Career Crisis? Impacts of Financial Shock on the Entry-Level Labor Market: Evidence from Thailand

We utilize Thailand's the financial crisis in 1997 as a natural experiment which exogenously shifts labor demand. Convincing evidence from the Thailand Labor Force Survey support the hypothesis that both employment opportunities and wages shrunk for new entrants after the crisis. We find that workers who entered before the crisis experienced job losses and wage losses. But these losses were smaller than those of new entrants after the crisis. We also find that new entrants after the crisis experienced a 10% reduction in the overtime wages compared to new entrants before the crisis.

Are Job Networks Localized in a Developing Economy? Search Methods for Displaced Workers in Thailand

Effects of localized personal networks on the choice of search methods are studied in this paper using evidence of displaced workers by establishment closure in Thailand Labor Force Survey, 2001. For the blocks/villages level, there is less significant evidence of local interactions between job-seekers and referrals in developing labor markets. The effects of localized personal networks do not play an important role in the probability of unemployed job-seekers seeking assistance from friends and relatives. Convincing evidence from the data supports the proposition that both self-selection of individual background-like professions and access to large markets determine the choice of job search method.

Political crisis and suspension of duty-free access in Madagascar : assessment of impacts on the garment industry

The export-oriented garment industry in Madagascar has displayed robust growth, thus both contributing to the economy and creating formal employment opportunities. However, it experienced a critical situation after the political turmoil that occurred in 2009. Our investigation using the trade data demonstrates that suspension of duty-free access to the US market (AGOA) resulting from the turmoil had a greater impact on exports, 64%–78% reduction, than the turmoil itself. Our original factory-level data demonstrates that AGOA suspension increased the probability of closure by 57.8% for the factories supplying exclusively to US market, and reduced 6405 jobs for low-skilled positions during the post turmoil period. The factory-level adverse impacts are much less than those on export value at the industry level because of the maintained duty-free access to EU, which has provided an alternative market. It suggests that if EU also had cancelled duty-free access, adverse impacts would have been enormous. Given the general pattern of comparative advantage in low-income countries, unplanned cancellation of duty-free access for them hurts labor-intensive industries and low-skilled workers.

Dimensions and determinants of upward mobility : a study based on longitudinal data from Delhi slums

This study based on two primary surveys of the same households in two different years (2007/08 and 2012) assesses the extent of inter-temporal change in income of the individual workers and makes an attempt to identify the factors which explain upward mobility in alternate econometric framework, envisaging endogeneity problem. It also encompasses a host of indicators of wellbeing and constructs the transition matrix to capture the extent of change over time at the household level. The findings are indicative of a rise in the income of workers across a sizeable percentage of households though many of them remained below the poverty line notwithstanding this increase. In fact, there is a wide spread deterioration in the wellbeing index constructed at the household level. Among several determinants of income rise two important policy prescriptions can be elicited. Inadequate education reduces the probability of upward mobility while education above a threshold level raises it. Savings are crucial for upward mobility impinging on the importance of asset creation. Views that entail neighbourhood spill-over effects also received validation. Besides, investment in housing and basic amenities turns out to be crucial for improvement in wellbeing levels.

What best transfers knowledge? : capital, goods, and innovative labor in East Asia

This paper compares three knowledge carriers—trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), and inventors—as knowledge mediums, and investigates their effects on knowledge flow in East Asia from 1996 to 2010. Using patent citations as a proxy for knowledge flow, this paper shows that FDI and inventor mobility have positive effects on increasing patent citations in East Asia when the technological portfolios of two countries are less similar. While trade shows statistical significance, the effect is inconsistent according to the regression models.

Labour market turnovers among South African youths

We describe the labour market turnovers of young people using a household survey data collected from Cape Town industrial area. We measure the correlates of first unemployment duration out of school and find that matriculation and late cohort (leaving school after 2007) are related with reduced initial unemployment, yet matriculation impacts are reduced among late cohort relative to early cohort. Our estimation reveals that initial unemployment is not related with subsequent employment duration nor wage rates, but related with number of turnovers which suggests that a shorter spell is associated with more stable job tenure.