Labor

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Multimedia
Can Manufacturing Kickstart Growth in Africa? – Vijaya Ramachandran
October 18, 2017
China has long been the factory of the world. But as wages there rise, manufacturers are looking to other countries and regions. Meanwhile, African countries have a huge and burgeoning population of young people looking for jobs. So now many wonder—could Africa be the next big destination for ...
Blog Post
Can Sub-Saharan Africa Be a Manufacturing Destination?
October 16, 2017
A new paper coauthored by Alan Gelb, Christian Meyer, Divyanshi Wadhwa, and myself suggests that Africa is not, in general, poised to embark on a manufacturing-led take-off, stepping into the shoes of emerging Asia. Africa, including those countries that have come to be regarded as leaders in develo...
BRIEFS
Global Skill Partnerships: A Proposal for Technical Training in Settings of Forced Displacement
October 11, 2017
The world urgently needs innovation to shape how international migration happens. Today people who are forcibly displaced are seen and treated largely as a burden, not as a resource that can bring shared benefits. A new type of private-public partnership can offer new opportunity for some of those w...
BRIEFS
Global Skill Partnerships: A Proposal for Technical Training in a Mobile World (Brief)
October 11, 2017
Within a decade, Europe will require hundreds of thousands more nurses than it is likely to train. To meet the growing need, nurses will move in large numbers to Western Europe from other countries, including those in Eastern Europe. But Eastern Europe currently lacks nurses already relative to West...
WORKING PAPERS
Can Africa Be a Manufacturing Destination? Labor Costs in Comparative Perspective - Working Paper 466
October 06, 2017
Our central question is whether African countries can break into global manufacturing in a substantial way. Our results suggest that for any given level of GDP, labor is more costly for firms that are located in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, we also find that there are a few countries in Africa that,...
WORKING PAPERS
Testing for Repugnance in Economic Transactions: Evidence from Guest Work in the Gulf - Working Paper 463
October 04, 2017
Workers from poor countries can find enormous economic opportunity by working temporarily in a rich country. But agencies that fight global poverty do little to facilitate guest work. This may be because guest workers are perceived to typically suffer negative side effects that outweigh th...
CGD NOTES
Automation, AI, and the Emerging Economies
September 08, 2017
For the world’s middle-income countries, the changes unleashed by automation, digital technologies, and the advent of increasingly more capable AI pose major challenges. They threaten to upend the few tried and tested development strategies.