IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/afrdev/v25y2013i4p385-399.html

Determinants of Unemployment in Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • William Baah‐Boateng

Abstract

Unemployment is often cited as a measure of the low employment content of Ghana's strong growth performance over the past three decades. The paper presents evidence to suggest that employment growth in Ghana continues to trail economic growth due to high growth of low employment generating sectors against sluggish growth of high labour absorption sectors. A cross‐sectional estimation of a probit regression model also indicates a strong effect of demand factors on unemployment, indicating a weak employment generating impact of economic growth. Empirical analysis also confirms higher vulnerability of youth and urban dwellers to unemployment with education and gender explaining unemployment in some instances. Reservation wage is also observed to have an increasing effect of unemployment. The paper recommends policies that promote investment in agriculture and manufacturing which is associated with higher employment elasticity of output. High incidence of unemployment among the youth and secondary school leavers in the most recent period requires targeted intervention including support for entrepreneurial training and start‐up capital to attract young school leavers to become ‘creators’ rather than ‘seekers’ of jobs. A downward review of expectations on the part of jobseekers in terms of their reservation wage could help reduce unemployment in Ghana.

Suggested Citation

  • William Baah‐Boateng, 2013. "Determinants of Unemployment in Ghana," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 25(4), pages 385-399, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:afrdev:v:25:y:2013:i:4:p:385-399
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-8268.12037
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8268.12037
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1467-8268.12037?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1974. "Incentives and Risk Sharing in Sharecropping," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(2), pages 219-255.
    2. Geeta Gandhi Kingdon & John Knight, 2004. "Race and the Incidence of Unemployment in South Africa," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(2), pages 198-222, May.
    3. Samuel Bentolila & Juan Dolado & Juan Jimeno, 2012. "Reforming an insider-outsider labor market: the Spanish experience," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-29, December.
    4. Osberg, Lars & Apostle, Richard & Clairmont, Don, 1986. "The Incidence and Duration of Individual Unemployment: Supply Side o r Demand Side?," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 10(1), pages 13-33, March.
    5. David Blackaby & Derek Leslie & Philip Murphy & Nigel O’Leary, 1999. "Unemployment Among Britain’s Ethnic Minorities," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 67(1), pages 1-20, January.
    6. Richard B. Freeman & David A. Wise, 1982. "The Youth Labor Market Problem: Its Nature Causes and Consequences," NBER Chapters, in: The Youth Labor Market Problem: Its Nature, Causes, and Consequences, pages 1-16, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. John C. Anyanwu, 2013. "Characteristics and Macroeconomic Determinants of Youth Employment in Africa," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 25(2), pages 107-129, June.
    8. Shapiro, Carl & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1984. "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 433-444, June.
    9. Harry Sackey & Barfour Osei, 2006. "Human Resource Underutilization in an Era of Poverty Reduction: An Analysis of Unemployment and Underemployment in Ghana," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 18(2), pages 221-247.
    10. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    11. Baah-Boateng, William & Adjei, Prince & Oduro, Abena, 2013. "Determinants of moonlighting in Ghana: an empirical investigation," MPRA Paper 109702, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. George J. Stigler, 1962. "Information in the Labor Market," NBER Chapters, in: Investment in Human Beings, pages 94-105, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Joanne Lindley, 2005. "Explaining ethnic unemployment and activity rates: evidence from the QLFS in the 1990s and 2000s," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(2), pages 185-203, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. William Baah-Boateng, 2016. "The youth unemployment challenge in Africa: What are the drivers?," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 27(4), pages 413-431, December.
    2. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2017. "The Revolution of Information Economics: The Past and the Future," NBER Working Papers 23780, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. J. Barkley Rosser, 2003. "A Nobel Prize for Asymmetric Information: The economic contributions of George Akerlof, Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(1), pages 3-21.
    4. Diana Marcela Jiménez Restrepo, 2011. "Búsqueda de empleo en las principales áreas metropolitanas de Colombia: ¿Cómo se hace? ¿Cuánto dura? Un análisis para los segundos trimestres de 2009 y 2010," Documentos de Trabajo 11057, Universidad del Valle, CIDSE.
    5. Clément Carbonnier, 2023. "Welfare Economics and Neoliberalism: Interpreting the ideal type of perfect competition general equilibrium," Working Papers hal-04062786, HAL.
    6. Clement Olalekan Olaniyi & James Temitope Dada & Nicholas Mbaya Odhiambo & Xuan Vinh Vo, 2023. "Modelling asymmetric structure in the finance-poverty nexus: empirical insights from an emerging market economy," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 453-487, February.
    7. Omar Al-Ubaydli & John A. List, 2019. "How natural field experiments have enhanced our understanding of unemployment," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 3(1), pages 33-39, January.
    8. Joshua Frank, 2008. "Perverse outcomes of intense competition in the popular arts and its implications for product quality," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 32(3), pages 215-224, September.
    9. Reda Sahmi, , & Mostafa El Hachloufi & Meriem Aboulethar, 2022. "The Social and Solidarity Economy, a new solution to decrease unemployment in Morocco ? Case of cooperatives in the Region of Tangier Tetouan Al-Hoceima," Review of Applied Socio-Economic Research, Pro Global Science Association, vol. 24(2), pages 140-164, December.
    10. Arciniegas, Christian & Dumas, Christelle & Fahn, Matthias, 2025. "Informal Labor Exchange Teams and Participation in the Labor Market: Evidence from Rural Tanzania," IZA Discussion Papers 17852, IZA Network @ LISER.
    11. Aleix Calveras & Juan José Ganuza, 2004. "Responsabilidad social corporativa. Una visión desde la teoría económica," Economics Working Papers 797, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    12. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Reputations, Relationships and the Enforcement of Incomplete Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 1730, CESifo.
    13. Kherallah, Mylene & Kirsten, Johann F, 2002. "The New Institutional Economics: Applications For Agricultural Policy Research In Developing Countries," Agrekon, Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA), vol. 41(2).
    14. Xinxin Ma & Ichiro Iwasaki, 2021. "Does communist party membership bring a wage premium in China? a meta-analysis," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 55-94, January.
    15. Delgado García, Juan Bautista & De Quevedo Puente, Esther, 2016. "The complex link of city reputation and city performance. Results for fsQCA analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 2830-2839.
    16. Bart Cockx & Matteo Picchio, 2013. "Scarring effects of remaining unemployed for long-term unemployed school-leavers," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 176(4), pages 951-980, October.
    17. Greenwald, Bruce C. & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1987. "Imperfect information, credit markets and unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 444-456.
    18. Dilip Mookherjee, 1997. "Informational Rents and Property Rights in Land," International Economic Association Series, in: John E. Roemer (ed.), Property Relations, Incentives and Welfare, chapter 1, pages 3-42, Palgrave Macmillan.
    19. Vegas, E & Ganimian, A. J., 2013. "Theory and Evidence on Teacher Policies in Developed and Developing Countries," Working Paper 104291, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    20. Breton, Albert, 1995. "Organizational hierarchies and bureaucracies: An integrative essay," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 411-440, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:afrdev:v:25:y:2013:i:4:p:385-399. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/afdbgci.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.