Increased globalization - the international integration of markets forgoods, technology, labor, and capital - has coincided in the past 20years with a shift in demand from less-skilled workers to those with moreskills. Have imports from developing countries been responsible for thelowered wages...

Many arguments that have been advanced in favor of maintaining capital controls within the EC have not paid sufficient attention to the welfare consequences of this type of market intervention. Our paper provides a simple, optimizing framework in which the welfare consequences of capital...

The paper examines labor market developments in the four hard-peg European Union (EU) accession candidates during transition, with a view toward understanding the persistent high unemployment experienced in each country. Despite the significant levels of unemployment in all four countries, labor...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes the regional labor markets for Belgium. The paper examines labor market performance, and argues that a number of factors—poor worker-job matching, a compressed wage structure, and low geographical mobility—contribute to economic disparities. The paper...

The GCC growth model has delivered substantial improvements in living standards over several decades. Access to foreign labor has supported rapid growth in the non-oil sector and price stability in the region. It has also resulted in positive spillovers to the migrant-sending countries through...

In designing policy measures, including possible social safety nets, targeted to the poor, it is important to fully understand the efficiency implications of these measures. There is abundant macroeconomic literature on their negative effects on the poor’s work effort. The literature, however,...

This paper gauges the potential effects on employment of rebalancing China''s exportoriented growth model toward domestic demand, particularly private consumption. Shifting to a private consumption-led growth likely means more demand for existing and new services as well as reorienting the...

Over the past decade, the United States has been very successful atcreating jobs. Some other industrial countries have clearly lagged behind. But what is the reason why some countries are more successful than others at creating employment? Are there common factors that explainjob creation? This...

This paper discusses tax and expenditure policy reforms to raise employment. Using data for 58 advanced and emerging economies, the paper provides a unified assessment of tax and expenditure measures that have usually been addressed separately. The focus is on incentives to increase labor demand...

In addition to transferring about 16 percent of GDP from exporters to importers, Uzbekistan’s quasi-fiscal multiple exchange rate regime generates identifiable welfare losses of 2-8 percent of GDP on import markets and up to 15 percent on export markets. These excess burdens have increased...