Inclusive and sustainable economic growth can drive progress and generate the means to implement the Sustainable Development Goals. Globally, labour productivity has increased and unemployment is back to pre-financial crisis levels. However, the global economy is growing at a slower rate. More progress is needed to increase employment opportunities, particularly for young people, reduce informal employment and the gender pay gap and promote safe and secure working environments to create decent work for all.
This study examines the impact of workplace-based soft skills training on the productivity of Indian garment workers. The study finds that such training leads to significant productivity gains, with treated…
The paper explores the unexpected consequences of road construction projects in rural India. While constructing roads to connect labor markets in remote areas is often seen as a positive development,…
Nighttime lights are routinely used as a proxy for economic activity when official statistics are unavailable and are increasingly applied to study the effects of shocks or policy interventions at…
Subnational measures of economic activity are crucial for analyzing inequalities that persist across subnational regions and for tracking progress towards sustainable development within a country. Eighteen of the Sustainable Development…
Trade policy uncertainty (TPU) has become an important source of economic uncertainty and research. We review the main sources and measures of TPU. We then provide a conceptual framework for…
Evidence suggests that natural resources have driven conflict and underdevelopment in modern Africa. We show that this relationship exists primarily when neighboring regions are resource-rich. When neighbors are resource-poor, own…
Through a field experiment in Indonesia, we show that worker productivity was 8.22% lower in deforested relative to forested settings, where wet bulb globe temperatures were, on average, 2.84 °C…
The Zero Carbon Action Plan (ZCAP) will serve as a roadmap for the U.S. based on the latest modeling, research and understanding of decarbonizing six key sectors (power, transport, industry,…
Shelter-in-place ordinances were the first wide-spread policy measures aimed to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Compliance with shelter-in-place directives is individually costly and requires behavioral changes across diverse sub-populations. Leveraging…
Export superstars are important for export growth and diversification and are typically born large. Firm-level data on manufacturing trade from 32 developing countries show that the top five exporters account…