The authors examine technical efficiency variation across four industrial sectors in India, using a stochastic production frontier technique. The results are comparable to technical efficiency distribution patterns obtained in other countries. The authors examine heterogeneity in firm-level...

This paper presents evidence of the importance of electronics global value chains (GVCs) in the global economy, and discusses the effects of the recent economic crisis on the industry. The analysis focuses on how information is exchanged and introduces the concept of "value chain modularity."...

Through a review of the literature, this paper examines the links of food and agriculture with nutrition in South Asia, a region characterized by a high level of malnutrition. The review finds that the level and stability of food prices play a critical part in food consumption, with rising...

The paper estimates the effect of product standards on firms? export decisions using two novel datasets. The first covers all exporting firms in 42 developing countries. The second covers pesticide standards for 243 agricultural and food products in 63 importing countries over 2006?12. The...

This paper documents an unusual and possibly significant phenomenon: The export of skills embodied in goods, services, or capital from poorer to richer countries. We first present a set of stylized facts. Using a measure that combines the sophistication of a country's exports with the average...

Although a large literature highlights the impact of personality traits on key labor market outcomes, evidence of their impact on agricultural production decisions remains limited. Data from 1,200 Ghanaian rice farmers suggest that noncognitive skills (polychronicity, work centrality, and...

This paper revisits traditional human capital models and proposes a new conceptual framework of human capital accumulation, anchored in skills development, to illustrate the phenomenon and implications of youth economic disengagement. In the framework, youth economic disengagement is defined as...

The spread of COVID-19 and implementation of "social distancing" policies around the world have raised the question of how many jobs can be done at home. This paper uses skills surveys from 53 countries at varying levels of economic development to estimate jobs' amenability to working from home....

A vast literature shows the importance of socioemotional skills in earnings and employment, but whether they matter in getting hired remains unanswered. This study seeks to address this question and further investigates whether socioemotional skill signals in job applicants' resumes have the...

Do matching frictions affect youth employment in developing countries? This paper studies a randomized controlled trial of job fairs in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The job fairs match firms with a representative sample of young, educated job-seekers. The meetings at the fairs create very few jobs:...