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Labour market constraints constitute prominent obstacles to firm development and economic growth of countries located in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of firm characteristics, national locations, and sectoral associations for the perceptions of firms concerning two basic labour market constraints: labour regulations and labour skill shortages.

The empirical analysis is carried out using firm-level data set sourced from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys database. A bivariate probit estimator is used to account for potential correlations between the errors in the two labour market constraints’ equations. The authors implement overall estimations and comparative cross-country and cross-sector analyses, and use alternative estimation models.

The empirical results reveal some important implications of firm characteristics (e.g. firm size, labour compositions) for firm perceptions of labour regulations and labour skill shortages. They also delineate important cross-country and cross-sector variations. The authors also find significant heterogeneity in the factors’ implications for the perceptions of firms belonging to different sectors and located in different MENA countries.

Reforms in labour regulations and investment in human capital are important governmental policy interventions for promoting firm development and economic growth in the MENA region. This paper contributes to the empirical literature by analysing the factors influencing the perceptions of firms located in the MENA region concerning labour regulations and labour skill shortages. It provides policy-makers with information needed in the design of labour policies that attenuate the impacts of labour market constraints and enhance the performance of firms and the long-run economic growth.

The purpose of the paper is to advocates the use of gendered economic policies to stimulate a post-COVID-19 recovery. It alerts on the risk of ignoring the female dimension of the current crisis and of resorting again to austerity programs that, like the ones enacted after the 2008 crisis, would hit women and mothers disproportionally harder than other groups.

The authors use data from the British Household Panel Survey on female participation and account for gendered constraints and enablers missed by mainstream economics. Using a sequential empirical approach, the authors simulate various welfare policy scenarios that address factors, such as childcare costs, personal and social nudges, that could help women back into the labor market in the aftermath of a crisis.

The authors found that incentive-type interventions, such as subsidies, promote female labor market participation more effectively than punishment-austerity type interventions, such as benefits' cuts. Policies oriented to alleviate childcare constraints can be sustainable and effective in encouraging women back to work. Considering factors wider than the standard economic variables when designing labor market policies may provide fruitful returns.

The sequential methodology enables to estimate current and counterfactual incomes for each female in the sample and to calculate their prospective financial gains and losses in changing their labor market status quo, from not employed into employed or vice-versa. Welfare policies affect these prospective gains and losses and, by interacting with other factors, such as education, number and age of children and social capital, prompt changes in women's labor market choices and decision.

This paper looks at some aspects of trade and investment relations between the EU and the countries of central and eastern Europe (CEEC). The approach used is based on a model of trade with, and development of, a frontier by a metropolitan economy developed by Ronald Findlay. Findlay’s model posits the existence of a monopolised supply of an input to the metropolitan economy. Development of the frontier enables the metropolitan economy to break the monopoly. The expansion of outward processing trade between the EU and the CEEC, a form of intra‐industry trade, is a notable feature of economic relations in Europe since the fall of the Soviet empire. This is modelled in the paper as a device whereby a supply side constraint (labour market restrictions) within the EU is relaxed by vertical disintegration of production and relocation outside the EU. This in turn has implications for the incorporation of the CEEC in the EU. While they remain outside the EU they provide regime competition, particularly in the area of labour market policy. The income distribution implications of this competition provides a political basis for moves to extend membership of the EU on the basis of the CEEC’s adopting the acquis communautaire.

In this paper, the nature of working‐hour constraints in the Swiss labour force using a sample of 14,523 observations is analysed. Three theoretical justifications of the existence of hours constraints are tested: the specific‐capital model, the agency model and the efficiency wage model. The first two models make opposite predictions regarding the trade‐off between working‐hour constraints and job tenure. The third model makes a prediction regarding the potential effect of the unemployment rate on the extent of working‐time constraints. Results indicate, first, that neither model of lifetime contracting (specific‐capital and agency) explains the observed extent of working‐hour constraints. Second, it is found that the unemployment rate confronting the worker in his or her labour market constitutes an obvious incentive to work more hours than he or she wants.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate area-level labour market dynamics from a spatial perspective. This analysis is aimed at better understanding what socio-economic actors are associated with shifts in unemployment rates across a major metropolitan city.

Based on two waves of New Zealand census data, this paper combines a seemingly unrelated regression approach (allowing for relaxation of the assumption that residuals from models of different employment states are unrelated) with a spatial lag model.

The key socio-economic drivers associated with intra-city employment dynamics were vehicle access, dependency rates and educational attainment. Importantly, the identification of spatial autocorrelation with respect to employment status patterns within this major New Zealand city motivates a case for heterogeneous employment policies across the city.

This research improves the understanding of changes in labour market status rates within a city region. This is done by inclusion of two important considerations: a spatial perspective to labour market dynamics at an intra-city level; and formally modelling the interdependence across the four potential labour market outcomes (being full-time, part-time, unemployed or out of the labour force). Overall, there was clear empirical support for the need to include spatial considerations when using targeted policy to help lift areas out of unemployment.

During the transition to parenthood, the gender division of paid and unpaid work undergoes a profound redefinition in response to both attitudes and resources. These attitudes may be concordant or discordant between two partners, they may or may not clash with perceived financial or labour market constraints, and they may or may not provoke explicit conflicts and negotiations. In this study, by combining quantitative and qualitative data, we focus on Italian couples with young children or in transition to first child, and we explore what happens when partners have discordant views. The findings show that the division of domestic and care work seems more resistant to change and more responsive to the husband’s attitudes than does the division of paid work, as the latter is mainly driven by the woman’s education and attitudes. The findings also show that very few couples overtly disagree. If they do so, the main issue in dispute is the allocation of domestic work and the main solution consists more in hiring external help than in obtaining the husband’s greater participation. Compared with domestic work, the allocation of care is a less disputed and more flexible issue: when women start negotiations on a more equal sharing, men are more willing to increase their participation. However, when a more equal sharing is not attained, couples’ narratives tend to give the “cause” to the constraints of the man (typically his work) than of the woman, while they point at a redefinition (for the best of the family) of her rather than his preferences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of access to skilled labor in explaining firms’ sales growth subject to the controlling influence of a wide range of firm-specific characteristics and country-level economic and non-economic factors.

The analysis uses a consistent and large firm-level data set from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys that includes 138 developing countries. An instrumental variables model with a GMM estimator is used for estimating the impact of access to skilled labor on firm performance. In order to obtain more robust estimators, the analysis introduces country-level controls reflecting the influence of economic and institutional factors, such as economic and financial development, institutional governance, education and technological progress.

The results document a significant and positive association between access to skilled labor and firm performance in the developing world. The explanatory power of access to skilled labor remains broadly robust after controlling for a wide range of firm-specific characteristics: sectoral and geographical influences matter. The results also show that the association between labor skill constraints and firm performance is mitigated by country-level factors but in diverse ways. Development, institutions, education and technological progress exert various mitigating effects on firm-level behavior regarding access to skilled labor.

The paper’s novel contribution is threefold: first, it uses joint firm, sector and country-level information to analyze the role of access to skilled labor on firm performance; second, it uses consistently produced information at the firm level from 138 developing countries; and, third, it considers the controlling impact of a wide range of country-level factors that reflect a country’s overall development, institutions and evolution.

In recent years separate bodies of literature on vacancy notification and employee mobility have evolved for Migration and Human Resource Management specialisms. Whilst the foci of these investigations have had much in common, examination of the literature suggests that many authors appear to have limited knowledge of the work undertaken outside their specialism. Concentrates on those two aspects of the recruitment process where integration of the literature is likely to be of most benefit: vacancy notification and subsequent employee mobility. Compares and contrasts the specialisms′ approaches to examining the recruitment process and highlights a series of issues where knowledge and understanding of how these aspects of the labour market operate is limited. These include the use of information channels, the impact of labour market factors on employee mobility and the ability of incentives to overcome employee inertia.

This study aims to analyse whether globalisation, i.e. informational and economic globalisation, promoted or impeded female labour force participation (FLFP) in South Asia.

The KOF Globalisation Index is used alongside a fixed effect panel data Discroll–Kraay estimator to control for unobserved factors and achieve robust standard errors. The sample covers all South Asian countries for the period 1999–2015.

Globalisation does not advocate the “feminisation of employment”; in fact, the impact is negative. This is driven by the economic dimension of globalisation, particularly for younger women. However, this impact is mitigated by informational globalisation that affects FLFP positively, especially for women aged 35 years and older.

Without support of the right governmental policies, there is a danger of globalisation creating new obstacles for women to enter the labour market.

This paper adds to the existing literature by using the more comprehensive KOF globalisation measure to identify the overall effect of globalisation on FLFP in South Asia, being the first study to analyse the impact of informational alongside economic globalisation, and investigating whether globalisation affects the labour force participation rate of various female age cohorts differently.