Journal Article
Introducing carbon taxes in South Africa
South Africa is considering introducing a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Following a discussion of the motivations for considering a carbon tax, we evaluate potential impacts using a dynamic economywide model linked to an energy...
Working Paper
Young People, Agriculture, and Employment in Rural Africa
This paper examines the current interest in addressing the problem of young people’s unemployment in Africa through agriculture. Using notions of transitions and mobilities we set out a transformative work and opportunity space framework that...
Working Paper
Education Policy, Vocational Training, and the Youth in Sub-Saharan Africa
Technical, vocational education, and training has remained an explosive topic because it can create a divided society in terms of education and the benefits associated with it. Internationally, it has always been a complex and controversial topic...
Working Paper
The Success of Learnerships?
Vocational training programmes, like South Africa’s learnership programme, which combine classroom learning and on-the-job training seem like the type of intervention which can create skills, get young people into jobs quicker, and reduce youth...
Working Paper
South African Labour Market Transitions During the Global Financial and Economic Crisis
This paper studies individual-level labour market transitions and their determinants in South Africa during the zenith and aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis using 2008 to 2010-2011 panel data from the National Income Dynamics...
Journal Article
Youth unemployment and the Arab Spring
Many observers see youth unemployment as the major reason behind the recent popular uprisings in a number of Arab countries. Increasing unemployment over the past two decades has led to frustration among young people, especially among university...
Journal Article
Political participation of Africa’s youth
The youth have long represented an important constituency for electoral mobilization in Africa. Yet, despite their numerical importance and the historical relevance of generational identities within the region, very little is really known about the...
Working Paper
Computers and Labour Markets
The rapid diffusion of computers has widely changed the consequences of computer use on the labour market. While at the beginning of the eighties knowledge of computers was an obvious advantage in a career, this same knowledge is now so commonplace...
Working Paper
Unemployment, Labour Policies and Health in Transition
A sharp rise in unemployment and a sharp rise in mortality have been two recurrent aspects of the process of transition. In response to the unemployment challenge transitional economies have equipped themselves with labour market policies (LMPs)...
Working Paper
The Changing Nature of Inequality in South Africa
The dispersion of racial incomes in South Africa has been declining since the mid 1970s. This has been accompanied by rising within-group inequality, especially amongst blacks, driven by growing unemployment. Consequently, there has been little...
Working Paper
Employer characteristics and youth employment outcomes in the formal sector in South Africa
Through the use of administrative tax data, this study attempts to identify the characteristics of firms that employ relatively large numbers of young people. The policy objective of this exercise is to use these insights to inform policy and...
Working Paper
Some Simple Analytics of Poverty Redress through Direct Income Transfers and Wage Employment Programmes
This paper is a review and commentary, from both ethical and informational perspectives, of some known results in optimal anti-poverty budgetary rules for two kinds of intervention, direct income transfers and wage employment programmes.
Journal Article
Efficiency frontier and matching process on the labour market
The purpose of this paper is to study the determinants of the inefficient functioning of the Tunisian labour market. The study takes advantage of the recent development in the stochastic frontier techniques and estimates, the matching function for...
Working Paper
A macroeconomic perspective on Asian development
Macroeconomic strategies and policies have differed significantly among Asian countries over the last fifty years, and yet some common issues recur despite their immense diversity in inherited historical initial conditions, differences in political...
Working Paper
China, South Africa, and the Lewis Model
The paper uses the Lewis model as a framework for examining the labour market progress of two labour-abundant countries, China and South Africa, towards labour shortage and generally rising labour real incomes. In the acuteness of their rural-urban...
Technical Note
On-model adjustment of incomes during COVID-19 in SOUTHMOD tax-benefit microsimulation models
This note describes methods to derive employment-to-unemployment transition shares across industries during the COVID-19 pandemic and to use these shares in SOUTHMOD tax-benefit microsimulation models to adjust relevant labour market variables. The...
Background Note
Expanding a wage subsidy during lockdown
Introduction The South African youth wage subsidy started in 2014 to increase employment and create jobs for low-wage youth. The subsidy was temporarily raised in value and expanded to reach more workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the...
Working Paper
State-Building Through Neotrusteeship
Why do some states, with foreign assistance, transition from ‘fragile’ to ‘robust?’ Scholars in state-building have argued that neotrusteeship is an effective strategy by which external organizations might build post-conflict states. This working...
Working Paper
The Travails of Unification
The former German Democratic Republic underwent a unique post-communist transition because it was absorbed into the wealthy Federal Republic of Germany and has received massive subsidies. Nonetheless, serious difficulties have persisted, including...
Working Paper
Trade Liberalization, Employment Flows and Wage Inequality in Brazil
Using nationally representative, economy-wide data, this paper investigates the relative importance of trade-mandated effects on industry wage premiums; industry and economy-wide skill premiums; and employment flows in accounting for changes in the...
Working Paper
Post-Apartheid South Africa
South Africa’s transition to democracy in 1994 created new possibilities for economic policy. Economic liberalization brought sustained, if unspectacular, growth that reversed the long decline in per capita incomes, but left its scars in much job...
Journal Article
Is there a spatial mismatch in South Africa’s metropolitan labour market?
This paper investigates evidence of a possible spatial mismatch in South Africa’s metropolitan labour market that could contribute towards explaining why black unemployment rates are significantly higher than white unemployment rates. The spatial...
Book
Global Employment
Employment has been adopted as a leading concern for the United Nations World Social Summit in March 1995. This important study, prepared for the Summit by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, comprises a wide-ranging set of...
Report
Workshop on Employment in Tunisia
On the 10th of April, 2012, the African Development Bank and UNU-WIDER organized a research workshop on the theme of ‘Employment in Tunisia: What Do We Know? What is the Way Forward?’. The aim of this workshop was to bring together universities and...
Book
Global Employment
Employment has been adopted as a leading concern for the United Nations World Social Summit in March 1995. This important study, prepared for the Summit by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, comprises a wide-ranging set of...
Book
Global Employment
Employment has been adopted as a leading concern for the United Nations World Social Summit in March 1995. This important study, prepared for the Summit by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, comprises a wide-ranging set of...