Technological progress in the exploration and production of oil and gas during the 2000s has led to a boom in upstream investment and has increased the domestic supply of fossil fuels. It is unknown, however, how many jobs this boom has created. We use time-series methods at the national level...

This paper investigates whether the COVID-19 recession led to an increase in demand for digital occupations in the United States. Using O*NET to capture the digital content of occupations, we find that regions that were hit harder by the COVID-19 recession experienced a larger increase in the...

Using a panel of firm-level data, this paper examines the effects of India's trade reforms in the early 1990s on firm productivity in the manufacturing sector, focusing on the interaction between this policy shock and firm and environment characteristics. The rapid and comprehensive tariff...

Through the 2000s, Korea's export and import linkages to advanced and emerging markets increased significantly. At the same time, the correlation of output growth between Korea and these economies rose. This paper investigates the nature of the link between trade linkages and the comovement of...

Structural transformation depends not only on how much countries export but also on what they export and with whom they trade. This paper breaks new ground in analyzing India's exports by the technological content, quality, sophistication, and complexity of the export basket. We identify five...

A key feature of developing economies is that wages in agriculture are significantlybelow those of other sectors. Using Brazilian household surveys and administrativepanel data, I use information on workers who switch sectors to decompose the driversof this gap. I find that most of the gap is...

We discuss existing shortfalls and inequalities in the accumulation of human capital—knowledge, skills, and health. We analyze their immediate and systemic causes, and assess the scope for public intervention. The broad policy goals should be to improve: the quality, and not just the quantity,...

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...