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Developing countries made considerable gains during the first decade of the 21st century. Their economies grew at unprecedented rates, resulting in large reduction in extreme poverty and a significant expansion of the middle class. But more recently that progress has slowed with an economic environment of lackluster global trade, not enough jobs coupled with skills mismatches, continued globalization and technological change, greater income inequality, unprecedented population aging in richer countries, and youth bulges in the poorer ones. This essay examines how seven key countries fared from 1990-2010 in their development quest. The sample includes Brazil, India, Vietnam and four African countries-Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, and Zambia-all of which experienced rapid growth in recent years, but for different reasons. The patterns of growth are analyzed in each of these countries using a unifying framework that draws a distinction between the "structural transformation" and "fundamentals" challenges in growth. Out of the seven countries, the traditional path to rapid growth of export oriented industrialization only played a significant role in Vietnam.
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Data from the Groningen Growth and Development Center's Africa Sector Database and the Demographic and Health Surveys reveals that much of Africa's recent growth and poverty reduction has been associated with a substantive decline in the share of the labor force engaged in agriculture. This decline is most pronounced for rural females over the age of 25 who have a primary education; it has been accompanied by a systematic increase in the productivity of the labor force, as it has moved from low productivity agriculture to higher productivity services and manufacturing. Although the employment share in manufacturing is not expanding rapidly, in most of the low-income African countries the employment share in manufacturing has not peaked and is still expanding, albeit from very low levels. More work is needed to understand the implications of these shifts in employment shares for future growth and development in Africa south of the Sahara.
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The economic thinking around the role of agriculture for development has evolved since the 1950s. Over the past decades, the agriculture sector has been rediscovered as a sector with great potential for triggering growth, reducing poverty and inequality, providing food security, and delivering environmental services. This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of agricultural development by investigating the role played by laws and regulations. First, the paper proposes new measures of regulatory quality and regulatory efficiency in agriculture. Second, the paper employs cross-section data to test the relationship of the proposed measures with agricultural performance. The results indicate that agricultural productivity is on average higher where transaction costs imposed by regulations are lower and where countries adhere to more regulatory good practices. This relationship is stronger when low transaction costs and regulatory good practices are combined.
Agribusiness --- Business Regulations --- Legal Institutions --- Structural Change
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In developing countries, younger and better-educated cohorts are entering the workforce. This developing world-led education wave is altering the skill composition of the global labor supply, and impacting income distribution, at the national and global levels. This paper analyzes how this education wave reshapes global inequality over the long run using a general-equilibrium macro-micro simulation framework that covers harmonized household surveys representing almost 90 percent of the world population. The findings under alternative assumptions suggest that global income inequality will likely decrease by 2030. This increasing educated labor force will contribute to the closing of the gap in average incomes between developing and high income countries. The forthcoming education wave would also minimize, mainly for developing countries, potential further increases of within-country inequality.
Demographic Trends --- Global Inequality --- Structural Change
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Economics. --- Evolutionary economy. --- Consumer. --- Creativity. --- Evolution. --- Firms. --- Growth. --- Structural change.
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Empirical evidence indicates that in many developing regions, the extreme poor in more marginal land areas form a "residual" pool of rural labor. Structural transformation in such developing economies depends crucially on labor and land use decisions of these most-vulnerable populations located on abundant but marginal agricultural land. Although the modern sector may be the source of dynamic growth through learning-by-doing and knowledge spillovers, patterns of labor, land and other natural resources use in the rural economy matter in the overall dynamics of structural change. The concentration of the rural poor on marginal lands is essentially a barometer of economy-wide development. As long as there are abundant marginal lands for cultivation, they serve to absorb rural migrants, increased population, and displaced unskilled labor from elsewhere in the economy. Moreover, the economy is vulnerable to the "Dutch disease" effects of a booming primary products sector. As a consequence, productivity increases and expansion in the commercial primary production sector will cause manufacturing employment and output to contract, until complete specialization occurs. Avoiding such an outcome and combating the inherent dualism of the economy requires both targeted polices for the modern sector and traditional agriculture on marginal lands.
Dualism --- Energy --- Environment --- Marginal lands --- Primary products --- Rural poverty --- Structural change
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These proceedings present results of the Concerted Action project "Consequences of structural changes in roundwood and forest products markets in Europe" (project AIR3-CT942288), financed by the DG IV of the European Commission. The main purposes of these proceedings have been to assess : (1) which topics should be emphasized when analyzing the consequences of structural changes in the European markets for timber and forest industry products ; (2) which methods seem most promising for analyses of structural changes in these markets ; (3) which data, in addition to the presently available data, are needed for such analyses ; (4) future research priorities in this field.
Forest products industry --- Forest products --- markets --- marketing --- forest products --- roundwood --- economic analysis --- trends --- structural change --- conferences --- europe --- Marketing.
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Been synonymous with development. However, the trend of premature deindustrialization and the spread of automation technologies associated with Industry 4.0 has raised concerns that the development model based on export-led manufacturing seen in East Asia will be harder for hitherto less industrialized countries to replicate in the future. Can services-led development be an alternative? Contrary to conventional wisdom, the features of manufacturing that were considered uniquely conducive for productivity growth - such as international trade, scale economies, inter-sectoral linkages, and innovation - are increasingly shared by the services sector. But services are not monolithic. The twin gains of productivity growth and large-scale job creation for relatively low-skilled workers are less likely to come together in any given services subsector. The promise of services-led development in the future will be strengthened to the extent that technological change reduces the trade-off between productivity and jobs, and growth opportunities in services with potential for high productivity do not depend on a manufacturing base. Considering technological change and linkages between sectors while differentiating across types of services, this book assesses the scope of a services-driven development model and policy directions that maximize its potential--
Digital Technology --- Economic Development --- Economic Growth --- Industrialization --- Jobs --- Manufacturing Sector --- Productivity --- Services Sector --- Servicification --- Structural change --- Structural transformation
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The Korean manufacturing sector has undergone active structural transformation in the past few decades. In particular, the composition of core manufacturing products has changed over time. In the 1970s, textiles, which are used to produce fabric, clothes, apparel, and shoes, were the main product. Over time, the value added shares have shifted toward electronics, ships, and cars. By analyzing plant-level microdata, this paper documents the patterns of entry, exit, job creation and destruction, and the growth of young plants during the industrial shift. This industrial shift involved active job reallocations, as well as the entry and exit of plants. The paper quantifies the extent to which such plant-level dynamics explain aggregate productivity growth. The findings show that within-plant productivity growth, which includes the effects of fast growth of young plants as well as robust growth of large continuing plants, played an important role in the productivity growth of the Korean manufacturing sector. The contribution of reallocations between continuing plants was relatively small. Moreover, productivity growth of an industry accompanied an increase of productivity dispersion, a measure commonly interpreted as the degree of misallocation.
Firm Entry --- Firm Exit --- Industrial Economics --- Industry --- Labor Markets --- Manufacturing --- Productivity Dynamics --- Resource Misallocation --- Social Protections and Labor --- Structural Change
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Economic growth in Benin, Burkina Faso, and Cote d'Ivoire occurred in tandem with a rapid exodus of labor out of agriculture. This paper investigates the contribution (or lack thereof) of within- and between-sector productivity changes to overall productivity growth and output per capita growth since 2000. Productivity growth was relatively significant in Burkina Faso, modest in Benin, and in the negative territory in Cote d'Ivoire. The results show that static structural change drove growth in Burkina Faso and Benin, although it was partly offset by a dynamic loss in Benin. However, structural change made a smaller contribution in Cote d'Ivoire. Within-sector productivity loss generally held back growth. The pattern of structural change observed in Benin, Burkina Faso, and Cote d'Ivoire starkly contrasts with that of Asia, where within-sector productivity gains were preponderant and dynamic structural change was the norm rather than the exception. The bulk of Benin, Burkina Faso, and Cote d'Ivoire's displaced agricultural workers moved into still-low productivity service activities, as is typical of the African sample.
Growth --- Labor Markets --- Labor Productivity --- Poverty Reduction --- Private Sector Development --- Private Sector Economics --- Social Protections and Labor --- Structural Change
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