The U.S. economy has been going through a striking structural transformation - the secular reallocation of employment across sectors - over the past several decades. We propose a decomposition framework to assess the contributions of various margins of firm dynamics to this shift. Using...

In this paper, we investigate the evolution of the informal sector through structural transformation. We develop both a three-sector and a five-sector dynamic general equilibrium (DGE) model, which can simultaneously account for structural transformation between agriculture, industry and...

This study examines the impact of trade and financial integration on structural transformation relying on data from 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the period 1985–2015. Results from our system generalized method of moments (GMM) show that, trade and financial integration...

We study the origins of labor productivity growth and its differences across sectors. In our model, sectors employ workers of different occupations and various forms of capital, none of which are perfect substitutes, and technology evolves at the sector-factor cell level. Using the model we...

We examine the extent to which declining manufacturing employment may have contributed to increasing inequality in advanced economies. This contribution is typically small, except in the United States. We explore two possible explanations: the high initial manufacturing wage premium and the high...

This paper examines the connections of structural change and economic openness to labour productivity growth using a panel data set of 41 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1991-2015. A dynamic panel model of cross-country productivity growth is estimated using the least squares with...

We look at how improving roads can affect jobs and structural transformation. We use a novel geocoded dataset covering the universe of Ethiopian roads and match this information with individual data to identify the effects of improvements in road infrastructure on the creation, quality, and...

Developing countries face a trade-off between the twin objectives of structural transformation and inclusive growth. This is the 'developer's dilemma'. This study analyses the dilemma as it manifested itself in the Indian context, and identifies two distinct episodes over the post-independence...

We focus on special characteristics of the manufacturing sector, in terms of employment generation and productivity growth, that enable the rapid, resilient economic catch-up of developing countries. We consider the 'developer's dilemma' and the relationship between manufacturing value added or...