Photo: Nafise Motlaq / World Bank Authors: Amanina Abdur Rahman and Achim Schmillen Similar to the trajectory of development seen in many other countries (see blog #3 in the series), over the decades since independence in 1957, Malaysia has seen a significant increase in GDP per capita from labor productivity. The country also underwent…
Photo credit: Rob Beechey / World Bank Authors: Xinshen Diaoa, Mia Ellisb, Margaret McMillanc, and Dani Rodrikd Some economists have called into question the primacy of manufacturing. For example, Gollin (2018) questions whether there is anything special about manufacturing and asks whether economists’ emphasis on manufacturing as a path to development reflects our lack…
Photo credit: Scott Wallace / World Bank Authors: Kevin Donovan, Will Jianyu Lu, and Todd Schoellman Economic development requires the reallocation of workers to more productive occupations, sectors, and regions. As such, evidence on labor market dynamics is critical for understanding whether labor markets are enabling the necessary movements of workers. In our recent…
Authors: Dino Merotto, Jörg Langbein, & Michael Weber In this blog, we explore how the challenges of delivering better jobs through structural change differ depending on where a country is in its demographic transition. We draw implications for jobs strategies in youthful countries. When developing countries enter the demographic transition the share of youth in…
Author: Dino Merotto Jobs Group, World Bank If you haven’t read Easterly and Levine’s “It’s Not Factor Accumulation” you should. But you should also read Klenow and Rodriguez-Clare’s “The Neoclassical Revival in Growth Economics: Has It Gone Too Far?”. Since it was published in 2001, Easterly and Levine’s ideas have shaped much of World Bank…
Authors: Andreas Eberhard-Ruiz and Kevwe Pela, Jobs Group, World Bank. In this blog, we explore whether the process of structural change differs between resource-rich and resource-poor economies, and discuss the implications of our findings for jobs strategies in resource-rich countries. The ‘Great Convergence’ of global incomes seen over the last 30 years, was triggered by…
Authors: Dino Merotto and Elena Casanovas, Jobs Group, World Bank. In in blog #2 and blog #3 in this series we focused on the evolution of the sectoral pattern of production and jobs as countries develop. But new research suggests that changing patterns of consumption and net trade should also be taken into account when…
Author: Andreas Eberhard-Ruiz, Jobs Group, World Bank. Out of 48 countries whose per capita income more than doubled in real terms since 1991, 47 experienced a decline in the share of workers in the agriculture sector, and in 27 of them, this decline exceeded ten percentage points. However, the sectoral shift in employment is not…
Author: Andreas Eberhard-Ruiz, Jobs Group, World Bank. Between 1996 and 2003, Nigeria’s per capita GDP grew by almost 3 percent per annum and the proportion of people living under US$ 1.90 per day – the World Bank’s threshold to measure extreme poverty – fell from 64 percent to 54 percent. By contrast, poverty did not…
Authors: Michael Weber and Jörg Langbein, Jobs Group, World Bank. Waged employment is the pathway to better jobs for most workers. Workers in waged jobs have more stable and higher earnings, better quality employment, and longer work relationships than many other types of employment (Merotto, Weber & Aterido, 2018). Yet, employment patterns vary greatly by…