Conflict and the composition of economic activity in Afghanistan

Despite informality being the norm in conflict-affected countries, most estimates of the impact of conflict on economic activity rely on formal sector data. Using high-frequency data from Afghanistan, this paper assesses how surges in conflict intensity affect not only the formal sector, but also informal and illicit activities. Nighttime light provides a proxy for aggregate economic activity, mobile phone traffic by registered firms captures fluctuations in formal sector output, and the land surface devoted to poppy cultivation gives a measure of illicit production. The unit of observation is the district and the period of reference is 2012–2016. The results show that an increase in conflict-related casualties has a strong negative impact on formal economic activity in the following quarter and a positive effect on illicit activity after two quarters. The impact on aggregate economic activity is negative, but more muted.

Gender Imbalances and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Large-Scale Mexican Migration

We study the consequences of international migration on labor market outcomes in a developing country. Specifically, we look at the case of Mexico, where large-scale international migration has led to significant declines in the male/female ratio. We explore whether this results in Mexican women entering high-skilled and better paying jobs over time. This question is relevant since there has been an increase in women's education and labor force participation across the developing world, but less evidence of improvements in the gender wage gap. Using an instrumental variables strategy that relies on historical migration patterns, we find that when there are relatively fewer men, women are more likely to work, have high-skilled jobs, and some earn higher wages. These results are robust to the inclusion of state, age group, and year fixed effects, and to different measures of migration and data sources. We explore investments in human capital as a key mechanism. We find that the gains in schooling are concentrated among women with the same average level of education of the men who migrate. From an aggregate perspective, these improvements in job type and wages are important given that higher female income may benefit the status, education, and health of both women and children, which in turn increases a country's development and growth. Our findings are among the few that show some movement toward improvements in the gender wage gap in a developing country setting.

Women’s economic rights in developing countries and the gender gap in migration to Germany

There is a large variation across countries of origin in the gender composition of migrants coming to Germany. We argue that women’s economic rights in developing countries of origin have three effects on their migration prospects to a place like Germany that is far away and difficult to reach. First, the lower are women’s economic rights the fewer women have access to and control over the resources needed to migrate to Germany. Second, the lower are the rights the lower is women’s agency to make or otherwise influence migration decisions. These two constraining effects on the female share in migrant populations dominate the opposing third effect that stems from low levels of women’s economic rights generating a potentially powerful push factor. We find corroborating evidence in our analysis of the gender composition of migration to Germany over the period 2009–2017.

Queuing to leave: A new approach to immigration

This paper uses queuing theory to examine the linkages between legal and illegal immigration. This approach is particularly appropriate for periods of mass migration and can be used to look at how the magnitude of people trying to migrate affects the choice between legal and illegal channels. An empirical illustration shows how origin-country conflict and past migration differently affect current legal and illegal flows. With data for Schengen countries from Eurostat for documented immigration and the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (Frontex) for illegal border crossings (IBCs), I implement a generalized method of moments (GMM) strategy using different estimates of conflict-related deaths and lagged flows of immigration as external and internal instruments, respectively. Violent conflict has a positive and significant effect on IBCs but not on documented migration flows. I find evidence of positive spillovers from the legal channel of immigration into the illegal channel but not vice versa.

Better together: Active and passive labor market policies in developed and developing economies

We investigate the macroeconomic impact of public expenditure in active labor market policies (ALMPs) and passive labor market policies (PLMPs) on main employment indicators (i.e., unemployment, employment, and labor force participation) for a large and novel panel database of 121 countries (36 developed, 64 emerging and 21 developing economies). Compared to previous studies, we include for the first time evidence from developing and emerging economies and explicitly examine the possible presence of complementarities between active and passive policies. We find that the interaction between interventions is crucial, as the effect of spending in either of the two policies is more favorable the more is spent on the other. Even the detrimental labor market effects of passive policies disappear on the condition that sufficient amounts are spent on active interventions. This complementarity seems even more important for emerging and developing economies.

Working beyond the normal retirement age in urban China and urban Russia

The incidence of working for earnings beyond the normal pension age of 55 for females and 60 for males in urban China and Russia is investigated using micro-data for 2002, 2013, and 2018. Estimated logit models indicate that, in both countries, the probability of working after normal retirement age is positively related to living with a spouse only, being healthy, and having a higher education level. It is negatively associated with age, the scale of pension, and, in urban China, being female. We find that seniors in urban Russia are more likely to work for earnings than their counterparts in China. Two possible reasons that are attributable to this difference are ruled out, namely cross-country differences in health status and the age distribution among elderly people. We also demonstrate that working beyond the normal retirement age has a much stronger negative association with earnings in urban China than in urban Russia. This is consistent with the facts that the normal retirement age is strictly enforced in urban China and seniors attempting to work face intensive competition from younger migrant workers. We conclude that China can learn from Russia that it has a substantial potential for increasing employment among healthy people under 70.

Migrating out of mega-cities: Evidence from Brazil

Traditional economic models predict rural to urban migration during the structural transformation of an economy. In middle-income countries, it is less clear which direction of migration to expect. In this article, the author shows that in Brazil as many people move out as into metropolitan cities and they mostly move to mid-sized towns. The author estimates the determinants of out-migrants’ destination choice accounting for differences in earnings, living costs, and amenities and tested whether the migrants gain economically by accepting lower wages but enjoying lower living costs. The findings suggest that in their destination choice, out-migrants aim to minimize costs of moving. On average, city-leavers realize higher real wages, including low-skilled migrants who would lose in nominal terms. The article thus provides new evidence on economic incentives to leave big cities in a middle-income country.

Informal work in sub-Saharan Africa: Dead end or stepping-stone?

Despite rapid economic growth in recent decades, informality remains a persistent phenomenon in the labor markets of many low- and middle-income countries. A key issue in this regard concerns the extent to which informality itself is a persistent state. Using panel data from Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda, this paper presents one of the very few analyses providing evidence on this question in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. Our results reveal an important extent of heterogeneity in the transition patterns observed for workers in upper-tier versus lower-tier informality. Given the limited alternative job opportunities available, particularly to those in lower-tier informal self-employment who often remain locked in a situation of inferior pay and conditions, specific policies that seek to enhance the livelihoods of workers in this most disadvantaged segment may be more relevant in the sub-Saharan context than policies that aim to reduce the regulatory barriers to formalization.

Spaniards in the wider world: the role of education in the choice of destination country

This paper examines the relationship between the education level of Spanish emigrants and their destination country. Since Spanish emigrants were born under the same laws and institutions, the differences in their destination countries can be due to dissimilarities in their level of education. To explore this, we use census microdata, covering the period from 2000 to 2007, of 21 countries with Spanish emigrants. Results suggest that with low unemployment rates, English- and Spanish-speaking countries are the most likely to become the host countries for more educated individuals, regardless of their location.

Gender gaps in education: The long view1

Many countries remain far from achieving gender equality in the classroom. Using data from 126 countries, we characterize the evolution of gender gaps in low- and middle-income countries between 1960 and 2010. We document five facts. First, women are more educated today than 50 years ago in every country in the world. Second, they remain less educated than men in the vast majority of countries. Third, in many countries with low levels of education for both men and women in 1960, gender gaps widened as more boys went to school, then narrowed as girls enrolled; thus, gender gaps got worse before they got better. Fourth, gender gaps rarely persist in countries where boys attain high levels of education. Most countries with large, current gender gaps in educational attainment have low levels of male educational attainment, and many also perform poorly on other measures of development such as life expectancy and GDP per capita. Fifth, in the youngest cohorts, women have more education than men in some regions of the world. Although gender gaps in educational attainment are diminishing in most countries, the empirical evidence does not support the hypothesis that reducing the gender gap in schooling consistently leads to smaller gender gaps in labor force participation.