Determinants of Long-Run Unemployment

This paper investigates the determinants of long-run unemployment and growth by extending the endogenous growth model of Howitt and Aghion (1998) to allow for a more general treatment of the labor market in the spirit of Pissarides (1990). We find that (i) both long-run growth and unemployment depend not only on factors that affect long-run growth as identified in endogenous growth models with full employment, but also on certain labor market parameters; (ii) long-run unemployment may rise or fall with growth depending on the model's parameters; and (iii) though government policies that promote growth indirectly through improvement in labor market efficiency always reduce the long-run unemployment rate, policies that directly encourage investment in research and development may increase the unemployment rate.     

The Determinants of Child Labour and Child Schooling in Ghana

This paper investigates the main determinants of child labourand child schooling in Ghana, with special reference to theirinteraction. The study provides evidence on the impact of povertyand quality of schooling on child labour hours, taking intoaccount their potential endogeneity. The exercise distinguishesbetween cluster poverty and household poverty in the two-stageHeckman estimation procedure. In addition, it relies on a setof non-common regressors to identify the child labour hoursregression from the selection equation. Other methodologicalfeatures include simultaneous equations estimation of childlabour, child schooling and poverty, taking into account theirjoint endogeneity. The empirical results contain some evidenceof sharp rural urban differences, thus, pointing to the needto adopt region specific policies in enhancing child welfare.However, rural, semi-urban and urban Ghana agree on the effectiverole that improved school attendance can play in curbing childlabour.     

Non‐farm Income Diversification in Rural Ghana: Patterns and Determinants

Abstract: Evidence abounds in the rural livelihoods literature that rural households do not only receive a significant proportion of their incomes from non‐farm sources, but also it is a significant source of employment for rural folks. This paper examines the pattern and determinants of non‐farm income diversification in rural Ghana. Results show that off‐farm income constituted 43 percent of rural household income in 2005/6. Female‐headed households tend to have larger off‐farm income shares compared to male‐headed households. Non‐farm income shares followed the same gender pattern albeit less pronounced. Unlike in Latin America and Asia, in rural Ghana, non‐farm self‐employment income is more important than non‐farm wage‐employment income. Regression results show that the gender composition of households, age, education, and access to credit, electricity and markets are important determinants of multiple non‐farm activities and non‐farm income. The findings call for strategies that can help rural households maximize the benefits from income diversification.     

Human Resource Underutilization in an Era of Poverty Reduction: An Analysis of Unemployment and Underemployment in Ghana

Abstract: Unemployment is more prevalent in urban than rural Ghana, while underemployment is pervasive in rural Ghana. The paper analyses trends in these two forms of human resource underutilization and examines their major determinants. It is found that a positive association exists between the underemployment rate and the incidence of poverty in specific industries. The data supports the importance of demographics, education and firm sizes as major determinants of unemployment. Furthermore, these factors together with type of employment are the factors influencing underemployment. To reduce the level of unemployment and underemployment, the government should provide support for: (1) growth of private sector firms and informal sector activities; and (2) rural alternatives to agricultural activities. These implications are also relevant to other African countries trying to combat the twin problems of unemployment and underemployment.     

Long‐term Determinants of Deforestation in Ghana: The Role of Structural Adjustment Policies

Abstract: Prior to the 1980s, Ghana witnessed an alternating cycle of boom and scarcity, culminating in the introduction of structural adjustment policies in the early 1980s. This paper uses data from the Ghana Forestry Services, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, FAO Yearbook of Forestry Products, Ghana Timber Marketing Board, Quarterly Digest of the Ghana Statistical Service, World Debt Tables, Bank of Ghana, IMF, COCOBOD and Ministry of Finance to examine the impact of SAP on deforestation in Ghana. The paper reveals a negative impact of structural adjustment on deforestation in Ghana through both direct and indirect channels. The most important channel of the effect of SAP on deforestation resulted from the conversion of forestland to crop farming, particularly cocoa farming, during the post‐adjustment period. Even though wood extraction exhibited a negative impact on deforestation, the impact seemed relatively weaker than that of agricultural land use. In addition, while in the long run, deforestation tended to be more responsive to logging than agriculture, in the short run the elasticity of deforestation with respect to agriculture tended to be greater than that with respect to logging. Finally, agriculture was relatively more important in causing deforestation.     

Interregional migration of labor in Ghana,West Africa: Determinants,consequences and policy intervention

This article examines the determinants, consequences and policy intervention measures of the movement of labor within Ghana’s administrative regions. The study concludes that the economic inequalities brought about by the uneven distribution of development projects in favor of urban areas causes depressed rural economic conditions, thus spurring rural to urban migration. Migration to the urban places of Ghana is therefore caused by individuals and families seeking better economic opportunities to improve the quality of their lives. Secondary determinants are varied, ranging from family obligations to the quest for adventure. The benefits of migration for the rural areas lie mainly in returned migrants’ contributions to the economic development of those areas. Migrants also contribute to the urban areas’ economic development, but their presence in large numbers has caused problems in the housing and in the delivery of social services. Rural development policies and land settlement schemes have been unsuccessful, due mainly to the lack of a comprehensive national development effort.     

Unemployment persistence

We estimate dynamic panel data models of unemployment incidencefor men using the British Household Panel Survey. Econometricissues concerning unobserved individual heterogeneity, genuinestate dependence, and the initial conditions problems are addressedin detail. We find strong evidence of state dependence consistentwith the scarring theory of unemployment - an individual's previousunemployment experience has implications for his future labourmarket experience. This suggests that policies reducing shortrun employment incidence will have longer-run effects by reducingthe equilibrium or natural rate of unemployment.     

Unemployment dynamics in the UK

This paper examines the determinants of unemployment in termsof its statistical correlates. At one extreme unemployment hasbeen viewed as highly trended in the post war period, with theimplication that equilibrium unemployment has followed a broadlysimilar path. Alternatively, unemployment can be viewed as ahighly persistent series that departs for long periods froma more stable equilibria. This paper reports on reduced formmodels of unemployment and suggests that many exogenous variablesthat have typically been associated with movements in equilibriumunemployment have little explanatory power. Instead, unemploymentmay be characterised as a near unit root process driven by amixture of mean shifting I(0) variables.     

结构性失业:难以弥合的城市裂痕

新的结构性失业潮来临,给城市的社会生活增添了不稳定因素,根源在于中国的经济结构失衡一方面是劳动力供给远远超过了经济增长带来的劳动力需求,出现总量型失业。另一方面是在经济体制改革和产业结构调整过程中,由于劳动力自身素质、技能不适应,出现大量岗位空缺,许多企业和地区技能劳动者短缺,产生结构性失业,导致自然失业率上升。     

Unemployment and racial differences in imprisonment

Conventional wisdom about the criminal justice system suggests that extralegal factors such as race or employment status should not affect sentencing outcomes. In this paper we examine an alternative model of the relationship between imprisonment and unemployment and race. The model suggests that penal practices are shaped by the labor market conditions of a system of production and that prisons, as part of a larger set of institutions providing support for economically-dependent populations, help to regulate the most superfluous group of workers in the industrial economy of the Northern states of the United States—unemployed black workers who comprise a large fraction of the pool of “reserve” workers necessary for price stability and economic expansion. We find support for the structural model that links black imprisonment (and Northern imprisonment in general) to manufacturing output and black unemployment.     

Unemployment and underemployment in Bangladesh agriculture

The paper starts with a critique of the various concepts of unemployment and underemployment from which follows the framework in which the author seeks to investigate and estimate unemployment and underemployment. Unemployment is broken down into various categories so that one can know the composition of the agricultural unemployed and underemployed. All the previous estimates had failed to provide such information. In the rest of the paper various estimates are made and implications discussed in the contest of the framework outlined and using first hand information from a survey of some villages conducted by the author himself.