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…
Matched Employee-Employer Panel-Data for Labour Market Analysis in Zimbabwe
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…
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…
Measuring Labour in Farm Households in Africa
In low-income countries, work in household owned and managed farms account for a large share of the labour force. Yet, to date, there is very little research on the approaches to measuring farm labour. Typically most measurements of farm labour involve a cumulative number representing a wide range of activities. For example, male labour is…
Are Labor Costs in Africa too High?
High labor costs appear to be a factor that undermines the creation of low-skill jobs in formal manufacturing firms at a large scale in several African countries. First, there exists a small number of formal manufacturing firms in Africa. These firms face higher labor costs than similar firms in numerous comparator countries, even after controlling…