May 2021
06May

Does it Matter to be Informal? Type of employment and political opinions in the MENA region

By Anil Duman Informal activities are highly persistent in developing countries, and their economic effects are widely studied in the literature. Yet, political consequences of informality are relatively an understudied topic and big chunk of the existing work does not offer systematic examination of how informal sector participation shape preferences and attitudes. Our paper contributes to the literature by focusing on Arab countries that have very stable and large size of informal sectors in the world. Additionally, we take into...

May 6, 2021
Articles, Labor Market, , , , ,
Read more...

April 2021
15Apr

Financial Inclusion in Malaysia Distilling Lessons for Other Countries

By World Bank Group The World Bank Group’s current partnership with Malaysia is focused on knowledge-sharing. It is centered on support for Malaysia’s vision to join the ranks of high-income economies by 2020 through inclusive and sustainable growth, and to share its lessons with developing countries. In March 2016, the World Bank Group officially launched its Global Knowledge and Research Hub in Malaysia. The new Hub is the first of its kind, serving both as a field presence in Malaysia and...

April 15, 2021
Books, Labor Market, System Sustainability, , ,
Read more...
15Apr

Financial Inclusion Through Fintech in the Digital Economy

By Eunsook Seo, Kyeong-Won Yoo Since the 2008 global financial crisis, including the recent COVID 19 pandemic, low interest rates and low economic growth have continued around the world. In spite of this low interest rate trend, as the economic downturn prolongs, there is a situation of concern called the “new normal” of low interest rates and low economic growth, and low prices. In this new normal economic structure, the rapid progress of aging is increasing the necessity and desire...

April 15, 2021
Articles, Innovation, Labor Market, System Sustainability, , ,
Read more...
15Apr

Involuntary unemployment in overlapping generations model due to instability of the economy and fiscal policy

By Yasuhito Tanaka The existence of involuntary unemployment advocated by J. M. Keynes is a very important problem of the modern economic theory. Using a three-generations overlapping generations model, we show that the existence of involuntary unemployment is due to the instability of the economy. Instability of the economy is the instability of the difference equation about the equilibrium price around the full-employment equilibrium, which means that a fall in the nominal wage rate caused by the presence of involuntary...

April 15, 2021
Articles, Labor Market, ,
Read more...
01Apr

Informal Sector in GDP: A Panel Estimation Method

By Nitesh Kansara, Gopal K. Basak, Pranab Kumar Das Estimation of the activities of the informal sector in an economy poses a serious problem for obtaining a correct estimate of GDP. This happens to be so because of the fact that informal sector activities are not registered. The literature has tried to solve the problem of estimation of the informal sector using the method of latent variables. The standard approach is generally aims to estimate for a single point. The present...

April 1, 2021
Articles, Labor Market, System Sustainability, ,
Read more...

March 2021
25Mar

Managing the Employment Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis: Policy Options for Relief and Restructuring

By Eliana Carranza, Thomas Farole, Ugo Gentilini, Matteo Morgandi, Truman Packard, Indhira Santos, and Michael Weber This note discusses policy options for managing the employment impacts of the COVID-19 crisis aimed at relief and restructuring. The relief phase corresponds to an initial COVID-19 phase when the health emergency dominates, lockdowns are common, and the focus is on saving lives, providing support to workers and households to manage the income shock and to firms to say afloat and, often retain workers;...

March 25, 2021
Books, Labor Market, System Sustainability, , ,
Read more...
19Mar

The Welfare and Labor Market Effects of Mandatory Pension Savings: Evidence from the Israeli Case

By Adi Brender Many studies show that workers make poor decisions about pension savings. Policy responses to these failures include social security retirement arrangements, tax benefits for pension savings and, in some countries, also mandatory private savings towards retirement. This study examines the response of Israeli employees to the introduction of mandatory pension contributions, and the medium-term labor market effects of the arrangement, using a randomly selected panel of 300,000 employees. The first year of the arrangement, when enforcement was...

March 19, 2021
Adequacy, Articles, Labor Market, Savings, , ,
Read more...
12Mar

Towards Improved Retirement Savings Outcomes for Women

By OECD Labour market inequalities are well-known to be the main drivers of the gender pension gap. This publication focuses on helping governments find solutions for retirement savings arrangements that do not further exacerbate these inequalities. This study first analyses why the gender pension gap exists and sheds light on some of the behavioural and cultural factors that contribute to these inequalities. Country case studies assess how demographics, labour markets and other factors may affect gaps in pension coverage, assets...

March 12, 2021
Books, Labor Market, Pension design, Reports, Savings, , ,
Read more...
11Mar

Shoring Up Shortfalls: Women, Retirement and the Growing Gigsupp Economy

By Caroline Bruckner, Jonathan Barry Forman In recent years, high-profile Silicon Valley firms have engineered billion-dollar IPOs through developing online and app-based platforms that connect service providers and sellers with customers and process their payments (the “online platform economy”). Today, millions of Americans earn income using platforms developed by Uber, Etsy, and Airbnb; and research has identified the limitations of existing federal tax rules to facilitate tax compliance of these workers and considered the consequences of their failure to pay...

March 11, 2021
Articles, Labor Market, , ,
Read more...
05Mar

Society, Economy and Development During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lesson for Emerging Economies

By Lovelina Little Flower FX, Sigamani Panneer, Hilaria Soundari, Lekha Bhat, Tresa Sugirtha J, Santhosh JS, Mhadeno Y Humtsoe, Vigneshwaran S A, Jeya Baskaran S and Samuel Paul Raj The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic impacted with multidimensional crisis has disrupted the functioning of the society, devastated global economy and has debilitated development. The appalling implications varied from country to country depending on their economy, health infrastructure, and socio-political factors. This in turn has also reflected on their responses to the pandemic...

March 5, 2021
Articles, Labor Market, ,
Read more...