Wage subsidies served as a dominant labour market policy response around the world to mitigate job losses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, no causal evidence of their effects exists for developing countries. We use unique panel labour force survey data and exploit a temporary...

Wage subsidies have served as a primary labour market policy used around the world to mitigate job losses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In South Africa, where unemployment is among the highest globally, the Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme supported millions of workers in a...

This study examines the effects of cross-border return migration on intertemporal and intergenerational transmission of socio-economic status across six new harmonized surveys from three Arab countries: Egypt (1998, 2006, 2012), Jordan (2010, 2016) and Tunisia (2014). We link individuals'...

This paper studies the incidence and heterogeneity of labour informality in six Latin American countries-Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru. We divide workers into five work statuses: formal wage-employed, formal self-employed, upper-tier informal wageemployed, lower-tier...

In South Africa, the manufacturing sector -- important for growth and employment creation -- has shown declining growth, poor productivity performance, decreased labour demand, and increased imports of intermediate goods (offshoring activities). Offshoring influences jobs and wages differently...

We investigate the evolution of wage levels, wage inequality, and wage determinants among urban residents in China using China Household Income Project data from 1988, 1995, 2002, 2007, and 2013. Average wage grew impressively between each pair of years. Wage inequality had long been on the...

Very little is known about the extent to which wage and employment offsetting behaviours change by firm size to mitigate the detrimental effects of minimum wage regulation. Do micro establishments react more aggressively to minimum wage shocks compared to small and medium establishments? To...

South Africa's Employment Tax Incentive, launched in 2014, aimed to address low youth employment by reducing the cost of hiring young workers. We make use of anonymized tax administrative data from the 2012-2015 tax years to examine the effect of the Incentive on youth employment. We match firms...

This paper presents new evidence on the employment effects of a large increase in agricultural minimum wages in South Africa using anonymized tax data. We add to the minimum wage literature by differentiating employment effects resulting from the destruction of existing jobs and from the slower...

The purpose of this article is to provide new evidence about the sources of regional income inequalities in Brazil along the wage distribution, taking into account the regional differentials in purchasing power. We use a unique and recent regional purchasing power index to adjust nominal values...