We estimate the elasticity of private-sector employment to non-oil GDP in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for GCC nationals and expatriates using a Seemingly Unrelated Error Correction (SUREC) model. Our results indicate that the employment response is lower for nationals, who have an...

This paper explores the short-term employment effect of deregulating job protection forregular workers and how it varies with prevailing business cycle conditions. We apply a localprojection method to a newly constructed 'narrative' dataset of major regular job protectionreforms covering 26...

In recent years, unemployment rates in some ECCU countries have been among the highest globally. This paper evaluates several factors that could explain them, finding that high unit labor costs, in a context of strong unionization, are significantly associated with high structural unemployment,...

Uruguay enjoys favorable social outcomes, and its labor indicators are comparable to other Latin American countries, but its youth unemployment is one of the highest in the world. To help understand this duality, we employ synthetic panels from repeated household surveys for LA6 countries from...

Using data from the Vietnam Labor Force Survey, this paper takes a granular look at the mostsalient drivers of labor informality in Vietnam by examining: (i) the nature of labor informalityand transitions from formal to informal employment status and the role of worker characteristics;(ii) the...

This paper examines the economic effects of policies to contain Covid-19, by extracting lessons from Sweden's experience during the ‘Great Lockdown'. Sweden's approach was less stringent and based more on social responsibility than legal obligations compared to European peers. First, we...

Covid-19 and war-induced commodity price fluctuations, and broadening price pressures have led to a surge in inflation in many sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries. To adjust to increasing costs, firms have resorted to several measures including shuttering offices, reducing businesses, laying off,...

We study the determinants of new and repeated research collaborations, drawing on the co-authorship network of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s Working Papers series. Being an outlet where authors express their views on topics of interest, and given that IMF staff is not subject to the...

Unpaid work, such as caring for children, the elderly, and household chores represents a significant share of economic activity but is not counted as part of GDP. Women disproportionately shoulder the burden of unpaid work: on average, women do two more hours of unpaid work per day than men,...