Abstract: This paper presents a selective overview of the literature on modeling labor market policies in developing countries. It considers welfare economics, theoretical models, and empirical evidence to highlight the three general features needed in future research on labor market policy in developing countries. The author identifies desirable research components (welfare economics, theoretical modeling, and empirical modeling) and pitfalls in the literature (inappropriate use of productivity, reliance on wrong kinds of empirical studies, lack of cost-benefit analysis, attention to only a subset of the goods and bads, and fallacy of composition). The paper concludes with suggested topics and methods for future research. The author states that sound labor market policy requires sound labor market models. The paper makes a case for developing policy based on explicit evaluation criteria, specific theoretical models, and comprehensive empirical evidence.

Agriculture is a major contributor to Africa’s GDP, the region’s biggest source of employment and its largest food producer. However, agricultural productivity remains low and buyer-driven global value chains offer few opportunities for small producers to upgrade into higher value-added activities. In recent years, the revival of Africa’s cooperatives has been celebrated by governments and international donors as a pathway towards inclusive agricultural development, and this book explores the strengths but also the issues which surround these cooperatives. The book scrutinizes the neoliberal ideal of economic prosperity arising through the operation of liberalized labor markets by illuminating the discriminatory nature of Uganda’s informal labor relations. It points to the role of cooperatives as a potential instrument of progressive change in African export agriculture, where large numbers of small producers depend on casual wage work in addition to farming. In contrast to the portrayal, advanced by some governments and rarely questioned by donors, of an unproblematic co-existence of small producers’ collective action and big capital interests, the author calls for a re-politicized debate on the Social and Solidarity Economy. As part of this, she highlights the adverse political and economic conditions faced by African cooperatives, including intense international competition in agricultural processing, inadequate access to infrastructure and services, and at times antagonistic state-cooperative relations. Supported by wide-ranging interdisciplinary evidence, including new ethnographic, survey and interview data, this book shows how cooperatives may be co-opted by both the state and corporations in a discourse that ignores structural inequalities in value chains and emphasizes poverty reduction over economic and political empowerment. It provides a critique of New Institutional Economics as a framework for understanding how institutions shape redistribution, and develops a political economy approach to explore the conditions for structural change in African export agriculture.

In the first IEG evaluation of World Bank Group support to youth employment, the findings reveal short-term effects, limited positive results, and lack of evidence. The focus is on investment climate, labor market, and skills. An evidence-based, strategic approach using youth-specific, complementary interventions and multisectoral teams is needed.

What guidance does academic research really provide to economic policy development? The critical and analytical surveys in this volume investigate links between policies and outcomes by surveying work from broad macroeconomic policies to interventions in microfinance. Asserting that there are no universal correspondences between policies and outcomes, contributors demonstrate instead that only an intense familiarity with the development context and the universe of applicable economic models can generate successful policies. Getting cause-and-effect right is essential for policy design and implementation. With the goal of drawing researchers and policy makers closer, this volume highlights our increasing understanding of ways to combine economic theorizing with careful, thoughtful empirical work. - Presents an accurate, self-contained survey of the current state of the field - Summarizes the most recent discussions, and elucidates new developments - Although original material is also included, the main aim is the provision of comprehensive and accessible surveys

This book explores China's hukou system, by which individuals are registered in a specific geographic region, and the prospects for reform. The history of the hukou system and its instrumental role in Chinese urbanization and labor markets is explained, and readers get a sense of what issues are prioritized by Chinese policymakers as they contemplate reform or change to this system, from hukou-based labor market discrimination, inequality of opportunity, multi-dimensional poverty of rural migrants, the public health consequences of non-hukou migration, and old age insurance for migrants without hukous. The author concludes with a stirring and practical call for hukou reform, articulating a cost-benefit model and providing an array of policy suggestions. This book will interest scholars of Chinese society, demographics and future urbanization.

Work is constantly reshaped by technological progress. New ways of production are adopted, markets expand, and societies evolve. But some changes provoke more attention than others, in part due to the vast uncertainty involved in making predictions about the future. The 2019 World Development Report will study how the nature of work is changing as a result of advances in technology today. Technological progress disrupts existing systems. A new social contract is needed to smooth the transition and guard against rising inequality. Significant investments in human capital throughout a person’s lifecycle are vital to this effort. If workers are to stay competitive against machines they need to train or retool existing skills. A social protection system that includes a minimum basic level of protection for workers and citizens can complement new forms of employment. Improved private sector policies to encourage startup activity and competition can help countries compete in the digital age. Governments also need to ensure that firms pay their fair share of taxes, in part to fund this new social contract. The 2019 World Development Report presents an analysis of these issues based upon the available evidence.

This book focuses on labour dislocation and migration of Palestinians between 1967 and 1992. In particular, it highlights the social transformations in the occupied Palestinian territory where Palestinian labour was permitted to work in Israel from 1968 onwards. Elaborating on the results of the policy which saw a gradual increase in the number of Palestinian workers commuting daily from a negligible proportion of the actively participating labour force, to 35 percent of all employed persons, and 60 percent of all wage paid workers, the book studies this unique case which embodies characteristics from permanent migration situations not only in the de-jure, but also the de-facto sense; insofar as it embeds higher risks and reallocates resources as if it was a permanent relocation scenario. Illustrated with tables and econometric results, the book identifies the determinants and implications of migrant labour from the West Bank using two broad methodologies: the neoclassical and the historical-structural method. Each of these methods is divided into two branches: the classical divided into price determined and a choice-theoretic framework,and the historical-structural divided into dependency and Marxist theory. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the situation, all four perspectives are employed in the investigation. In doing so, what emerges is a structure for the book which takes shape along the different lines of migration literature. The book provides new insights into the making of wage labour and labour migration theory.