Is a five-day workweek followed by a two-day weekend a socially optimal schedule? This paper presents a model in which labor productivity and the marginal utility of leisure evolve endogenously over the workweek. Labor productivity is shaped by two forces: restfulness, which decreases over the...

This paper investigates the contribution of small firms to employment, job creation, and growth in developing countries. While small firms (20 employees) have the smallest share of aggregate employment, the SME sector's (100 employees) contribution is comparable to that of large firms. Small...

Individual-level employment data have a wide range of applications. They are used to monitor labor markets and the Sustainable Development Goals, contribute to understanding and explaining socioeconomic conditions, and may help to design and inform labor market policies. This paper is relevant...

Off-farm income constitutes a significant share of the household livelihood portfolios across Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, the determinants and dynamics of individuals' participation in off-farm employment activities have not received adequate attention due to the weaknesses in individual-level data...

This paper uses the recently collected Living Standard Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture Initiative data sets from five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to provide a comprehensive overview of land and labor market participation by agrarian households and to formally test for...

Drawing on a new set of nationally representative, internationally comparable household surveys, this paper provides an overview of key features of structural transformation?labor allocation and labor productivity?in four African economies. New, micro-based measures of sector labor allocation...

Using a randomized survey experiment in urban Ghana, this paper demonstrates that the length of the reference period and the interview modality (in person or over the phone) affect how people respond in labor surveys, with impacts varying markedly by job type. Survey participants report...

This paper studies employment patterns and trends in South Asia to shed light on determinants of extremely low female employment rates in the region. After a comprehensive literature review, the authors use employment data from about one hundred censuses and surveys from Afghanistan, Bangladesh,...

This paper finds that informal workers are more likely to have inferior work conditions, but do not necessarily report worse subjective well-being. Starting with lower wages, but also with less regularity of hours and paid vacation, informal workers have higher incidence of envelope payments...

In this paper the impact of various agglomerative forces on employment growth in Ghanaian manufacturing is investigated, using data from two firm censuses, as well as population census and trade data. The study is the first to use nationally representative firm data that covers the formal and...