A really fantastic few days in Maputo 🇲🇿 for the IGM Annual Conference & Policy Symposium, hosted by @unu-wider.bsky.social. A wonderful city with many challenges but no shortage of super welcoming people. I hope to return soon!

UNU-WIDER@unu-wider.bsky.social · 10mo ago

📊 Connecting data, research, and policy for inclusive growth! At the Inclusive Growth in Mozambique (IGM) Symposium on Youth Employment in Mozambique, @txm23.bsky.social discussed how AI and digital innovation can transform work in developing economies. Data is 🗝️in effective policy design. #WIDER40

Join us at UCT for our 2-day December Workshop co-hosted with ERSA, discussing frontier research in applied economics for developing countries! 2 keynotes: Taryn Dinkelman & Joseph Kaboski. 12 presenters from 7 international & 4 local universities, & PhD student panels.

Great to be in Sydney🇦🇺 for the first time for the 2025 @sioecon.bsky.social Conference hosted by UNSW. Turns out koalas are indeed real (and adorable!), and apparently sleep even more than academics after conference dinners.

🆕 The gender pay gap in South Africa: Firms, formality and churn Today on VoxDev, Ihsaan Bassier (@uniofsurrey.bsky.social) & @leilagautham.bsky.social (@universityofleeds.bsky.social) discuss the dynamics of the gender pay gap in South Africa: voxdev.org/topic/labour...

The gender pay gap in South Africa: Firms, formality and churn

Half of South Africa’s gender pay gap comes from women sorting into low-paying firms, with low formality and high churn being key to understanding this dynamic.

voxdev.org

HAROON BHORAT (@haroonbhorat.bsky.social, our colleague at @dpru-uct.bsky.social): Getting the numbers right on the informal economy www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2...

HAROON BHORAT: Getting the numbers right on the informal economy

It is wrong to assume that what is true at the local level must translate to a 1:1 relationship at national level

businesslive.co.za

Very grateful to be in Senegal 🇸🇳 for the first time this week for @j-pal.bsky.social’s Summer School on advanced randomised evaluation design. Many thanks to J-PAL, CESAG, @afd-france.bsky.social, and others for hosting me!

A fantastic and timely summer school, thanks very much @rodrigooliveira.bsky.social and the @unu-wider.bsky.social team for organising!

UNU-WIDER@unu-wider.bsky.social · last yr.

The 2025 UNU-WIDER Summer School wraps up today in Helsinki! 🎓 A huge thank you to all participants, especially the emerging scholars tackling intergenerational social mobility. Stay tuned for their impactful research on ensuring societies Leave No One Behind. More info: go.unu.edu/P8JTH

Now up: the 9th in my annual series of efforts to put together data on development journals: rankings, number of papers submitted (over 12,000 last year across 12 journals), number published (937), acceptance rates, time to review, open access stats, and more... blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

The State of Development Journals 2025: Quality, Acceptance Rates, Review Times, Open Access, and What’s New

blogs.worldbank.org

Grateful to be attending the 2025 @unu-wider.bsky.social Development Conference here in Helsinki, which explicitly focuses on the role of social protection in driving growth and equality. Only Day 1 and I’ve learnt so much from everyone’s impressive work already!

UNU-WIDER@unu-wider.bsky.social · last yr.

Fascinating research presented by WIDER Visiting Scholar Timothy Köhler on South Africa's social relief grant. The paper reveals cash transfers to the unemployed boosted 🔎job search 📦business attempts 💼employment though long-term effects aren't universal #WIDERDevConf2025

Great to be a part of this work. Excited to see how it evolves!

UNU-WIDER@unu-wider.bsky.social · last yr.

An exciting workshop at UNU-WIDER earlier this week, as researchers gathered to finetune their research plans and both hear and provide expert feedback. Follow the project, a part of @schmidtsciences.bsky.social‬ initiative on AI at work: go.unu.edu/5OVXX

It’s been a really great two months so far, very grateful to be here! Thanks very much to the welcoming folks at @unu-wider.bsky.social for having me.

UNU-WIDER@unu-wider.bsky.social · last yr.

First one of our spring 2025 Visiting Scholars to be introduced is @timkohler.bsky.social‬. Coming from @dpru-uct.bsky.social‬, he is a micro-economist focused on labour markets, social protection, and policy evaluation in lower-income countries. Meet our visitors: go.unu.edu/D0wIP

How have the returns to education evolved during the post-Apartheid era in South Africa?🇿🇦 Read about it in a new short Econ3x3 blog I’ve put together below, summarizing a 2024 RESEP paper also below. www.econ3x3.org/article/how-... Full paper for those interested: resep.sun.ac.za/wp-content/u...

Presented some work at the University of Turku🇫🇮 today. Grateful for the opportunity to share some ideas & learn from such a welcoming & kind group of researchers - an impressive bunch doing great work. Thanks to @jerniemin.bsky.social @asfandyk.bsky.social @selcencakir.bsky.social for organising!

Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is @TimothyKohler @timkohler.bsky.social @DPRU_UCT who works on topics related to labor + development

Very grateful to be in beautiful Maastricht🇳🇱 today to present some work at @unumerit.bsky.social. Thanks for having me! If you’re interested in attending in-person or online: go.unu.edu/9zq7Q

Very excited and grateful to be in beautiful Helsinki 🇫🇮 for the next few months as a Visiting Scholar at @unu-wider.bsky.social. If you’re around and would be keen to connect, please get in touch!

Hi Bluesky! We're a research unit at University of Cape Town, addressing challenges facing children in South Africa through research, advocacy & education. We explore tensions between policy, practice & lived realities, to promote design & implementation of laws & services enabling kids to thrive 🌱

Hello, Bluesky #EconSky! We're the Southern Africa Labour & Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at UCT, dedicated to challenging inequalities through policy-relevant academic research. We are one of the leading Labour & Development #Economics units on the continent. Explore our work: saldru.uct.ac.za

🔊Postdoc Research Fellowship at DataFirst! Analyze large-scale African foundational learning data, conduct original research, & shape education policy. Apply now! ➡️https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/articles/2025-02-04-postdoctoral-research-fellowship-opportunity

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Opportunity

We invite applications for a postdoctoral position to work in the AFLEARN Data Hub. The successful candidate will be involved in original empirical research; collating and analysing large-scale Africa...

datafirst.uct.ac.za

Excited to be joining @unu-wider.bsky.social in Helsinki 🇫🇮 as a Visiting Scholar for 3 months starting in April! While there, my work will focus on social protection policy & labor market inequality in lower-income countries, with a particular focus on South Africa. Very much looking forward to it!

How has the return to education evolved in post-Apartheid SA?🇿🇦 Happy to share a new working paper where I use reliable earnings data not publicly available to provide a more precise analysis than previously possible. 🔗: tinyurl.com/educ-returns... 5 key findings below!

Been a while since we shared this! Here is a selection of our favourite sources of research, newsletters, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos related to development economics, including researchers who have written for VoxDev. go.bsky.app/4rsxm7G

Adaptation helped Cape Town, South Africa dodge the Day Zero drought (where city's pipes run dry), but with long-term fiscal, distributional, and environmental consequences, from Alexander C. Abajian, Cassandra Cole, Kelsey Jack, Kyle C. Meng, and Martine Visser https://www.nber.org/papers/w33468

📢CALL FOR PAPERS 7th annual conference of the Baltic economic association 📅Deadline: 15 March 2025 👨‍🏫Keynote: Luigi Guiso ➡️Learn more and submit: conf2025.balticecon.org #EconSky #EconConf

BEC - 26-27 June 2025 - Vilnius, Lithuania

conf2025.balticecon.org

In the News: 'Noncompliance with minimum wage rising, study finds' New Business Day article referencing Haroon Bhorat, @timkohler.bsky.social, and Ben Stanwix's evaluation of the labour market effects of the 2024 ⬆️ in South Africa’s🇿🇦 National Minimum Wage. www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/...

Noncompliance with minimum wage rising, study finds

National minimum wage is a theoretical exercise that does not take cognisance of stakeholder inputs, says Neasa

businesslive.co.za

📢 Call for papers #YEM2025 📅 May 22-23 2025 in Brno, Czech Republic 🗒️Topics: Applied Empirical Research, Labor Economics, Experimental Economics and Behavioral Theory 👥Keynotes: @dkuebler.bsky.social @neumarkecon.bsky.social ✅Submit paper by Feb 17 ℹ️Details: yem.econ.muni.cz

YEM 2025 | YEM: Young Economists' Meeting

YEM: Young Economists' Meeting in Brno, Czech Republic

yem.econ.muni.cz

🚨New paper!🚨 Now published in Energy Economics, we (w/ @HaroonBhorat) provide the 1st estimates of the labour market effects of frequent & severe power outages (known as “load shedding”) in South Africa 🇿🇦 Full (OA) paper available here: doi.org/10.1016/j.en... 🧵 below! 1/n

#econsky Interesting workshop for early career scholars working on education.

Joshua Goodman@joshua-goodman.com · 2y ago

Great economics of education workshop for early career scholars!

A great way to end the year 🎉 My paper, co-authored w/ Haroon Bhorat, on the labour market effects of SA’s🇿🇦 SRD grant is now published in World Development. We began this work back in 2020. So happy it found a good home! Full (OA) paper here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #EconSky

✍️Read the full report here: www.labour.gov.za/DocumentCent... 📃Read the relevant government gazette, which includes a summary of the report's findings alongside ongoing work on the effects of all of the NMW adjustments over the past 5 years, here: static.pmg.org.za/1/NMW.pdf