Internal migration in Indonesia raises wages and improves access to formal employment for the workers left behind, particularly lower-educated workers, by easing labour supply pressures and reallocating jobs across the formal and informal sector.
The new Global Gender Distortions Index (GGDI) quantifies the impact of gender gaps in the labour market, shedding light on how much higher economic activity would be if women had the same opportunities as men.
Increases in Brazil’s national minimum wage between 2000 and 2009 moved the country from a regime of low minimum wage bite to one of high bite. This column exploits variation in the bite of the reform across states and industries to reveal immediate ...
Repeated increases in the real minimum wage in early-2000s Argentina – implemented amid moderate inflation and an economic recovery – did not lead to higher job destruction as firms were able to absorb higher costs without resorting to terminations.
Training women in assertive communication in India enabled them to more effectively persuade their husbands to support their participation in the workforce – leading to substantial and sustained increases in women’s job uptake and earnings at low cos...
When female labour reforms fail to align with employer incentives, they can deepen rather than reduce gender disparities in the labour market, as shown by Iran’s 2016 reform.
Valuing the time of the self-employed is crucial for evaluating interventions and conducting cost-benefit analysis. Yet research often misprices this value at zero or equal to market wages. New evidence from Kenya suggests a practical fix: value unpa...
Evidence from Ethiopia suggests that while part-time jobs broaden access for workers needing flexibility, they attract lower-skill applicants and reduce productivity, helping explain part-time wage penalties and gender pay gaps.
