Most downsizing operations show high financial returns, but their economic returns depend crucially on their design. After comparing public sector employment across countries, the author analyzes the optimal design of downsizing operations from a microeconomic perspective. The author discusses...

The author analyzes production and labor market data for a random selection of small to medium-size firms in Ethiopia to answer two questions: 1) Does a worker's marginal productivity increase with time in the labor market or with job security, as must be the case if on-the-job skill formation...

Indonesia's labor markets, especially on the island of Java, have been transformed in the past 30 years, especially since liberalization picked up speed in the mid-1980's. The author explores the regional dimensions of that transformation. In some other countries, when labor markets changed,...

Unusually rich administrative data sets covering both firms and workers enabled the authors to study displacement in Slovenia during 1987-93. They describe displacement trends and the characteristics of displaced workers comparing them to those in North America during a major recession. They...

Teams from two institutions studied the economic impact of health status on productivity and income. They studied whether onchocercal skin disease caused economic damage to the labor force at a coffee plantation in southwest Ethiopia, and how much. The research team estimated the daily wage...

Do flexible labor markets lubricate growth? Using data from Taiwan, China, to analyze the effects of labor market flexibility, the authors find that: 1) Workers are more likely to move to industries that tend to be similar to their industry of origin (including intrasectoral moves that would be...

The author develops a view of the informal sector in developing countries primarily as an unregulated micro-entrepreneurial sector and not as a disadvantaged residual of segmented labor markets. Drawing on recent work from Latin America, he offers alternative explanations for many of the...

The authors present empirical evidence on the determinants of industry-level multifactor productivity growth. They focus on"traditional factors,"including the process of technological catch up, human capital, and research and development (R&D), as well as institutional factors affecting labor...

The recent restructuring of Latin American economies has renewed interest in the effects of trade liberalization, on labor markets, and on the gender division of labor. The author does not attempt to establish casuality between economic reforms, and the types of jobs that men and women hold....

Parliaments are the institutions through which governments are held accountable to the electorate. They have a wide range of tools with which to carry out this oversight function, but until recently little analysis had been undertaken on the characteristics or use of such tools. This paper uses...