positive impacts of opening new legal migration pathways. It creates a framework with which to explore potential sectors and partner countries for the implementation of the Global Skill Partnership model, providing practical steps that governments can follow. And finally, it applies this framework to three sectors and partner countries: a health care partnership between Nigeria and the UK, a construction partnership between Nigeria and Germany, and an information and communications technology (ICT) partnership with various European states.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Labor Issues, Intellectual History, Immigration Policy, and Migrants
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and Nigeria

51. Unpacking Gender Gaps and Data Gaps in Public Sector Employment and Pay

Author:
Ugonma Nwankwo, Megan O'Donnell, and Charles Kenny
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
We look at available sources to ask (i) Where is data available on employment and wages allowing for comparisons between women and men, and the public and private sectors? (ii) How do women’s employment, compensation, and seniority compare with men’s in the public and private sectors? (iii) How do gender gaps vary by countries’ income level, education levels, and other factors? What are the policy implications of the data we analyze? (iv) Which countries’ efforts can be modeled by others, and how else can global gender gaps in employment and compensation be narrowed? We suggest the Open Government Partnership as a promising platform through which governments can commit to increased transparency around disaggregated employment and wage data, in turn improving policy decision-making aimed at closing gender gaps (or those rooted in other forms of inequality and discrimination).
Topic:
Labor Issues, Women, Inequality, Feminism, Data, and Gender
Political Geography:
Global Focus

52. Four Decades of Canadian Earnings Inequality and Dynamics across Workers and Firms

Author:
Audra J. Bowlus, Emilien Gouin-Bonenfant, Huju Liu, Lance Lochner, and Youngmin Park
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP), Western University
Abstract:
This paper studies the evolution of individual earnings inequality and dynamics in Canada from 1983 to 2016 using tax files and administrative records. Linking these individuals to their employers (and rich administrative records on firms) beginning in 2001, it also documents the relationship between the earnings dynamics of workers and the size and growth of their employers. It highlights three main patterns over this period: First, with a few exceptions (sharp increase in top 1% and declining gender gap), Canada has experienced relatively modest changes in overall earnings inequality, volatility, and mobility between 1983 and 2016. Second, there is considerable variability in earnings inequality and volatility over the business cycle. Third, the earnings dynamics of individuals are strongly related to the size and employment growth of their employers.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, Income Inequality, Business, History, and Earnings
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

53. The EU’s legal migration acquis: Patching up the patchwork

Author:
Tesseltje de Lange and Kees Groenendijk
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Policy Centre (EPC)
Abstract:
The European Commission and EU member states must increase intra-EU mobility opportunities for already lawfully present third-country nationals (TCNs). A considerable workforce of TCNs is waiting to work across EU borders in the same way as EU citizens; their waiting is not conducive to making the EU legal migration acquis patchwork work. In its proposal on the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, the European Commission has set out to do just that. If it wants to succeed and address Europe’s demographic trends and the foreseeable shortages in the continent’s national labour markets, a strong focus on enhancing the intra-EU mobility of TCNs already present in the EU is imperative. This Issue Paper presents five key recommendations that would improve the patchwork of the legal migration acquis. Harmonise existing rules. Full harmonisation of the legal migration acquis is not the immediate aim of EU member states but could become the objective in the long run. In the meantime, the Commission can take action to lift uncertainties over the meaning and subsequent implementation of the patchwork acquis. More legal certainty can only be experienced if the labour migration directives are used and litigated. Redesign the Single Permit Directive to deal with all procedures. The Single Permit Directive should, as a general directive on procedures, expand its subject matter to include all procedures on visas for entry and procedures on renewal and status switching. This could enable quick access to the Long-Term Resident status and intra-EU mobility. Engage third parties in the enforcement of equal treatment rights. The enforcement of the Single Permit Directive can be improved by first shifting the burden of proof of unequal treatment from the single permit holder to the employer. Second, third parties (e.g. work councils, NGOs) should be granted legal standing to engage in proceedings before national courts on behalf of or in support of single permit holders. In general terms, labour rights protection should be a priority of the highest degree. Design a ‘Light Blue Card’ for medium-skilled labour. To facilitate migration for medium-skilled jobs, rather than expand the scope of the Single Permit Directive, we suggest adding an optional or add-on, ‘light blue’ alternative for medium-skilled or -qualified labour (e.g. care work) to the recast Blue Card Directive. Facilitate the intra-EU mobility of third-country nationals. Rather than allow employers to use intra-EU posting to hire ‘cheap’ TCN workers in substandard conditions in low- and medium-skilled jobs, TCNs already lawfully present in the Union should get priority to access the EU labour market.
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, Immigration, European Union, Diversity, and European Commission
Political Geography:
Europe

54. How Do Immigrants Promote Exports?

Author:
Gianluca Orefice, Hillel Rapoport, and Gianluca Santoni
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales (CEPII)
Abstract:
How does immigration affect export performance? To answer this question, we propose a unified empirical framework allowing to disentangle various mechanisms put forth in previous literature. These include the role of networks in reducing bilateral transaction costs as well as productivity shifts arising from migration-induced knowledge diffusion and increased workforce diversity. While we find evidence supporting all three channels (at both the intensive and the extensive margins of trade), our framework allows to gauge their relative importance. We then focus on diversity and find stronger results in sectors characterized by more complex production processes and more intense teamwork cooperation. This is consistent with theories linking the distribution of skills to the comparative advantage of nations. The results are robust to using a theoretically grounded IV approach combining three variations on the shift share methodology.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Immigration, Immigrants, Diversity, and Trade
Political Geography:
Global Focus

55. The Impact of Common Law on the Volume of Legal Services: An International Study

Author:
Enzo Dia and Jacques Melitz
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales (CEPII)
Abstract:
We show that the heavy use of legal services relative to output in the US is not a peculiarity of the country but applies to common law countries in general. It stems largely from better ability to contract and easier access to justice. Yet in close association, common law also opens significantly more room for rentseeking by lawyers than civil law. Thereby the costs could outweigh the benefits. Both real GDP per capita and openness emerge as further factors making room for lawyers.
Topic:
International Cooperation, International Law, Labor Issues, and Law
Political Geography:
Global Focus

56. Robots and Labor in the Service Sector: Evidence from Nursing Homes

Author:
Karen Eggleston, Yong Suk Lee, and Toshiaki Lizuka
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
In one of the first studies of service sector robotics using establishment-level data, we study the relationship between robots and staffing in Japanese nursing homes. We utilize variation in robot subsidies across prefectures as an instrumental variable to explore the impact of robot adoption on nursing homes’ staffing decisions. We find that robot adoption appears to decrease difficulty in staff retention and to increase employment by augmenting the number of care workers and nurses on flexible employment contracts. Robot adoption is negatively correlated with the monthly wages of regular nurses, consistent with reduced burden of care such as fewer night shifts. Our findings suggest that robots may not be detrimental to labor and may help to remedy challenges posed by rapidly aging populations.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Labor Issues, Services, Innovation, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Emerging Technology, and Labor Cost
Political Geography:
Global Focus

57. Essential Work: Using A Social Reproduction Lens to Investigate the Re-Organisation of Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author:
Sara Stevano, Rosimina Ali, and Merle Jamieson
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
COVID-19 has shaken a foundational pillar of global capitalism: the organisation of work. Whilst workers have commonly been categorised based on skills, during the pandemic the ‘essential worker’ categorisation has taken prominence. This paper explores the concept of essential work from a global feminist social reproduction perspective. The global perspective is complemented by a zoom-in on Mozambique as a low-income country in the Global South, occupying a peripheral position in global and regional economies and with a large share of vulnerable and essential workers. We show that the meaning of essential work is more ambiguous and politicised than it may appear and, although it can be used as a basis to reclaim the value of socially reproductive work, its transformative potential hinges on the possibility to encompass the most precarious and transnational dimensions of (re)production.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Feminism, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Africa, Mozambique, and Global South

58. The Role of Global Climate Change in Structural Transformation of Sub-Saharan Africa

Author:
Askar Mukashov and Christian Henning
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
Abstract:
With increasing evidence that rural households in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) opt for deagrarianization as an adaptation strategy to climate change, it is becoming important to understand the role of Global Climate Change (GCC) in ongoing structural transformation processes in these countries. We use Senegal as a case study country and analyze how various GCC scenarios affect the country's economic sectors, households' welfare, and structural transformation patterns. Our simulation results suggest that GCC can increase the country's deagrarianization pace, with industrial and service sectors in the capital Dakar being the most important destinations of the former agricultural labor force. Although unplanned urbanization smoothes the overall negative impact of GCC and decreases spatial income disparities, uncontrolled deagrarianization is also associated with negative externalities. Previous growth-focused studies suggest that services partaking in Senegal’s deagrarianization can hamper its long-term growth prospects, and our results suggest that productivity increase of services can redirect part of the former agricultural labor force towards industrial sectors.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Economics, Environment, Labor Issues, Income Inequality, Rural, and Housing
Political Geography:
Africa and Senegal

59. The Updated Okun Method for Estimation of Potential Output with Broad Measures of Labor Underutilization: An Empirical Analysis

Author:
Claudia Fontanari, Antonella Palumbo, and Chiara Salvatori
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
This paper extends to different indicators of labor underutilization the Updated Okun Method (UOM) for estimation of potential output proposed in Fontanari et al (2020), which, from a demand-led growth perspective, regards potential output as an empirical approximation to fullemployment output, as in A.M.Okun’s (1962) original method. Based on the apparent incapability of the official rate of unemployment to fully account for labor underutilization, in this paper we offer estimates of Okun’s law both with broad unemployment indicators and with an indicator of ‘standardized hours worked’ which we propose as a novel measure of the labor input. The paper reflects on the possible different empirical measures of full employment. The various measures of potential output that we extract from our analysis show greater output gaps than those produced by standard methods, thus highlighting a systematic tendency of the latter to underestimate potential output. Output gaps that underestimate the size of the output loss or that tend to close too soon during recovery, may produce a bias towards untimely restriction.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Economic Growth, Demand, and Unemployment
Political Geography:
Global Focus

60. Inflation? It’s Import Prices and the Labor Share!

Author:
Lance Taylor and Nelson H. Barbosa-Filho
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
Recognizing that inflation of the value of output and its costs of production must be equal, we focus on a cost-based macroeconomic structuralist approach in contrast to micro-oriented monetarist analysis. For decades the import and profit shares of cost have risen, while the wage share has declined to around 50% with money wage increases lagging the sum of growth rates of prices and productivity. Conflicting claims to income are the underlying source of inflationary pressure. Inflation affects income (labor’s spending power) and wealth. Monetarist theory around 1900 concentrated on the latter (Bryan and the “Cross of Gold)” leading to the standard Laffer curve. It was replaced by the Friedman-Phelps model which has incorrect dynamics (labor payments do not fall during an expansion – they go up). Samuelson and Solow introduced a version of the Phillips curve that violates macroeconomic accounting. Rational expectations replaced Friedman but was immediately falsified by output drops after the Volcker shock treatment around 1980. There followed a complicated transition from rational expectations to inflation targeting, anchored by economists’ misunderstanding of the physical meaning of ergodicity and ontological blindness. It did not help that the real balance effect is irrelevant because money makes up a small part of wealth. Rather than issuing veiled threats of disaster if its policy advice is not followed, the Fed now announces inflation targets which it cannot meet. Contemporary structuralist theory suggests that conflicting income claims set the inflation rate. Firms can mark up costs but workers have latent bargaining power over the labor share that they can exercise. Import costs and policy repercussions complicate the picture, but a simple vector error correction model and visual analysis suggest that money wages would have to grow one percentage point faster than prices plus productivity for several years if the Fed is to meet a three percent inflation target. The results pose a Biden policy trilemma: (i) the only path toward a more egalitarian size distribution of income is through a rising labor share (money wage growth exceeds price plus productivity growth), (ii) which would provoke faster inflation with feedback to rising interest rates, and (iii) the resulting asset price deflation likely facing political resistance from Wall Street and affluent households.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Inflation, Imports, and Structuralism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

61. Economic impact of the global ferry industry

Author:
Oxford Economics
Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxford Economics
Abstract:
The global ferry industry comprises companies that own or operate vessels that transport passengers, goods and vehicles over short sea and inland routes. Ferries provide vital connections which enable all types of journey, whether that be local trips to work, study, visit others, or access amenities, or longer trips for business or tourism. Ferries also facilitate trade within and across national borders. Ferries therefore play a pivotal role as an economic and social enabler. As they do so, they sustain significant economic activity in their own right, both directly through the income and employment they support, and through wider supply chain and worker spending effects which benefit other parts of the economy. In this study, commissioned by Interferry, we assess the economic footprint of the global ferry industry. Our modelling suggests the global ferry industry could have supported $60 billion in GDP and 1.1 million jobs globally in 2019.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Maritime Commerce, Labor Issues, Maritime, and Travel
Political Geography:
Global Focus

62. Uncovering the Crisis: Care Work in the Time of Coronavirus

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
The pandemic uncovered a reality that has long been brewing in which inequalities, injustices, and asymmetries are violently embedded in the order of society. The crisis of wage-based society did not alter the unequal distribution of work, nor did it recognise it as an integral element of all lives – despite how feminisms have long politicised this discussion. This dossier focuses on three main areas around three main areas: communities, houses/homes, and domestic and care work.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Feminism, Pandemic, COVID-19, Domestic Work, and Caregivers
Political Geography:
Global Focus

63. Labour Taxes and International Trade: The Role of Domestic Labour Value Added

Author:
Amat Adarov, Mario Holzner, Branimir Jovanovic, and Goran Vukšić
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper revisits the relationship between labour taxation and international trade, focusing on the role of domestic labour value added. Using sectoral data from 41 EU and OECD economies over the period 2005-2014, we assess how labour taxes affect exports and imports and how domestic labour value added shapes this relationship. We find that higher labour taxes reduce exports but that the effect depends to a large extent on the share of domestic labour value added, which differs by industries, countries and time periods. Imports do not seem to be affected. This implies that changes in labour taxes will not affect all sectors and countries in the same way and that policy makers should be aware of this when deciding on labour taxes. We also calculate the contribution of labour tax changes to the export dynamics in the analysed period and sample of countries, finding that in general the contribution is small.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Labor Issues, Tax Systems, Exports, and Imports
Political Geography:
Global Focus

64. Is ICT Still Polarising Labour Demand after the Crisis?

Author:
David Pichler and Robert Stehrer
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
The impact of ICT capital accumulation and digitisation on labour demand and wage structures has changed in recent years, according to some of the literature on the subject. We analyse the impact of ICT capital accumulation based on recent data differentiating between the period before and after the global financial crisis. Methodologically, we draw on Michaels, Natraj and van Reenen (2014) and are able to corroborate their findings for the period 1980-2004, whereas we find distinctly different patterns since 2011. Results suggest a negative relationship between changes in ICT intensity and the wage share for high-skilled workers, whereas medium-skilled workers were the main beneficiaries in sectors that experienced a more intensive digitisation process. These results are chiefly driven by the dynamics in the Central and Eastern European economies and the service industries. The effect of digitisation on low-skilled workers does not reveal any robust significant impact.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Economies, Demand, Polarization, Skills, and Wages
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe and Central Europe

65. Kind or contented? An investigation of the gift exchange hypothesis in a natural field experiment in Colombia

Author:
Francesco Bogliacino, Gianluca Grimalda, and David Pipke
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
Abstract:
The gift exchange hypothesis postulates that workers reciprocate above market-clearing wages with above-minimum effort. This hypothesis has received mixed support in dyadic employer-worker relationships. We present a field-experimental test to assess this hypothesis in the context of a triadic relationship in which only one out of two workers receives a pay increase. We conjecture that inequality aversion motivations may thwart positive reciprocity motivations and analyze the interaction between such motivations theoretically. Across three treatments, the pay increase is justified to workers based on either relative merit or relative need or was arbitrary as no justification was offered. Two conditions in which either none or both workers receive a bonus serve as the reference. In contrast to the gift exchange hypothesis, we find that pay increases lead to a decrease in productivity. Such a decrease is most sizable in the condition where both workers receive the bonus. A post-diction of this result is that workers interpret the monetary bonus as a signal of the employer’s contentment with their effort, which makes them feel entitled to reduce their effort. In other treatments, receiving the pay increase while the coworker does not has a positive effect on productivity, especially when the pay increase is based on merit. This result is consistent with statusseeking preferences rather than aversion against advantageous inequality. Conversely, not receiving the pay increase while the coworker does, leads to lower productivity, especially when the pay increase is assigned based on relative needs.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, Labor Policies, and Wealth
Political Geography:
Colombia and South America

66. Recycling Policies from the Bottom Up: Waste Work in Lebanon

Author:
Elizabeth Saleh
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Discussions on waste policy in Lebanon tend to focus on the country’s corrupt practices and the health and environmental impact of bad waste management. This paper examines an overlooked aspect: the story of waste pickers — many of whom are economic or forced migrants — who are essential to Lebanon’s garbage management. Through an ethnographic study of a group of underage waste pickers, it argues that it is time for policy debates on garbage in Lebanon to integrate the perspective of waste workers.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Labor Issues, Recycling, and Garbage
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

67. Ending Hereditary Slavery in Mauritania: Bidan (Whites) and Black “Slaves” in 2021

Author:
Stephen J. King
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Mauritania has earned the title of slavery’s last stronghold due to the widespread existence of descent-based racial slavery in the country despite successive abolition decrees. This paper seeks to explain why the formal efforts to abolish slavery in Mauritania have failed, discusses the Mauritanian economy and the government’s official views on slavery, and puts forward recommendations to end slavery and slave-like conditions in the country.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Slavery, Discrimination, and Racism
Political Geography:
Africa and Mauritania

68. Regulated Market, Trapped Workers: The Impacts of the "Tolerant and Prudent" Policy on Labour Precarity in China’s Online Ridehailing Sector

Author:
Wei Zhang, Hao Qi, and Zhongjin Li
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
Since 2017, China has adopted the "tolerant and prudent" policy in regulating emerging digital platform industries. The impacts of this policy on labour precarity have been rarely studied. Drawing on an original survey of over 600 ridehailing drivers in two Chinese cities, Nanjing and Beijing, we conduct a political economy analysis for a three-party framework involving the municipal government, capital, and labour. We find that, in accordance with the "tolerant and prudent" principle, municipal governments stipulated regulations regarding the qualifications of ridehailing vehicles and drivers. These regulations, although they can help reduce labour precarity in the marketplace for licensed drivers, have exacerbated precarity in the workplace. Specifically, in response to the regulations, the ridehailing platforms aligned with thirdparty rental companies that provided licensed vehicles. This arrangement has effectively trapped many ridehailing drivers in the industry: our quantitative analysis shows that drivers bounded by a rental or rent-toown agreement worked significantly longer hours than counterparts who steered their own vehicles.
Topic:
Markets, Labor Issues, Regulation, Digital Economy, and Precarity
Political Geography:
China and Asia

69. Work and Social Reproduction in Rural India: Lessons from Time-Use Data

Author:
Smita Ramnarain, Sirisha Naidu, Anupama Uppal, and Avanti Mukherjee
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
Even as the literature on work in the Global South acknowledges the importance of forms of non-waged work, it has not sufficiently incorporated consideration of the labor of social reproduction. We propose understanding work through four conceptual dyads: waged productive labor, non-waged productive labor, waged reproductive labor, and non-waged reproductive labor. Through an in-depth description of three specific cases from a Time Use Survey we conducted in rural Punjab, India, we argue not only that all four dyads are required to encompass the world of work, but that this more expansive conceptualization can help us produce richer analyses of the intersections of class, caste, and gender.
Topic:
Political Economy, Labor Issues, Class, Caste, Gender, and Social Reproduction
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

70. Gender, Selection into Employment, and the Wage Impact of Immigration

Author:
George J. Borjas and Anthony Edo
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales (CEPII)
Abstract:
Immigrant supply shocks are typically expected to reduce the wage of comparable workers. Natives may respond to the lower wage by moving to markets that were not directly targeted by immigrants and where presumably the wage did not drop. This paper argues that the wage change observed in the targeted market depends not only on the size of the native response, but also on which natives choose to respond. A non-random response alters the composition of the sample of native workers, mechanically changing the average native wage in affected markets and biasing the estimated wage impact of immigration. We document the importance of this selection bias in the French labor market, where women accounted for a rapidly increasing share of the foreign-born workforce since 1976. The raw correlations suggest that the immigrant supply shock did not change the wage of French women, but led to a sizable decline in their employment rate. In contrast, immigration had little impact on the employment rate of men, but led to a sizable drop in the male wage. We show that the near-zero correlation between immigration and female wages arises partly because the native women who left the labor force had relatively low wages. Adjusting for the selection bias results in a similar wage elasticity for both French men and women (between -0.8 and -1.0).
Topic:
Economics, Gender Issues, Political Economy, Labor Issues, Immigration, and Workforce
Political Geography:
France

71. Heterogeneous Effects of Forced Migration on Female Labor Supply

Author:
Julian Pedrazzi and Leonardo Penaloza
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
In this paper we analyze the impact of Venezuelan migration on the female labor supply in Colombia. Using a instrumental variable approach we found significant drops in the female labor supply, mainly on those women with lower qualifications. In contrast, we observe significant increases for high-skilled women with family responsibilities, such as childcare. These results are consistent with a redistribution of time use, where women spend fewer hours on household tasks and more time in the labor market. Our results provide novel evidence of the consequences of forced migration between developing countries on the female labor supply.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Migration, Labor Issues, and Employment
Political Geography:
Colombia, South America, and Venezuela

72. Routinization and Employment: Evidence for Latin America

Author:
Leonardo Gasparini, Irene Brambilla, Guillermo Falcone, Carlo Lombardo, and Andres Cesar
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
We study changes in employment by occupations characterized by different degree of exposure to routinization in the six largest Latin American economies over the last two decades. We combine our own indicators of routine task content based on information from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIACC) with labor market microdata from harmonized national household surveys. We find that the increase in jobs was decreasing in the automatability of the tasks typically performed in each occupation, and increasing in the initial wage, a pattern more consistent with the traditional skill-biased technological change than with the polarization hypothesis.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, Automation, and Job Creation
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and North America

73. Do Credit Supply Shocks Affect Employment in Middle-Income Countries?

Author:
Emilio Gutierrez, David Jaume, and Martin Tobal
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
This paper studies the extent to which increases in bank credit supply available for small and medium firms can foster formal employment in Mexico. We use a detailed dataset containing loan-level information for all loans extended by commercial banks to private firms in Mexico during the 2010-2016 period, when the economy was relatively stable. To obtain exogenous variation in credit supply, we exploit differences in the regional presence of Mexican banks across local labor markets by combining pre-existing market shares with national-level changes in banks’ credit supply, after accounting for local credit demand shocks. Then, we use employment registry data to compare changes in the number of formal workers registered by small and medium firms in local labor markets differently exposed to these shocks. We find that credit supply shocks have a large impact on formal employment: a positive credit shock of one standard deviation increases yearly employment growth by 0.45 percentage points (13 percent of the mean). Our results differ from the null to small effects identified by previous literature for developed countries, suggesting that credit supply shocks play a more prominent role for employment creation (and destruction) in low and middle-income countries.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, and Credit
Political Geography:
North America and Mexico

74. The role of childcare challenges in the US jobs market recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic

Author:
Jason Furman, Melissa Kearney, and Wilson Powell III
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
This working paper examines how much of the overall decline in employment between the beginning of 2020 and 2021 can be explained by excess job loss among parents of young children, and mothers specifically. Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the authors confirm that, in general, mothers with young children have experienced a larger decline in employment, as compared (unconditionally) with other adults, including fathers. This excess job loss is driven by mothers without a four-year college degree. The main point of the paper is to build off this observation and examine how much of the aggregate employment deficit in early 2021 can be explained by parent-specific issues, such as childcare struggles. To examine this question, the authors construct counterfactual employment rates and labor force participation rates that assign to mothers of young children the percent change in employment and labor force participation rates experienced by comparable women without young children. The paper considers multiple definition, sample, and counterfactual specification alternatives. The analysis yields robust evidence that differential job loss among mothers of young children accounts for a negligible share of the ongoing aggregate employment deficit. The result is even stronger (and flips signs) if all parents are considered, since fathers with young children experienced less job loss than other men. The practical implication of these findings is that nearly all of the aggregate ongoing employment deficit is explained by factors that affect workers more broadly, as opposed to challenges specific to working parents.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Children, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Childcare
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

75. Do US firms have an incentive to comply with the FLSA and the NLRA?

Author:
Anna Stansbury
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
To what extent do US firms have an incentive to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)? Stansbury examines this question through a simple comparison of the expected costs of noncompliance (in terms of legal sanctions) to the profits firms can earn through noncompliance. In the case of the FLSA minimum wage and overtime provisions, typical willful violators are required to pay back wages owed and in some cases additional penalties, if detected by the Department of Labor (DOL). Based on available data on the penalties levied, a typical firm would need to expect a chance of at least 78-88 percent that its violation would be detected in order to have an incentive to comply with the FLSA. In practice, the probability of detection many firms can expect to face is likely much lower than this. In the case of the NLRA, a firm that fires a worker illegally is required to reinstate the worker with back pay if the violation is detected. Based on empirical estimates of the effect of unionization on firm profits, a typical firm may have an incentive to fire a worker illegally for union activities if this illegal firing would reduce the likelihood of unionization at the firm by as little as 0.15-2 percent. These analyses illustrate that neither the FLSA nor the NLRA penalty and enforcement regimes create sufficient incentive to comply for many firms. In this context, the substantial evidence of minimum wage and overtime violations, and of illegal employer behavior toward unions, is not surprising.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Regulation, and Economy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

76. Heterogeneous informality in Costa Rica and Nicaragua

Author:
Enrique Alaniz, T. H. Gindling, Catherine Mata, and Diego Rojas
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Informal work is often considered a place of employment for marginalized and vulnerable workers who have been rationed out of preferred formal work. However, informality can also be seen as a dynamic sector that budding entrepreneurs and those looking for flexible working conditions enter voluntarily. We use the methodology developed in Günther and Launov (2012) to test for the voluntary and involuntary nature of informal work in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, without making ad hoc assumptions about labour market segmentation and self-selection. We find evidence of heterogeneous informality in both Nicaragua and Costa Rica, with one informal sub-segment where most workers are voluntarily informal and another informal sub-segment where most workers are involuntarily informal. In Nicaragua, our results suggest that 44 per cent of wage employees are involuntarily informal, while 30 per cent of self-employed workers are involuntarily informal. In Costa Rica, our results suggest that 10 per cent of wage employees are involuntarily informal, and that 66 per cent of the self-employed are involuntarily informal.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Developing World, Informal Economy, and Workforce
Political Geography:
Central America, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica

77. How good are manufacturing jobs in Myanmar? Evidence from matched employer–employee data

Author:
Paolo Falco, Francesca Gioia, and Neda Trifković
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The quality of people’s jobs is a fundamental determinant of their well-being, and judging the state of a labour market on the basis of job quantity alone delivers a very partial picture. This study is an attempt to place the spotlight on the working conditions of workers in the Myanmar manufacturing sector. Using a model of job demands and job resources, we focus on the balance between different stress factors and the support workers get. We find that a large fraction of workers face severe pressures. In particular, nearly one half faces severe time pressure; nearly a quarter is exposed to health hazards, such as loud noises, carrying heavy loads, and operating in uncomfortable or painful positions. These factors are often not met with adequate support from the firm. Male workers and those with lower levels of education are most exposed to occupational risks. Contrary to the narrative that a trade-off might exist between firm competitiveness and job quality, we find that labour productivity is higher in firms where working conditions are better.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, Manufacturing, Trade, and Productivity
Political Geography:
Southeast Asia and Myanmar

78. The changing nature of work and earnings inequality in China

Author:
Chunbing Xing
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper examines the evolution of China’s industrial and occupational structure in the last two decades and its impact on wage inequality. We find that non-routine cognitive and interpersonal tasks have increased, while routine cognitive tasks first increased and then declined. Occupation structural change is accompanying rising wage inequality. The wage premium for educated workers rose sharply in the 1990s and remained high thereafter. Occupations with high routine task intensity are associated with lower wages. While the return to education has become the largest contributor to wage inequality, routine task intensities have yet to play a significant role.
Topic:
Education, Labor Issues, Employment, Inequality, and Work Culture
Political Geography:
China and Asia

79. Marching to Good Laws: The Impact of War, Politics, and International Credit on Reforms in Ukraine

Author:
Artem Kochnev
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
The paper investigates determinants of investments in state capacity and institutional change in contemporary Ukraine. After formulating a simple sequential two-stage model of investments in state capacity, the paper estimates autoregressive distributed lag and vector autoregressive models to verify its predictions. The paper finds little evidence for the impact of conflict intensity and access to international credit on the pace of reform progress. It finds a statistically significant effect for the intensity of political competition and changes of real wages, albeit these results are sensitive to robustness checks.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, War, Labor Issues, Credit, International Business, State Capitalism, and Models
Political Geography:
Ukraine

80. Net Migration and its Skill Composition in the Western Balkan Countries between 2010 and 2019: Results from a Cohort Approach Analysis

Author:
Sandra Leitner
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
In view of the scarcity of reliable and detailed data on migration this paper develops the novel cohort approach, which allows us to deduce from annual Labour Force Surveys (LFS) the extent and skill composition of net migration. It is based on representative age cohorts who are followed over time and whose change in size and composition provides information about the extent and skill composition of net migration. As concerns skill composition, the analysis differentiates between four educational levels (Low, Medium-general, Medium-VET and High). The analysis is applied to the six Western Balkan countries (for the period 2010-2019), which lack official, comprehensive and domestic migration statistics, particularly in terms of the skill composition of migrants. The analysis shows that during the period analysed all six Western Balkan countries experienced net emigration which, however, differs across countries in terms of magnitude and particular age pattern. A further breakdown of net migration by highest level of education shows that net emigration in the region mainly occurs among the medium- and low-educated. Contrary to widespread perception, the analysis finds evidence of brain gain in terms of partly substantial net immigration of the highly educated in all countries except Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. Brain gain is highest among those in their early to mid-20s to early 30s. As this is the age at which students usually complete tertiary education, this is likely to be related to students returning to their home countries after graduating from tertiary education abroad.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Migration, Labor Issues, and Skilled Labor
Political Geography:
Balkans

81. Interrelationships between Human Capital, Migration and Labour Markets in the Western Balkans: An Econometric Investigation

Author:
Michael Landesmann and Isilda Mara
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
The South-North migration corridor, i.e. migration flows to the EU from Africa, the Middle East and EU neighbouring countries in the East, have overtaken the East-West migration corridor, i.e. migration flows from Central and East European countries to the EU15 and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). This is likely to dominate migration flows into the EU+EFTA over the coming decades. This paper applies a gravity modelling approach to analyse patterns and drivers of the South-North migration corridor over the period 1995-2020 and explores bilateral mobility patterns from 75 sending countries in Africa, the Middle East and other EU neighbours to the EU28 and EFTA countries. The study finds that income gaps, diverging demographic trends, institutional and governance features and persisting political instability, but also higher climate risks in the neighbouring regions of the EU, are fuelling migration flows along the South-North corridor and will most likely continue to do so.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Migration, Labor Issues, European Union, Human Capital, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
Europe

82. Gender Gaps in Employment, Wages, and Work Hours: Assessment of COVID-19 Implications

Author:
Maryna Tverdostup
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has highly asymmetric effects on labour market outcomes of men and women. In this paper, we empirically investigate the dynamics and drivers of gender gaps in employment rates, wages and workhours during the pandemic. Relying on Estonian Labour Force Survey data, we document that the pandemic has, if anything, reduced gender inequality in all three domains. Our results suggest that, while the evolution of inequalities mirrored the infection rate development – rising as infections mounted and declining as the first wave flattened – overall, the pandemic did not exacerbate gender gaps in 2020. The cyclical increases in gender disparities were largely driven by parenthood, as child-rearing women experienced a major decline in their employment rate and workhours, as well as gender segregation in the most affected industries. The higher propensity to work from home and better educational attainments of women deterred gender wage gap expansion, as wage returns to telework and education rose during the pandemic. Our results suggest no systematic expansion of gender gaps, but rather short-term fluctuations. However, labour market penalties for women with young children and women employed in those industries most affected by COVID-19 may last longer than the pandemic, threatening to widen gender inequality in the long run.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Employment, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

83. How Human Subjects Research Rules Mislead You and Your University, and What to Do About it

Author:
Gary King and Melissa Sands
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Universities require faculty and students planning research involving human subjects to pass formal certification tests and then submit research plans for prior approval. Those who diligently take the tests may better understand certain important legal requirements but, at the same time, are often misled into thinking they can apply these rules to their own work which, in fact, they are not permitted to do. They will also be missing many other legal requirements not mentioned in their training but which govern their behaviors. Finally, the training leaves them likely to completely misunderstand the essentially political situation they find themselves in. The resulting risks to their universities, collaborators, and careers may be catastrophic, in addition to contributing to the more common ordinary frustrations of researchers with the system. To avoid these problems, faculty and students conducting research about and for the public need to understand that they are public figures, to whom different rules apply, ones that political scientists have long studied. University administrators (and faculty in their part­time roles as administrators) need to reorient their perspectives as well. University research compliance bureaucracies have grown, in well­meaning but sometimes unproductive ways that are not required by federal laws or guidelines. We offer advice to faculty and students for how to deal with the system as it exists now, and suggestions for changes in university research compliance bureaucracies, that should benefit faculty, students, staff, university budgets, and our research subjects.
Topic:
Education, Science and Technology, Labor Issues, Bureaucracy, and Academia
Political Geography:
Global Focus

84. Labour Reforms in the Indian State of Rajasthan: a boon or a bane?

Author:
Sourabh Paul and Diti Goswami
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The authors examine the impact of labour law deregulations in the Indian state of Rajasthan on plant employment and performance. In 2014, after a long time, Rajasthan was the first Indian state that introduced labour reforms in the Industrial Disputes Act (1947), the Factories Act (1948), the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act (1970), and the Apprentices Act (1961). Exploiting this unique quasi-natural experiment, the authors apply a difference-in-difference framework using the Annual Survey of Industries longitudinal data of India’s manufacturing establishments. Their results show that reforms had an unintended consequence of the decline in labour use. Also, worryingly, the flexibility resulted in a disproportionate decline in the directly employed worker. Evidence suggests that the reforms positively impact the value-added and productivity of the establishments. The strength of these effects varies depending on the underlying industry and reform structure. These findings prove robust to a set of specifications.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Reform, Employment, and Regulation
Political Geography:
India

85. Can a Machine Learn Democracy?

Author:
Rajendran Narayanan, Sakina Dhorajiwala, and Chakradhar Buddha
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) provides up to 100 days of work in a year for every rural household at a minimum wage. The Act has several landmark worker-centric provisions. For the implementation of MGNREGA, for the first time in the country, a transaction-based Management Information System (MIS) has been made available in the public domain; a feather in the cap of transparency. However, there are several critical questions to be examined in this regard. Our main focus in this article is to explore the tensions between technocracy and democratic values/participation in the context of MGNREGA and its associated MIS. We use our action research on information-based interventions in several states to examine whether the MGNREGA MIS incorporates democratic values, whether it has been inclusive or if it has widened the existing inequities. We use specific examples to illustrate how such an information system has been used to subvert the legal rights of workers. We underscore that technological interventions, with a compassionate human-centred design are potentially powerful tools for transparency, accountability, and grievance redressal. However, technology alone can neither enhance participatory democracy nor reduce socio-economic inequalities.
Topic:
Economics, Science and Technology, Labor Issues, Democracy, Employment, and Artificial Intelligence
Political Geography:
India

86. Tracking Employment Trajectories during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Indian Panel Data

Author:
Rosa Abraham, Amit Basole, and Surbhi Kesar
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Using the CMIE’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey, we track a panel of households prior to the lockdown (in December 2019), during the lockdown (in April 2020) and afterwards (in August 2020) to investigate the employment and income effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated containment measures. We identify four distinct employment experiences during the pandemic for those who were in the workforce just prior to the lockdown: no loss of employment (“No effect”), loss of employment followed by recovery (“Recovery”), loss of employment with no recovery (“No recovery”), and a delayed loss of employment (“Delayed job loss”). Overall, 54% of individuals experienced no job loss, while 30% lost work in April but recovered by August. 12% had not recovered employment as of August 2020. We analyse how these trajectories vary across different social and economic characteristics to quantify contractions and recovery in the labour market and the extent to which the vulnerabilities vary across different social groups, employment arrangements, and industries. We find that women were substantially more likely to lose employment as well as less likely to recover employment. Job loss was also more severe for lower castes as compared to intermediate and upper castes and for daily wage workers as compared to regular wage workers. Younger workers were particularly vulnerable to job loss compared to older workers. Having lost employment in April, younger workers were also less likely to recover employment in August. Finally, for those who were employed in both December 2019 and August 2020, we examine the changes in employment arrangements. We find a much greater frequency of transitions from wage employment to self-employment, more than that in the seasonally comparable period last year (Dec 2018 to Aug 2019). Our results call for urgent additional fiscal measures to counteract these effects.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, Unemployment, Pandemic, Job Creation, and Consumerism
Political Geography:
India

87. A Short Note on Debt-Neutral Fiscal Policy

Author:
Zico Dasgupta
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
One of the central concerns against increasing expenditures in the recent period has been the possibility of an adverse impact on debt-GDP ratio. Once stability of debt-ratio is regarded as a policy-objective, the aggregate expenditure that is consistent with the stability condition gets determined by the given level of output growth rate and revenue receipts. Instead of perceiving expenditures to be determined by the debt-stability condition, this short note attempts to lay bare the conditions under which the debt-stability condition is restored despite increasing the growth rate of non-capital primary expenditure to a targeted level. The targeted level of growth rate of non-capital expenditures can be perceived to be one which compensates for the income loss of labour during the pandemic. In contrast to conventional wisdom, the possibility of increasing such expenditures is explored not by reducing capital expenditures, but rather by increasing the latter. Using the multiplier value of capital expenditures estimated by the RBI, it is argued that the debt-ratio would remain unchanged despite increasing the growth rate of non capital primary expenditure if the capital expenditures growth rate is allowed to increase in a specific proportion.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, Political Economy, Labor Issues, GDP, Employment, and Fiscal Policy
Political Geography:
India

88. Technical & Vocational Education and Training in India: Lacking Vision, Strategy and Coherence

Author:
Santosh Mehrotra
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper briefly examines the performance of each of the five pillars of India’s TVET ecosystem. It also discusses the poor design and implementation of a national vocational qualification framework. It goes to discuss the latest development in the field of education: the National Education Policy 2020 and its view on TVET, and finds it seriously wanting. The paper argues that if India does not want its tertiary education system to be overwhelmed by the massification of school education that occurred since early noughties, it must divert increasing numbers of secondary graduates to vocational education and training. Together with a rising number of jobs in the non-agricultural sector, to which India’s youth aspire to, strengthening vocational education offers the prospect of India potentially realizing its demographic dividend, in the same way that many East Asian countries. If India’s TVET system continues to lack vision, strategy and coherence to underpin the country’s aspiration to become a high human development country, we risk frittering away our dividend.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Labor Issues, Employment, Training, and Vocational Training
Political Geography:
India

89. Explaining COVID-19 Lockdown, Employment and Migration in India: Challenges and Prospects

Author:
Purna Chandra Parida and Yogesh Suri
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper makes an attempt to do an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on employment and migration in India. The analysis is based on up-to-date facts and figures available in the public domain on economic growth, employment and migration. Using the employment elasticity approach, the study estimates employment loss during 2020-21 owing to the negative impact of COVID-19 on economic activities. The results of the study suggest that the country may witness job loss with the tune of 18.5  18.8 million in the current fiscal year. This in turn would shoot up the unemployment rate from 5.8% in 2018-19 to 8.9% in 2020-21, warranting a coordinated and focused approach from both the Central and State governments to uplift the confidence of the people and bring back the lost jobs, particularly the migrant workers. The study also emphasises on Central government’s urgent attention and action plan for uplifting the rural economy in order to revive India’s economy in the short run.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Labor Issues, Employment, Economic Growth, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
India

90. Covid-19 Crisis: An Indictment of India’s Informal Economy

Author:
Jenny Sulfath and Balu Sunilraj
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper attempts to look at the ways informality is conceptualized in India and argues that the problems with the laws pertaining to informal labour are not simply an implementation issue, but the design of the labour laws itself exclude informal labour. While reviewing the history of labour laws in India and the social history of labour participation, the paper also examines the current change in the political approach to labour by changing the labour laws in the pretext of the pandemic. Focussing on the changes made in labour laws in Madhya Pradesh the paper argues that these changes would further informalise the workers intensifying the crisis.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
India

91. Down and Out? The Gendered Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on India’s Labour Market

Author:
Rosa Abraham, Amit Basole, and Surbhi Kesar
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic has created unprecedented disruptions in labour markets across the world including loss of employment and decline in incomes. Using panel data from India, we investigate the differential impact of the shock on labour market outcomes for male and female workers. We find that, conditional on being in the workforce prior to the pandemic, women were seven times more likely to lose work during the nationwide lockdown, and conditional on losing work, eleven times more likely to not return to work subsequently, compared to men. Using logit regressions on a sample stratified by gender, we find that daily wage and young workers, whether men or women, were more likely to face job loss. Education shielded male workers from job loss, whereas highly educated female workers were more vulnerable to job loss. Marriage had contrasting effects for men and women, with married women less likely to return to work and married men more likely to return to work. Religion and gender intersect to exacerbate the disproportionate impact, with Muslim women more likely to not return to work, unlike Muslim men where we find religion having no significant impact. Finally, for those workers who did return to work, we find that a large share of men in the workforce moved to self-employment or daily wage work, in agriculture, trade or construction. For women, on the other hand, there is limited movement into alternate employment arrangements or industries. This suggests that typical ‘fallback’ options for employment do not exist for women. During such a shock, women are forced to exit the workforce whereas men negotiate across industries and employment arrangements.
Topic:
Economics, Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, Employment, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
India

92. Where Do They Come From, Where Do They Go? Labour Market Transitions in India

Author:
Rahul Menon and Paaritosh Nath
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Using two rounds of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) covering the periods 2017-18 and 2018-19, we construct a panel of urban Indian individuals aged 15 to 65, and analyse the dynamics of their participation – or non-participation – in the labour force. We construct transition probabilities to study the movement of individuals through three distinct statuses – employment, unemployment and non-participation – at the aggregate level and for different demographic groups. We find evidence of considerable movements from the labour force to non-participation; there exists a significant discouraged worker effect as well as a pronounced movement from employment outside the labour force, specifically for women. A majority of those unemployed in the beginning of the year remain so at the end of the year, indicating the presence of long-term unemployment. The reduction in unemployment rates from 2017-18 to 2018-19 hides significant weaknesses in Indian urban labour markets. This study represents an original contribution to the field of Indian labour economics, given the paucity of large-scale studies of the dynamics of Indian labour.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Labor Issues, Employment, Labor Market, and Workforce
Political Geography:
India

93. Social clauses in trade agreements: implications and action points for the private sector in developing countries

Author:
Anna Liz Thomas, Jarrod Suda, and Gaia Grasselli
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Trade and Economic Integration, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
Since the 1990s, more free trade agreements have come to include social clauses, which make reference to domestic and international labour standards. As this international legal web continues to grow, so too will the questions and concerns from employers and businesses. This Tradelab report, for the International Organisation of Employers, provides practical guidance for those employers and businesses. It does so by taking the diverse array of actors, the tensions within, and the opportunities set forth by free trade agreements and elaborating upon them using three case studies.
Topic:
International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, Treaties and Agreements, Labor Issues, Free Trade, Trade, International Business, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
Global Focus

94. Productivity and the Pandemic: ShortTerm Disruptions and Long-Term Implications

Author:
Klaas de Vries, Abdul Erumban, and Bart van Ark
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
This paper analyses quarterly estimates of productivity growth at industry level for three advanced economies, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, for 2020. We use detailed industry-level data to distinguish reallocations of working hours between industries from pure within-industry productivity gains or losses. We find that all three countries showed positive growth rates of aggregate output per hour in 2020 over 2019. However, after removing the effects from the reallocation of hours between low and high productivity industries, only the US still performed positively in terms of withinindustry productivity growth. In contrast, the two European economies showed negative within-industry productivity growth rates in 2020. While above-average digital-intensive industries outperformed belowaverage ones in both France and the UK, the US showed higher productivity growth in both groups compared to the European countries. Industries with medium-intensive levels of shares of employees working from home prior to the pandemic made larger productivity gains in 2020 than industries with the highest pre-pandemic work-from-home shares. The paper also experiments with US data on employment at county level by allocating within-industry productivity contributions for 2020 to urban, sub-urban and rural areas, showing that the contributions to within-industry productivity growth from manufacturing and other production industries in urban and sub-urban areas increased during the pandemic. Overall, after taking into account the productivity collapse in the hospitality and culture sector during 2020, productivity growth shows no clear deviation from the slowing pre-pandemic productivity trend. Future trends in productivity growth will depend on whether the favourable productivity gains (or smaller losses) in industries with above-average digital intensity will outweigh negative effects from the pandemic, in particular scarring effects on labour markets and business dynamics.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Work Culture, Pandemic, COVID-19, Productivity, and Digitalization
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, France, and United States of America

95. Employing Capital: Patient Capital and Labour Relations in Kenya’s Manufacturing Sector

Author:
Florence Dafe, Radha Upadhyaya, and Christoph Sommer
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
Abstract:
Generating decent employment is key to the creation of a new social contract and social cohesion in Sub-Saharan Africa. The crucial question is, thus, how can more decent jobs be created? Much of the extant research has focused on the role of states and businesses in shaping employment relations. In this paper, we draw attention to a third type of actor that has been largely absent in the literature on the determinants of employment relations in developing countries: financial institutions. Based on data from 38 interviews of Kenyan manufacturing firms, financiers and labour representatives before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine the relationship between the patience of capital and labour relations. In particular, the evidence presented in this paper suggests that access to more patient sources of capital may help to enhance the quantity and quality of jobs in African countries. We discuss three mechanisms through which this occurs. Our paper contributes to the growing body of research on patient capital (which largely focuses on developed countries) by extending it to the context of lower income African countries; it also speaks to the broader debates about how to enhance the contribution of finance capital to social cohesion.
Topic:
Development, Labor Issues, Manufacturing, Social Cohesion, COVID-19, and Capital
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

96. Supply Chain Regulation in the Service of Geopolitics: What’s Happening in Semiconductors?

Author:
Dieter Ernst
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Supply chain regulation can be a formidable tool to protect a country’s resilience against unexpected disruptions of trade, investment and the supply of skilled labour. Its utility, however, may erode when geopolitics rather than economics becomes the primary objective. This paper examines the implementation problems and the unintended consequences of a new supply chain doctrine in the service of geopolitics, with a focus on US President Joe Biden’s Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains to protect US technological leadership and national security against China. With semiconductors as a primary target, America’s supply chain controls are designed to exploit China’s most glaring weaknesses as supply chain chokepoints that the US Commerce Department can block, thus impeding timely and cost-effective access to essential products, services and technologies. The paper also highlights a second defining characteristic of America’s supply chain doctrine — regulatory supply chain controls are combined with a big push in domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Three propositions are presented as guideposts for further research. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the implications for future US supply chain control against China: Will the quest for improved supply chain resilience succeed in mobilizing enough forces to shift the focus of US policy away from supply chain regulation in the service of geopolitics?
Topic:
International Cooperation, Labor Issues, Regulation, Rivalry, and Supply Chains
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

97. Labour Market Impacts of Import Penetration from China and Regional Trade Agreement Partners: The Case of Japan

Author:
Kazunobu Hayakawa, Tadashi Ito, and Shujiro Urata
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
The impacts of imports on the domestic labour market have been hotly debated recently. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the effects of not only imports from China but also those under regional trade agreements (RTAs) on employment in Japan. As in previous studies in the literature, we found that the rise in import penetration from China significantly decreases employment in Japan. However, import penetration under RTA regimes is found to have insignificant effects on employment. The finding suggests that the increase in imports under RTA regimes might not be harmful to the domestic labour market. In addition, we did not find significant effects of import penetration via input–output linkages. This insignificant result may be because imports by Japanese manufacturing firms are mostly conducted in the form of intra-firm trade, enabling them to avoid negative impacts on employment.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Regional Cooperation, Labor Issues, Employment, and Manufacturing
Political Geography:
Japan, China, and Asia

98. Analysis of Global Value Chain Participation and the Labour Market in Thailand: A Micro-level Analysis

Author:
Upalat Korwatanasakul and Youngmin Baek
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
This study assesses the links between global value chain (GVC) participation and the labour market to examine the relatively unexplored employment-related distribution effects of GVC integration. Based on the Mincer wage model, we examine the relationship between GVC participation and worker productivity and wages at the individual level. Our main estimation method is a simple ordinary least squares estimation using pooled cross-sectional data from the Thai Labour Force Survey for the period 1995–2011. We also separately examine the effects of forward and backward GVC participation on wages and wage distributions. Our results show that GVC participation induces higher monthly wages for individuals and increases productivity in the labour market through either the forward linkage or backward linkage. We even find that GVC participation can help mitigate inequality. Our findings show that GVC participation promotes inclusive job creation and provides more job opportunities for rural, female, and low-skilled workers. Policies to support leveraging the existing strong industries through upgrading, smoothing labour movements while improving agricultural productivity, and preparing to move towards a services economy can help prepare Thailand, and other developing countries in general, to upgrade to higher value chains. Although GVC participation may be a catalyst for higher wages, greater labour productivity, and more inclusive job creation, its employment effects are complicated. An unbalanced policy framework might contribute to uneven income distributions and exclusive job creation as participating in GVCs through different linkages can benefit different stakeholders in varying ways. Therefore, a policy framework that balances the benefits among stakeholders in terms of wage distributions and job inclusion is ideal.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Work Culture, Global Value Chains, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
Asia and Thailand

99. Technological Advancement, Import Penetration, and Labour Markets: Evidence from Thai Manufacturing

Author:
Đoàn Thi Thanh Ha
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
This paper examines the impacts of advanced technology on a possible change in workers’ skills, wages, and employment due to such technological advancement. Three proxies of advanced technologies are used in the study: (i) information and communications technology, (ii) intensity of robot use, and (iii) value of e-commerce. Our study compares the effects of technological advancements on labour market outcomes with import penetration, delineating into raw materials, capital goods, and final products. Our results show that in Thailand, the impact of advanced technology in pushing workers out of the job market is limited. Instead, it tends to affect reallocation of workers between skilled and unskilled positions. The results vary amongst proxies of technology and sectors. It seems that workers in comparatively capital-intensive industries, including automotive, plastics and chemicals, and electronics and machinery, are the most affected by advanced technology. Dampened wage/income is found only in some proxies of technology and sectors. Our results show less concern of negative impacts induced by imports, particularly imports of capital goods and raw materials, on employment status and income than technological advancement.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Labor Issues, Employment, Manufacturing, Job Creation, and Labor Rights
Political Geography:
Asia and Thailand

100. The Value-Added Tax Reform and Labour Market Outcomes: Firm Level Evidence from China

Author:
Yuxiang Yang and Hongyong Zhang
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
The tax incentives designed to stimulate firm investment may have a large impact on labour market outcomes. Using a comprehensive data set containing more than 1 million Chinese manufacturing firms during the period 2000–2013 with a difference-in-difference approach, we examine the impact of the value-added tax reform in 2004–2008 on the firm-level labour market outcomes. We find that firms in eligible industries and regions (treated firms) enjoying lower costs of purchasing fixed assets under the reform tended to increase capital investment and reduce employment relative to firms that did not have tax incentives (the control firms). Compared with the control firms, the treated firms became more capital intensive and had an increase in average wage but a decline in labour income share. We also provide evidence that the substitutions of labour input by capital input is associated with increases in firm productivity and the share of skilled workers, but not imported capital goods.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Reform, Tax Systems, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
China and Asia