This paper examines how different types of workers in 17 middle-income countries were affected by labor market retrenchment during the great recession. Impacts on different types of workers varied by country and were only weakly related to the severity of the shock. Among active workers, youth...

This paper provides a synthetic and systematic review on the effectiveness of various entrepreneurship programs in developing countries. It adopts a meta-regression analysis using 37 impact evaluation studies that were in the public domain by March 2012, and draws out several lessons on the...

This paper provides experimental evidence on the effects of vocational and entrepreneurial training for Malawian youth, in an environment where access to schooling and formal sector employment is extremely low. It tracks a large fraction of program drop-outs -- a common phenomenon in the...

Since the mid-1990s, Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced unprecedented levels of high economic growth. A key question follows: What accounts for the turnaround of the growth performance in the mid-1990s? The answer can provide insight into whether the recent growth spurt in Sub-Saharan Africa is...

The informal sector is generally believed to be more vulnerable to various risks due to limited access to social insurance, but little empirical evidence exists to support this statement. This paper examines the relationship between informality and protection from health risks in Yemen. The...

This paper reviews evidence from 44 middle-income countries on how the recent financial crisis affected jobs and workers'incomes. In addition to providing a rare assessment of the magnitude of the impact across several middle-income countries, the paper describes how labor markets adjusted and...

This paper contributes new evidence from two large household surveys on the compliance of firms with severance pay regulations in Indonesia, and the extent to which changes in severance pay regulations could affect employment rigidity. Compliance appears to be low, as only one-third of workers...

This paper utilizes a cross-country panel of 83 developing countries to examine how changes in cohort size are correlated with subsequent employment outcomes for workers at different ages. The results depend on countries'level of development. In low-income countries, young adults that are born...

This paper analyzes heterogeneity among the self-employed in 74 developing countries, representing two-thirds of the population of the developing world. After profiling how worker characteristics vary by employment status, it classifies self-employed workers outside agriculture...

In rural Indonesia, around 60 percent of workers engage in agriculture and face regular climatic shocks that may threaten their crop production, household income, and human capital investments. Little is known about households’ ability to maintain consumption in response to these shocks. This...