"Despite sustained output growth since 1997, low-income Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries (CIS-7) have not experienced growth in employment, a phenomenon observed elsewhere in transitional economies and labeled as "jobless growth." The author addresses the causes of this...

This book identifies the binding constraints to growth of Morocco. It applies an innovative procedure known as "growth diagnostic" and has a central finding. The Moroccan economy suffers from a too slow process of structural transformation for achieving higher growth, especially for its exports...

In 2009 the Gabonese authorities defined a new vision whose strategic guidelines are detailed in an operational plan, the strategic plan for an emerging Gabon (PSGE) whose goal is to turn Gabon into an emerging country within one generation. PSGE includes an ambitious public investment program...

Unemployment, especially youth unemployment, is a serious problem for the Republic of Congo. Despite the economic recovery and political stabilization in the last decade, insufficient employment has been created, leading to high unemployment rates, especially for the young population in urban...

Fourteen years of civil conflict (1989-2003) have destroyed Liberia's social and economic infrastructure and brought the economy nearly to a halt. Workers who came of age during the conflict are largely unskilled, and the supply of workers exceeds demand by a substantial margin. The negative...

Since 1999, Nigeria has made significant progress in economic reform. Sound macroeconomic policies, combined with structural reforms aimed at increasing the supply responsiveness of the economy, ushered in sustained high growth, driven by the non-oil economy. The goal of this book is to shed...

This policy note outlines short, and medium-term policy options for addressing critical challenges affecting labor markets in Mexico, and in particular labor productivity. As labor is the main source of income for most of the population, poverty is closely linked to underemployment and low...

The strong economic growth enjoyed by the Dominican Republic following its 2003 domestic crisis was not matched by similarly substantial progress in poverty reduction. While labor productivity grew by an estimated 39 percent between 2000 and 2013, real wages fell with the crisis in 2003/04, and,...