This paper aims at evaluating to what extent one’s position in the labour market is determined by his social background and what explains differences between seven West-African capital cities. Does the father’s position influence directly the occupational situation of his children through...

This paper aims at highlighting the debate on firm heterogeneity in the informal sector by testing whether entrepreneurial familial background impacts informal businesses outcomes in the West African context. In the USA, a literature aiming at understanding the high intergenerational correlation...

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of education on urban labour market participation and earnings in seven major West African cities. Our results show that although education does not always guard against unemployment, it does increase individual earnings in Abidjan, Bamako,...

Using comparable data from five West African capitals, we assess the rationale behind development policies targeting high rates of school enrollment through the prism of allocation of labor and earnings effects of skills across the formal and informal sectors, and not working. We find that...

This paper presents a cohort analysis of the participation in the labor force and in the formal and informal sectors of the economy. The participation rates are decomposed in age, cohort, and time effects. The life-cycle patterns in labor force participation and employment in the formal sector...

This article develops indicators of vulnerability in employment in seven economic capitals of West Africa and studies their links with individual incomes. Quantitative, distributional and qualitative analyses show that vulnerability compensating mechanism is mainly seen in the informal sector,...