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Poor people derive most of their income from work; however, there is insufficient understanding of the role of labor markets, employment, and earnings as a linkage between growth and poverty reduction, especially in low income countries. To provide inputs into the policy discussion on how to enhance poverty reduction through increased employment and earnings for given growth levels, this study explores this linkage in the case of Nicaragua using data for 2001 and 2005. To do so, the study discusses macroeconomic growth and the labor market in Nicaragua, presenting sectoral employment and produ.
Covid-19. The Russian invasion of Ukraine. Commodity price volatility. The rise of global inflation and interest rates. Currency depreciations among indebted middle-income economies. And now, natural disasters. As a sequence of events, the consequences can be both tragic and long-lasting. After analyzing the macroeconomic prospects of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region, this edition of the regional Economic Update assesses the human toll of macroeconomic shocks in terms of lost jobs and deteriorating livelihoods of the people of MENA. Growth is forecast to decelerate in 2023 after experiencing an oil-price induced growth spurt in 2022 among the high-income oil exporters of the re...
Technology and globalization are threatening manufacturing’s traditional ability to deliver both productivity and jobs at a large scale for unskilled workers. Concerns about widening inequality within and across countries are raising questions about whether interventions are needed and how effective they could be. Trouble in the Making? The Future of Manufacturing-Led Development addresses three questions: - How has the global manufacturing landscape changed and why does this matter for development opportunities? - How are emerging trends in technology and globalization likely to shape the feasibility and desirability of manufacturing-led development in the future? - If low wages are going...
This Element argues that the low dynamism of low- to mid-income Arab economies is explained with a set of inter-connected factors constituting a 'segmented market economy'. These include an over-committed and interventionist state with limited fiscal and institutional resources; deep insider-outsider divides among firms and workers that result from and reinforce wide-ranging state intervention; and an equilibrium of low skills and low productivity that results from and reinforces insider-outsider divides. These mutually reinforcing features undermine encompassing cooperation between state, business and labor. While some of these features are generic to developing countries, others are regionally specific, including the relative importance and historical ambition of the state in the economy and, closely related, the relative size and rigidity of the insider coalitions created through government intervention. Insiders and outsiders exist everywhere, but the divisions are particularly stark, immovable and consequential in the Arab world.
Doing Business 2020 is the 17th in a series of annual studies investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. It provides quantitative indicators covering 12 areas of the business environment in 190 economies. The goal of the Doing Business series is to provide objective data for use by governments in designing sound business regulatory policies and to encourage research on the important dimensions of the regulatory environment for firms.
Growth is forecasted to slow down for the Middle East and North Africa region. The war in Ukraine in 2022 exacerbated inflationary pressures as the world recovered from the COVID 19 pandemic-induced recession. The response by central banks to raise rates to curb inflation is slowing economic activity, while rising food prices are making it difficult for families to put meals on the table. Inflation, when it stems from food prices, hits the poor harder than the rich. Moreover, food insecurity in MENA has been rising over decades. The immediate effects of food insecurity can be a devastating loss of life, but even temporary increases in food prices can cause long-term irreversible damages, especially to children. The rise in food prices due to the war in Ukraine may have altered the destinies of thousands of children in the region, setting them on paths to limited prosperity. Food insecurity imposes challenges to a region where the state of child nutrition and health were inadequate before the shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic. The report discusses policy options and highlights the need for data to guide effective decision making.
This book uses household surveys in five countries of Sub-Saharan Africa to describe employment off the farm in the region s growing informal sector and assesses how different forms of education and training, including apprenticeships, influence choices in employment and earnings.
Sub-Saharan Africa's turnaround over the past couple of decades has been dramatic. After many years in decline, the continent's economy picked up in the mid-1990s. Along with this macroeconomic growth, people became healthier, many more youngsters attended schools, and the rate of extreme poverty declined from 54 percent in 1990 to 41 percent in 2015. Political and social freedoms expanded, and gender equality advanced. Conflict in the region also subsided, although it still claims thousands of civilian lives in some countries and still drives pressing numbers of displaced persons.Despite Africa’s widespread economic and social welfare accomplishments, the region’s challenges remain daun...
The Economics of Health and Health Care is the market-leading health economics textbook, providing comprehensive coverage of all the key topics, and balancing economic theory, empirical evidence, and public policy. The ninth edition offers updated material throughout, including two new chapters: Disparities in Health and Health Care (Chapter 7) examines issues of race, ethnicity, income, gender, and geography with respect to health care access, health inputs, and health outcomes; Pandemic Economics (Chapter 9) introduces a new and simplified economic treatment of epidemics and pandemics within the context of COVID-19. We also include applications from the growing literature on digital medici...