Labor Markets in Southern Africa: Evidence and Policy Lessons
Project
Labour Migration and Structural Change in Rural Labour Markets
The project consists of two parts. Transitions out of agriculture and into other sectors of the economy are a necessary part of economic development. In Africa, some of the traditional routes out of agriculture- through domestic industrial revolution, a “green revolution” in the agricultural sector, or trade reforms that stimulate industrial growth- have not typically…
Public Works Programs and Farm Household Behaviour
Public Works Programs (PWPs) are important tools for social protection. There are 167 PWPs in 29 sub-Saharan Africa. There are short term and long term PWPs. Short term PWPs can stabilise consumption in response to individual or aggregate shocks. Long term programs, on the other hand, are forms of insurance. However, there is little evidence…
Labour Markets and Household Enterprises
It is a general tenet of economic theory that competitive markets, supported by adequate infrastructure and institutions, do a better job of determining prices and allocating resources than do large-scale government planning programmes. In the structural adjustment era of the 1980s-90s, this belief underpinned a historic shift away from central planning and toward market liberalisation…
Modelling Labour Markets in LICs with Imperfect Data
Despite the centrality of the labour market to the questions of poverty and inequality, African labour markets are not well understood and significant research gaps exist. These gaps have important implications: they weaken the ability of governments to design and implement effective policies and hamper the monitoring of change and the measurement of impact. Within…