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This paper aims to examine the employment effect of the minimum wage in Mauritius, a country that has recently introduced an economy-wide national minimum wage. As women have low labor force participation rate and higher unemployment rate compared to men, this study sheds light on the impact of the national minimum wage on male and female employment.

A conceptual framework based on the labor–leisure model of Blundell et al. (2007) incorporating the minimum wage as an important variable influencing the employment decision of the individual serves as the methodological backdrop of this paper. It applies the difference-in-difference estimation technique and uses micro data from the Continuous Multi-Purpose Household Survey for the period 2017–2019.

The results show that minimum wage has a significant negative impact on overall employment. With the imposition of the national minimum wage, the probability that an individual, currently earning less than the minimum wage, remains employed is 0.525 lower than that of a worker earning above the minimum wage level. Moreover, using sex-disaggregated data, the analysis demonstrates the negative employment effects of the minimum wage adversely impact women more than men.

This is a first attempt to estimate the effect of the newly introduced national minimum wage on employment in Mauritius. While the effects of a minimum wage vary across different segments of the economy, this study adopts a gender perspective by comparing the impact of the minimum wage on male and female employment.

This paper aimed examining the contribution of female labour force participation rate on economic growth in the sub-Saharan Africa during the period of 1991–2019.

The study employed a sample of 42 sub-Sahara African countries using annual data from the World Bank development indicators. The long-run causal effect of female labour force and economic growth was analysed using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag model and Granger causality test for causality and direction since the variables did not have the same order of integration.

The estimated results indicate that a long-run causal relationship exists between female labour force and economic growth in sub-Sahara Africa and the direction of causality is unidirectional running from economic growth to female labour force. The results also showed that female labour force participation rate negatively and significantly contributes to economic growth (GDP) is sub-Saharan Africa in the long run with an insignificantly negative contribution in the short run hence a liability.

The author recommends the promotion of women's economic empowerment to encourage female labour force participation to increase economic growth in the entire sub-Saharan region.

This paper adds to existing literature by using more comprehensive and up to econometric analysis and variables. This paper also makes further recommendation on how female labour force participation can boost economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

This paper adds to existing literature by using more comprehensive and up to econometric analysis and variables. This paper also makes further recommendation on how female labour force participation can boost economic growth in SSA.

This article aims to explore how Japanese women with younger children changed their commitment to the labour market between 2000 and 2019 by comparing mothers in three-generation and nuclear family households.

Japan currently has the highest ageing rate in the world at nearly 30%. Since the 1990s, employment flexibilization and women's labour market participation have proceeded in parallel, and the conservative family values of the patriarchy and gender division of labour that have provided intergenerational aid for care within households have been shrinking, by conducting a descriptive analysis of the Labour Force Survey (LFS).

This study identified that a conspicuous increase in part-time employment among mothers in both household types and a decrease by half in the working mother's population in three-generation households. These results suggest that the function of inter-generational assistance by multi-generation cohabitation, which was once thought to be effective in helping working mothers with younger children, is declining.

A study examining the transformation of mothers' employment behaviour differences between three-generation households and nuclear family households is rare. This paper makes a new contribution to the research regarding the grandparents' caregiving, household types and mothers' employment.

The entire world is now witnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is indeed altering the lives of the many in both developing and developed countries. Massive digital transformations are affecting the economies of those countries and are bringing with them many promised merits, as well as many challenges to face. This paper aims to examine the relationship between digital transformation (as a one facet of the fourth revolution and AI trends) on one side, and economic development, labor productivity and employment on the other side.

The paper analyzes different indices of digital transformation, and then uses the Digital Evolution Index (DEI) to study those relationships in a group of developing countries using feasible generalized least squares method (FGLS).

The results show a positive relationship between the digital transformation index and economic development, labor productivity and job employment. Females seem to gain more from digital transformation compared to males, as suggested by the positive relation with the first and the insignificant relation with the latter. The relationship with vulnerable employment is not significant; more evidence is still needed to judge whether digital transformation will have an impact upon the vulnerable employees in the economy.

The paper focused on the impact of digital transformation upon total aggregate employment. Future research is still needed to examine the impact upon the structure of the labor market and the shift of occupations.

The paper aims to add to in the literature regarding the relationship between digital transformation, economic development, employment and productivity in the developing world. The implications of those relationships are of significant importance to policymakers regarding how much support should be given to encourage the digital transformation. At the same time, it shall also indicate how much social support policies are required – if any – to lessen the negative impact of digital transformation on the vulnerable groups inside the country. Another contribution is using a single composite index for digital transformation that is comparable across the chosen set of developing countries, instead of using single indices each capturing a different dimension of digital transformation.

This study examines the relevance of information and communication technologies in the effect of gender economic inclusion on environmental sustainability.

The focus is on a panel of 42 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2005–2020. The empirical evidence is based on generalized method of moments. The environmental sustainability indicator used is CO2 emissions per capita. Three indicators of women’s economic inclusion are considered: female labour force participation, female employment and female unemployment. The chosen ICT indicators are mobile phone penetration, Internet penetration and fixed broadband subscriptions.

The results show that: (1) fixed broadband subscriptions represent the most relevant ICT moderator of gender economic inclusion for an effect on CO2 emissions; (2) negative net effects are apparent for the most part with fixed broadband subscriptions (3) both positive ICT thresholds (i.e., critical levels for complementary policies) and negative ICT thresholds (i.e., minimum ICT levels for negative net effects) are provided; (4) ICT synergy effects are apparent for female unemployment, but not for female employment. In general, the joint effect of ICTs or their synergies and economic inclusion should be a concern for policymakers in order to better ensure sustainable development. Moreover, the relevant ICT policy thresholds and mobile phone threshold for complementary policy are essential in promoting a green economy.

The study complements the extant literature by assessing linkages between information technology, gender economic inclusion and environmental sustainability.

In this research, we explore the dynamics among measures of income inequality in the USA, male and female unemployment rates, and growth in government transfer using time series data.

This research adopts a macro-econometric approach to estimate a structural VAR model using time series data.

Our structural impulse responses found that growth in government transfer increases unemployment rates for both males and females. Female income inequality declines with increased government transfer. When the female income ratio rises, we observe that government transfer outlays fall over the forecast horizon. Variance decomposition finds that growth in government transfers is impacted by the male unemployment rate relatively more than the female unemployment rate. This research, therefore, suggests gender-specific government transfers to reduce income inequality. This, in effect, may reduce government transfer outlays over time.

This research, therefore, suggests gender-specific government transfers to reduce income inequality. This, in effect, may reduce government transfer outlays over time.

This research investigates the dynamics among income inequality, government transfer, and unemployment rates. There is a dearth of research articles that adopt a macro-econometric in this area.

The article investigates whether variety of democracy affects the probability to employ public subsidies for credit support by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) led by female entrepreneurs.

Building on the literature on democracy and on gender differences, it leverages a large firm- and country-level dataset (SAFE) of 31 democracies in Europe (EU and non-EU) over the 2009–2014 period by using probit models and instrumental variable approaches.

Results from the different econometric techniques and samples suggest that variety of democracy affects female-led SMEs in using public subsidies for credit support. The evidence is robust to endogeneity concerns.

The empirical evidence presents a time frame limitation. At the same time, SAFE is the only database that supplies information about the gender of firms and public subsidies for credit support, rendering it the only resource that allows the test of the hypothesis proposed. The article therefore offers insights for scholars to revisit our results in future studies that make use of datasets with a longer time span – when they will become available.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, the article is the first to study the effect of democracy on female entrepreneurial behavior in the use of public subsidies for credit support.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether cross-country differences in pensionable age explain such differences in economic activity of people at near-retirement age.

The empirical study uses regression models for macro-panel encompassing 21 European countries in the period 2008–2014.

Empirical results indicate that pensionable age is a determinant of cross-country differences in employment rate in the near-retirement age group, and less a factor differentiating average effective retirement age. It turns out that other factors matter, including salaries and wages as percentage of GDP (treated as a proxy for the occupational composition of populations across the countries studied), self-employment, participation in education and training, or self-perceived health.

The problem of economic activity at the near-retirement age is complex and cannot be limited to legal regulations concerning pensionable age. The policy aiming at stimulating the economic activity of the near-elderly should include actions on many sides including labour market, pension system, education, training, or health care.

The results complement studies based on the single-country approach and demonstrate that pensionable age does not account for cross-country differences in terms of average effective age of retirement when controlling for other factors. Moreover, factors differentiating effective retirement age and employments rates across countries studied are not similar.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate benefits to debt reduction by using the natural experiment provided by the debt relief programs: the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative launched by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in 1996 and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative extension in 2005.

The authors apply a time-shifted difference-in-differences strategy to evaluate the effects of this intervention. The date of each country’s decision to participate in the program is used as one treatment point while the date of the completion of the debt relief program is used as another treatment point. The exercise compares different economic outcomes such as domestic and foreign investment, schooling, and employment of the treated observations to the counterfactual of untreated country-years. The period between the decision and completion points is a short run while the period after the completion point is considered a long run.

The authors found that debt relief increased capital investment as much as 1.63 percent in the short run and 5.79 percent in the long run. However, there was no effect on foreign direct investment suggesting that debt overhang does not affect incentives of foreign investors. Output and schooling enrollment increased both in the short and long run.

This paper exploits a natural experiment of debt relief in a number of developing countries to shed light on the possible benefits to debt reduction. The authors are able to separate the short- and long-run effects of debt reduction. The finding that domestic but not foreign investment responds to debt reduction is suggestive of the differences in incentives across these two sources of investment.

Although previous research has examined the role of franchising for the economic development of countries, no empirical study to date has investigated the importance of franchising for social, infrastructural, and institutional development. The authors address this research gap by applying research results from the field of sustainable entrepreneurship and highlight that franchising has a positive impact on economic, social, institutional and infrastructural development.

This study uses a fixed-effects model on a panel dataset for 2006–2015 from 49 countries to test the hypothesis that franchising positively influences various dimensions of country development such as economic social institutional and infrastructural development.

The findings highlight that franchising has a positive impact on the economic, social, infrastructural, and institutional development of a country. Specifically, the results show that the earlier and the more franchising systems enter a country, the stronger the positive impact of franchising on the country's economic, social, institutional, and infrastructural development.

This study has several limitations that provide directions for further research. First, the empirical investigation is limited by the characteristics of the data, which are composed of information from 49 countries (covering a period of 10 years). Because franchising is not recognized as a form of entrepreneurial governance in many emerging and developing countries, the available information is mainly provided by the franchise associations in the various countries. Hence, there is a need to collect additional data in each country and to include additional countries. Second, although the authors included developed and developing countries in the analysis, the authors could not differentiate between developed and developing countries when testing the hypotheses, because the database was not sufficiently complete. Third, future studies should analyze the causality issue between franchising and development more closely. The role of franchising in development may be changing depending on different unobserved country factors, economic sector characteristics, or development stages.

What are the practical implications of this study for the role of franchising in the development of emerging and developing economies? Because public policy in emerging and developing countries suffers from a lack of financial resources to improve the social, infrastructural and institutional environment, entrepreneurs, such as franchisors who expand into these countries, play an important role for these countries' development. In addition to their entrepreneurial role of exploring and exploiting profit opportunities, they are social, institutional, and political entrepreneurs who may positively influence country development (Schaltegger and Wagner, 2011; Shepard and Patzelt, 2011). Specifically, the findings highlight that countries with an older franchise sector (more years of franchise experience) may realize first-mover advantages and hence larger positive spillover effects on their economic, social, institutional and infrastructural development than countries with a younger franchise sector. Hence, governments of emerging and developing countries have the opportunity and responsibility to reduce potential market entry barriers and provide additional incentives for franchise systems in order to trigger these positive spillover effects. The authors expect that the spillover effects from the franchise sector on the economic, institutional, social and infrastructural development of a country are stronger in emerging and developing countries than in developed countries.

Previous research has focused on the impact of franchising on the economic development of a country, such as its growth of gross domestic product (GDP), employment, business skills, innovation and technology transfer. This study extends the existing literature by going beyond the impact of franchising on economic development: the results show that franchising as an entrepreneurial activity offers opportunities for economic, social, institutional, and infrastructural development, all of which are particularly important for emerging and developing economies. The findings of this study contribute to the international franchise and development economics literature by offering a better understanding of the impact of franchising on country development.