Abstract

South Asia’s economy has grown rapidly, and the region has made a significant reduction in poverty. However, the available jobs for the growing working population remain limited. Policy makers are contending with lingering concerns about jobless growth and poor job quality. Exports to Jobs: Boosting the Gains from Trade in South Asia posits that exports, could bring higher wages and better jobs to South Asia. We use a new methodology to estimate the potential impact from higher South Asian exports per worker on wages and employment. We find that increasing exports per worker would result in higher wages, mostly for the better-off groups—like the better-educated workers, men, and the more-experienced workers—although the less-skilled and rural workers would benefit from new job opportunities outside of the informal sector. Our report shows that to spread the benefits from higher exports widely, policies are needed to raise skills and get certain groups, such as women and youth, into more and better jobs. Complementary measures include removing trade barriers and investing in infrastructure, and increasing the ability of workers to find higher-paying jobs. Together, these actions would help South Asian countries spread the gains from being closely integrated into the global economy through exporting. This book, which is the product of a partnership between the International Labour Organization and the World Bank, contributes to our understanding of the impact that growing exports can have on increasing well-being, and it bridges the gap between academic research and policy making. Document type: Book

Abstract

Submitted by Isabele Garcia (isabele.garcia@fgv.br) on 2018-01-03T16:48:40Z No. of bitstreams: 1 CEPESP_Moreno-Moroy; Posada. The impact of public transport expansions on informality.pdf: 3096163 bytes, checksum: ab616acbd943d66a959dad54ebd1c5fb (MD5) Approved for entry into archive by Isabele Garcia (isabele.garcia@fgv.br) on 2018-01-03T16:49:55Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 CEPESP_Moreno-Moroy; Posada. The impact of public transport expansions on informality.pdf: 3096163 bytes, checksum: ab616acbd943d66a959dad54ebd1c5fb (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2018-01-03T16:49:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 CEPESP_Moreno-Moroy; Posada. The impact of public transport expansions on informality.pdf: 3096163 bytes, checksum: ab616acbd943d66a959dad54ebd1c5fb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 The São Paulo Metropolitan Region (SPMR) displays a strong core-periphery divide. Central areas concentrate the bulk of formal jobs while peripheral areas display high incidence of informal employment. This pattern is reinforced by a large deficit in urban transport provision. Against this background, we estimate the impact of expansions of the public transport system on local informality rates for the SPMR between 2000 and 2010. We compare the average changes in informality in areas which received new public transport infrastructure with the average changes in areas which were supposed to receive infrastructure according to official plans, but did not because of delays. After controlling for endogenous selection, we find that informality decreased on average 16 percent faster in areas receiving new public transport infrastructure compared to areas that faced project delays.