Millions of people around the world have been forced to abandon their homes due to conflict, as either international refugees or internally displaced persons. Forced migration produces significant economic impacts. These impacts involve multiple factors, but one key element of these impacts is labour markets. Labour markets have important implications for long-term development after an…
The Labour Market Impacts of Forced Migration
How do Labour Markets Equilibrate?
Migrants have long been thought to play a central role in helping an economy to make efficient use of its resources. That migration acts as a force of arbitrage– that it takes place, that it encourages equilibrium, and that it leads to an efficient allocation of resources – is one of the central tenets of…
Food Constraints and “Ganyu” Labour
Small-scale farming continues to be the principal source of employment and income for a majority of the population in low-income countries. Zambia is no exception: in 2008, 80% of employment was in agriculture. Even though Zambia has recently been re-classified as lower middle-income country primarily due to its large copper and cobalt exports, most Zambian…
Public Works Programs and Farm Household Behaviour
Public Works Programs (PWPs) are important tools for social protection. At the time of the beginning of the project, there were 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….
Women’s Access to Public Transport and Labour Force Participation
This project focuses on the labour market entry situation for women in Pakistan. Social norms against women coming into close contact with unrelated men and the discomfort social stigma and threat of possible harassment when they do so, restricts women’s use of public transport in urban areas of many countries, including in South Asia. This…
Matched Employee-Employer Panel-Data for Labour Market Analysis in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a low-income economy emerging from years of economic crisis. The crisis had a profound impact on production, employment and human development. The policy challenges to growth and recovery are severe and will require rigorous economic analysis drawing on a detailed understanding of the field and relevant data of a high quality. This project…
Asymmetric Information on the Skills of Workers and Matching in the Labour Market
Youth unemployment is a serious issue in developing countries, where around 60% of young people are currently unemployed or underemployed [ILO 2013]. Understanding the determinants of youth employment in LICs is thus highly policy relevant, not just for policies related to labour market functioning and attachment, but also for those debates related to the incentives…
Promoting Migrant Remittances using Mobile Banking
Recent research has shown that migrant remittances are extremely important sources of funding for developing countries, as they are generally large in magnitude and stable in times of macroeconomic volatility. But there is still much to be learned about remittance flows in this context, both in terms of their determinants and consequences. This research project…
The Urban Geography of Entrepreneurship and Growth in India
Rapid urbanisation is a major phenomenon in many developing countries. Cities are the engines of economic development; however, little is known about what determines the success of cities in developing countries, nor about the factors that shape the characteristics of rapid urbanisation. The historical literature on urban economics is rooted in the rise of the…
Wage Compression in Low Income Labour Markets
Do relative pay comparisons matter for worker behaviour? A long tradition in economic thought – as well as in psychology, sociology, and human resource management – has advanced the notion that individuals care about not only their own pay but also their pay relative to that of their co-workers. When subjected to unequal pay, workers…