Global Labor Organization (GLO) invites interested young scholars to apply for participation in the 2021-22GLO Virtual Young Scholars Program (GLO VirtYS). This is the third cohort of the successful GLO venture to support career developments of young researchers. It also provides a unique opportunity to interact with the large and very active GLO global network.
Application deadlineEXTENDED: September 24, 2021, 5 pm GM.
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that self-reported physical and mental health decreased in 2013 and in 2019 compared to 2009indicating the need for more inclusive health strategies.
Author Abstract: In Greece, given the precarious nature of the sex work industry, sex workers health and wellbeing is of concern. However, relevant research remains limited. This study examined whether sex workers’ self-reported physical and mental health deteriorated across time points during the economic recession in Athens, Greece. The study focused on 13 areas where off-street and street-based sex work occured. Cross-sectional data was collected from the same areas in 2009 (i.e. before the economic recession began) and in 2013 and 2019 (i.e. at time points during the recession). Self-reported physical and mental health decreased in 2013 and in 2019 compared to 2009. A positive association was found between the country’s gross domestic product and sex workers’ self-reported physical and mental health. The opposite was found for annual aggregate unemployment. The determinants of better self-reported physical and mental health were sex workers’ economic condition, Greek nationality, off-street sex work, and registered sex work status. The opposite was found for more years’ involvement in sex work and drug consumption. Findings indicate the need for more inclusive health strategies, especially during periods of economic downturn when sex workers’ physical/mental health is likely to decline. This is the first study to investigate the association between economic recession and sex workers’ self-reported physical and mental health.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
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Presentations in this series are based on the projects that GLO-VirtYS program scholars completed as part of the their program participation. See for the details VirtYs program and the cohort 2021.
September 16th 2021 Program on 1 pm London/UK time.
Odmaa Narantungalag, Massey University and GLO Affiliate The Local Impacts of Natural Resource Extraction: Evidence from Mongolia (GLO VirtYS program advisor Professor Almas Heshmati)
Soumya Pal, Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and GLO Affiliate Weather Shock, Agricultural Productivity, and Infant Health: A Tale of Environmental Justice (GLO VirtYS program advisor Professor Kompal Sinha)
Chaired by GLO VirtYS Program Director Olena Nizalova.
Odmaa Narantungalag is a Ph.D. student in economics at Massey University in New Zealand. Her research interests are in development economics, natural resource economics, and health economics. Odmaa holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from American University in Bulgaria and a Master of Public Administration from Tsinghua University, China. Prior to starting her doctoral studies, Odmaa worked as a national consultant at the Ministry of Economic Development and Ministry of Finance in Mongolia for various projects implemented by the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme.
GLO VirtYS project: The Local Impacts of Natural Resource Extraction: Evidence from Mongolia
This paper investigates the local economic impacts of a large-scale copper-gold mine in Mongolia. Employing household data from 2008 to 2016, I find positive economic effects of the mine. A ten percent increase in mining activities resulted in 2.2 and 2.3 percent increases in income and food consumption, respectively. Mining activities enabled households to increase their medical expenditures, while sickness did not increase significantly. In contrast, education expenditures dropped while educational attainments improved in mining areas. Both expenditure patterns indicate that large-scale extractive industries can positively benefit residents, and corporate social responsibility activities further enhance the mining sector’s traditional benefits.
Soumya Pal is PhD Candidate at the Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. His research interests are broadly in the domain of Climate Change, Regulations, and Environmental Justice. His doctoral thesis focuses on Economics of Climate Change and Environmental Regulations. He completed his bachelor’s in Statistics, Master’s, and M.Phil. in Demography.
GLO VirtYS project: Weather Shock, Agricultural Productivity, and Infant Health: A Tale of Environmental Justice
We study how income shock due to extreme weather fluctuations causally impacts the birth outcomes. We selected households depended directly on agriculture due to their extreme vulnerability to temperature and rainfall shocks. We find large efficiency loss attributed to weather shock for major food crops to the extent of 20%. However, we find that access to technology provides resilience against weather shock, therefore, causing the heterogeneity in vulnerability across farming households. Based on it, we designed the agriculture-household model, which predicts that health outcomes of child are dependent on income shock due to abrupt change in weather conditions. We tested the hypothesis by introducing weather shock in the cropping season before the conception of child to eliminate the confounding effect of direct impact due to extreme weather conditions. We find that weather shocks in cropping season, increases the likelihood of child mortality, low birth weight, and birth size. We further find that access to technology, financial tools, and economic security net reduces the impact of income loss due to weather shock. Our results suggests that access to resilient capabilities leads to heterogeneous impact across farmer households causing environmental injustice. Further, our findings provide insights into the policy design for long term shift in weather patterns due to climate change and stresses on the inequality in resilience against extreme weather events.
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that discretionary fiscal policy measures in Austria are key to counteracting the inequality- and poverty-enhancing effect of COVID-19.
Author Abstract: This paper analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on household income in Austria, using detailed administrative labor market data, in combination with micro-simulation techniques, that enable specific labor market transitions to be modeled. We find that discretionary fiscal policy measures in Austria are key to counteracting the inequality- and poverty-enhancing effect of COVID-19. Additionally, we find that females tend to experience a greater loss in terms of market income. The Austrian tax-benefit system, however, reduces this gender differences. Disposable income has dropped by around 1% for both males and females. By comparison, males profit mainly from short-time work scheme, while females profit especially from other discretionary policy measures, such as the one-off payment for children.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
The WIDER Development Conference 2021 took place online on September 6-8, 2021 organized by UNU-WIDER, Helsinki. On September 8, UNU-MERIT, Maastricht, contributed a Panel Session on The Future of Work chaired by UNU-MERIT Professorial FellowKlaus F. Zimmermann. Under his guidance, a prominent group of speakers from academia and practice discussed the perspectives for future work in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. UNU-WIDER will soon publish the video of the session.
The Panel
Nobuya Haraguchi (UNIDO) Heads the Research and Industrial Policy Advice Division of UNIDO, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, in Vienna
Sangeeta Khorana (Bournemouth University) Professor of Economics at Bournemouth University
Francois Lafond (University of Oxford) Deputy Director of the Complexity Economics Programme and Lead Researcher at the Institute for New Economic Thinking
Aurelio Parisotto (ILO) Senior Economist at the Policy Integration Department
Panel with Chair and WIDER technical support
Session abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted upon the way that production is organised and the way in which consumption takes place. There has been a much greater reliance on remote work and an increased use of automation technologies in many sectors, allowing firms to maintain and increase production levels in the face of social distancing and strict lockdowns. On the consumption side, there has been an increased use of e-commerce. To a large extent, such changes were underway prior to the pandemic with the pandemic increasing the speed of change rather than the direction. With vaccines being rolled out – albeit unevenly – and the direct effects of the pandemic beginning to subside in many parts of the world, it is an opportune time to consider the longer-term impacts of the pandemic on the future of work and production. It appears clear that the pandemic will lead to longer-term disruptions to labour markets, with an increased need for reskilling and an increased number of employees switching occupations. In this session, academics and practitioners will debate the longer-run implications of the pandemic on work in the developed and developing world, further considering and identifying what the appropriate policy responses are.
A new paper published ONLINE FIRST with free readlink in the Journal of Population Economics finds that left-behind parents experience lower utility when their adult children migrate.
Published ONLINE FIRST 2021: Journal of Population Economics READLINK: https://rdcu.be/cxiiq
Shu Cai
Author Abstract: This paper examines the impact of children’s migration on the well-being of left-behind parents using panel data on experienced utility measured by the Day Reconstruction Method. Exploiting exogenous variation in exposure to employment shocks at migration destinations for identification, we find that left-behind parents experience lower utility when their adult children migrate. This is partly due to increased working time and less time spent in social activities, and partly due to reduced utility within activity type. The latter effect is consistent with the finding of less physical care and psychological support from children who have migrated. These negative effects dominate the possible benefits of greater income associated with children’s migration.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: The study replicates the first European field experiment on gay men’s labor market prospects in Greece. Utilizing the same protocol as the original study in 2006-2007, two follow-up field experiments took place in 2013-2014 and 2018-2019. The study estimated that gay men experienced occupational access constraints and wage sorting in vacancies offering lower remuneration. It was found that in 2013-2014 and 2018-2019, gay men experienced increasingly biased treatment compared to 2006-2007. Moreover, the results suggested that unemployment bore an association with occupational access constraints and wage sorting in vacancies offering lower remuneration for gay men. In each of the three experiments, this study captured recruiters’ attitudes toward gay men. A one standard deviation increase in taste-discrimination attitudes against gay men decreased their access to occupations by 9.6%. Furthermore, a one standard deviation increase in statistical-discrimination attitudes against gay men decreased their access to occupations by 8.1%. According to the findings, in 2013-2014 and 2018-2019, firms excluding gay applicants expressed a higher level of taste- and statistical-discrimination attitudes compared to 2006-2007. A gay rights backlash due to the LGBTIQ+ group’s attempt to advance its agenda, rising far-right rhetoric, and prejudice associated with economic downturns experienced in Greece might correspond with increasing biases against gay men.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
A new GLO Discussion Paper argues that negative and zero incomes cannot be treated equally in terms of household well-being and that standard methods used by practitioners fail to recognize this fact likely resulting in overestimations of poverty.
Author Abstract: The paper discusses the main issues related to negative and zero incomes that are relevant for the measurement of poverty. It shows the prevalence of non-positive incomes in high- and middle-income countries, provides an analysis of the sources and structure of these incomes, outlines the various approaches proposed by scholars and statistical agencies to treat non-positive incomes, and explains how non-positive incomes and alternative correction methods impact the measurement of standard poverty indexes. It is argued that negative and zero incomes cannot be treated equally in terms of household well-being and that standard methods used by practitioners fail to recognize this fact likely resulting in overestimations of poverty.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
In a festive ceremony at Maastricht University on September 2, 2021, Anne-Lore Fraikin received her double PhD degree with University of Liege after proper examinations. The procedure was hybrid (online and in person) chaired by the Pro-Rector of Maastricht University Prof. Dr. Alexander Bruggen. The theme of the thesis is “The Effect of Financial Retirement Incentives Originating from the Social Security System on the Retirement Behavior of Older Belgian Workers”.
Dr. Anne-Lore Fraikin is an Affiliated Researcher in the POP @ UNU-MERIT group and a GLO Research Affiliate. The thesis work was done under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Alain Jousten (University of Liege) and Prof. Dr. Alessio Brown (UNU-MERIT & Maastricht University). The Assessment Committee consisted of Prof. Dr. Klaus F. Zimmermann (UNU-MERIT & Maastricht University) as the Chair, Prof. Dr. Sergio Perelman (University of Liege), Prof. Dr. Antoine Bozio (Paris School of Economics), Prof. Dr. Corrado Giulietti (University of Southampton), Prof. Dr. Mathieu Lefebvre (University of Strassbourg and Liege) and Dr. Zina Nimeh (UNU-MERIT). Brown and Zimmermann are Co-Directors of the POP @ UNU-MERIT group dealing with Population, Development and Labor Economics. Brown, Jousten and Giulietti are GLO Fellows and Zimmermann is GLO President.
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