The aim of this paper is to analyse the possible trade-off between employment and productivity using panel data on world economies, developed and developing. We begin with the importance of productivity growth for developing countries, followed by a brief discussion of the concept of...

The present paper provides an overview of literature on the shift to services. It follows the three dimensions of structural change - final demand, the inter-industry division of labor and inter-industry productivity differences. It first looks at the ‘classics’, however (Fisher (1935),...

In the context of South Africa's pervasive poverty and mass unemployment, households provide an important private safety net for the unemployed. Using new South African Labour Force Survey panel data, I investigate how households cope with job separations and the resulting loss of earned income....

Various development objectives are worthy, but to my mind, one objective dominates all others: reducing the scourge of absolute economic misery in the world. In this paper, I focus on an important but relatively underemphasized approach to poverty reduction: helping the poor earn more in the...

This paper critically discusses the theoretical and empirical literature on the quantitative and qualitative employment impact of technological change, compares the relative explanatory power of the competing theories, and explains in detail the macro and micro evidence on the issue, with...