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The purpose of this study is to investigate the evolving perceptions and human resource (HR) responses of owners and HR managers of Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) towards local labour markets in the context of the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

This study adopts a two-stage longitudinal qualitative approach involving 52 interviews with owners and HR managers of Chinese SMEs in the pre- and post-pandemic time periods.

The findings reveal a shift from the perceptions of a general labour shortage to perceptions of specialised talent shortages and increasing geographical disparities in local labour markets. They further reveal that SMEs are increasingly likely to adopt efficiency-oriented, flexibility-enhancing HR practices in the face of high uncertainty.

The findings provide insights into the nature of the constraints of SMEs' sustainable development that need to be addressed by policymakers, SME owners and HR managers when they devise and implement policies relating to structure optimisation, labour market integration and mobility enhancement.

In contrast to extant literature that has examined the labour market at the national level, this study explores the views of SMEs (the demand side) by taking a localised perspective on how SMEs have responded to change through their HR practices.

This theoretical study aims to clarify the (a priori) ambiguous effect of homeownership on unemployment. In general, in fact, homeownership discourages job mobility, but homeowners are less likely to be unemployed than tenants, since homeownership would seem to be positively related to human capital.

This study develops a modified version of the benchmark theoretic model of the labour market – the well-known “equilibrium unemployment theory” – where homeownership affects both the “Beveridge Curve” (BC, by means of job immobility) and the “Job Creation Condition” (JCC, by means of human capital).

The general result is that an increase in homeownership increases unemployment. Therefore, policymakers could encourage job mobility, before facilitating homeownership. This policy implication, however, may not apply in the case of high inflation and/or low nominal interest rate, and when the job destruction rate depends on the homeownership rate.

The model studies the steady-state equilibrium of the labour market, so the policy implications only relate to the long-run. The model, therefore, does not consider the short-run effects of homeownership on unemployment (which may differ from the long-term results).

The model suggests a public policy characterised by large investment in rail lines and subsidised commuter fares. By promoting a more efficient allocation of workers across regions (and, thus, job mobility), indeed, this policy can be a good way to increase employment, without harming homeownership.

The practical implication of this model is also a social implication, since it relates to homeownership and housing tenure.

To the best of author’s knowledge, this is the first model that introduces the key role of homeownership in the so-called “Equilibrium unemployment theory”. Precisely, the model uses a modified version of both the BC (which includes the negative effect of homeownership on the overall job search intensity of unemployed workers) and the JCC (which includes the positive effect of homeownership on both the business start-up and the human capital of workers). By comparing these two opposite effects, this theoretical work makes clearer the net effect of homeownership on unemployment.

This scoping review aims to survey literature that covers employability preparation and labor market outcomes for graduates from transnational higher education institutions.

This scoping literature review uses career ecosystems as a theoretical framework and the context-input-process-outcomes model as a conceptual framework.

This scoping review confirms a limited research base of approximately 50 sources that primarily use qualitative methods and socio-economic theories to center the student voice and focus on international branch campuses in the Middle East and Asia. Notably, there is a lack of focus on staff experiences regarding the process of preparing students for employment. The review also demonstrates the need for more research on career processes and outcomes in transnational higher education.

This scoping review is relevant to higher education institutions seeking to meet the challenges of preparing graduates for more than one national labor market. It has implications for universities' ability to attract students, develop relevant labor market preparation programming and understand whether the institution is addressing local employment needs. For researchers, it offers insight and impetus into the area of inquiry regarding transnational education, graduate labor market outcomes and employability.

Practical implications are drawn for students, parents, policymakers and transnational and non-transnational higher education institutions, as well as those who are engaged in providing international education and career advice.

This review offers insight into developing labor market-relevant TNE programming, which may be helpful both for host and home country transnational education stakeholders interested in impact.

This is one of the first reviews to systematically address literature about employability preparation and labor market outcomes for graduates from transnational higher education institutions; in using career ecosystems theory, this review offers a bridge between international higher education and career studies.

The outbreak of covid-19 has affected international migration and remittance and has also narrowed down the opportunities for internal labor migrants. The pandemic has also left internal migrants in a threatening situation due to the closure of job opportunities. Taking the migration of labor from the highland toward the sesame production belt into consideration, this study aims to examine the influencing factors of migration to the sesame belt amid covid-19 and ascertain the link between migration and translocal vulnerability.

The study followed a mixed approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods. However, the quantitative approach tends to dominate due to the nature of the objectives of the study. The study was conducted in the central Gondar zone, using a cross-sectional survey design with a sample size of 150 households collected from January to March, 2021. Both descriptive and econometrics models such as binary logit model have been used.

Based on the study result, we came to understand that migration is part and parcel of the livelihoods of the farm household that accounts for 35% of migration status amid covid-19. Particularly, the study came to conclude that households’ decision to send family members heavily relied on their prior information and fear of transmission of the coronavirus to family members which are statistically significant. As a result, this piece of work can be a good witness for translocal vulnerability where studies are very limited in the area. For this, this study suggests that concerned bodies like social and labor affairs in consultation with the agriculture offices and bureaus at a different level and the investors in the migrant’s destination should facilitate the protection and awareness mechanisms so that the spread of covid-19 can be minimized and thereby both the migrants and the investors can be benefitted from the migrants’ work amid covid-19.

This study tries to connect the current spread of covid-19 with the translocal vulnerability context. Primarily, it empirically argued the translocal vulnerability factor is the main determinant for the farm households to send families’ labor as a livelihood diversification strategy. Very limited studies consider the translocal vulnerability implication of migration; notably to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, studies that linked covid-19 with translocal vulnerability context are scant. On top of that, many studies that link migration with covid-19 tend to be inclined to international migration with very limited attention to internal migration.

This chapter provides an empirical assessment of the effects of infrastructure provision on structural change and aggregate productivity using industrylevel data for a set of developed and developing countries over 1995–2010. A distinctive feature of the empirical strategy followed is that it allows the measurement of the resource reallocation directly attributable to infrastructure provision. To achieve this, a two-level top-down decomposition of aggregate productivity that combines and extends several strands of the literature is proposed. The empirical application reveals significant production losses attributable to misallocation of inputs across firms, especially among African countries. Also, the results show that infrastructure provision has stimulated aggregate total factor productivity growth through both within and between industry productivity gains.

This paper aims to examine the consequences of Covid-19 for the migrants and the tourism industry following the emergence of the new business models and operational practices in the following three areas: i) Covid-19 and post-Covid-19 labour shortages, ii) the development of migrant gig jobs and iii) future trends.

Covid-19 posed challenges for labour retention and has given rise to new outsourced and precarious forms of employment. The growth of various tourism-related apps and establishments, such as “ghost kitchens” or pop-up restaurants, has transformed the landscape of tourism work and opportunities. This short paper provides an overview of the labour consequences of Covid-19, focusing on migrant tourism workers.

Despite growing attention towards promoting sustainable, just and decent employment, global trends and changing industrial relations in the sector have led to heightened levels of precariousness and uncertainty in migrants’ work.

This paper contributes to the literature on tourism employment by examining the forms of new business models and operational practices that affect migrant labour.

While only one aspect of fulfilling equal rights, effectively addressing workplace discrimination is integral to creating economies, and countries, that allow for everyone's full and equal participation.

Labor, anti-discrimination, and other relevant pieces of legislation were identified through the International Labor Organization's NATLEX database, supplemented with legislation identified through country websites. For each country, two researchers independently coded legislation and answered questions about key policy features. Systematic quality checks and outlier verifications were conducted.

More than 1 in 5 countries do not explicitly prohibit racial discrimination in employment. 54 countries fail to prohibit unequal pay based on race. 107 countries prohibit racial and/or ethnic discrimination but do not explicitly require employers to take preventive measures against discrimination. The gaps are even larger with respect to multiple and intersectional discrimination. 112 countries fail to prohibit discrimination based on both migration status and race and/or ethnicity; 103 fail to do so for foreign national origin and race and/or ethnicity.

Both recent and decades-old international treaties and agreements require every country globally to uphold equal rights regardless of race. However, specific national legislation that operationalizes these commitments and prohibits discrimination in the workplace is essential to their impact. This research highlights progress and gaps that must be addressed.

This is the first study to measure legal protections against employment discrimination based on race and ethnicity in all 193 UN countries. This study also examines protection in all countries from discrimination on the basis of characteristics that have been used in a number of settings as a proxy for racial/ethnic discrimination and exclusion, including SES, migration status, and religion.

The study's objective is to measure the gender gap in quit behavior, consider whether it has changed over time and determine whether parenthood affects the gender gap in quit decisions.

The quantitative study design leverages two separate USA data sources to analyze the gender gap in quits over time. Two separate cohorts confirm the study's results in Logit, ordinary least squares (OLS) and fixed effects estimations, using the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY).

After controlling for demographic and job characteristics, individual and geographic fixed effects and local unemployment rates, the study finds that the gender gap in voluntary turnover has declined over time and that parenthood's effect on quit behavior has converged between genders.

Women earn less than men. One common explanation is women's propensity to interrupt their careers, often voluntarily, more so than men. Yet, the determinants and trends of this gender gap in quit behavior has not been given much attention in the literature, including the role of parenthood.

Acknowledging that housing forms a large part of households’ and country’s long-term wealth, the South African Government has implemented various housing-related policies towards that end. Among these, the government has extended transfer duty exemption to house buyers – both individuals or natural persons and companies or other parties – to enable them buy houses of their choices since January 1950 to date. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between historical transfer duty exemption and housing demand in the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) over a longer period, where a comprehensive data set on house sales and other predictors was available.

This paper uses multi-year data on repeat house sales from 2010 to 2020 and other macro- and socio-economic variables to test the relationship between transfer duty exemption and housing demand in the CoJ, a core part of Gauteng province, South Africa. After cleaning the original data, final analysis was based on 139,121 repeat sales transactions. Data was analyzed in R.

Findings suggest that, when macro-, socio-economic and yearly effects are controlled, transfer duty has a damping effect on housing demand in the CoJ. The results were consistent across all the estimated models. While the motivation behind the implementation of transfer duty exemption in South Africa continues to encourage home ownership, these findings are unexpected because they do not offer support to that policy intention. These unexpected results are partly explained by the prevailing complexities of the housing market and related policies and the progressive tax regime. However, there are welfare effects that all buyers achieve across the housing market ecosystem.

This paper extends work on housing markets research in South Africa through the investigation of mortgage-based housing market in the CoJ that presents one of the densest, developed, bustling and growing housing market in the country. It also presents a fertile ground where all the effects of all the housing policies coalesce – in the statistical sense, one can control the effect of some aspects of housing policies, while appropriately testing the link between a specific policy (in this case, transfer duty exemption) and housing dynamics.

The purpose is to market a reinterpretation of Brazilian economic history highlighting the importance of non-tradable goods to understand major historical developments such as the lack of industrialization in the mining boom; the rise and contribution of industries to development in the early 20th century; indexation as hyperinflation in the late 20th century; growth and cycles in the early 21st century.

Section 2 introduces analytical perspectives on the relationship between non-tradables, transport costs and external shocks. Section 3 presents a historical overview of the gold and coffee cycles in the Brazilian economy, which highlights the crucial role played by transport costs in the genesis of industrialization. Thus, in a more precise way, industrialization was not an import substitution process but the substitution of non-tradables by the domestic tradable manufactures.

Section 4 shows that Brazilian statistical records and historiography disregard this characterization and, to that extent, underestimate economic growth in the primary export phase (1872–1920) and overestimate growth rates in the industrialization period (1920–1940). Section 5 shifts to the end of the 20th century to analyze the relationship between non-tradables, indexation and hyperinflation. Section 6 concludes with a brief discussion of the role played by the terms of trade and non-tradables in the unfolding of the 2014 economic crisis.

Distance from international markets and a continental geographic size made transport costs in Brazil historically prohibitive: the relevance of non-tradables in the Brazilian economic history. While the theme is not new, it seldom received proper attention in the historiography.