IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wboper/10853.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Infrastructure and Employment Creation in the Middle East and North Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Caroline Freund
  • Elena Ianchovichina

Abstract

The state of national labor markets has always been a concern for governments and development agencies such as the World Bank. Key labor market indicators, such as the rate of unemployment, send signals about the health of an economy and mirror citizens' attitudes. Being gainfully employed is an important aspect of an individual's well-being both financially and socially, as 'initial failures in finding a job can lead to persistent joblessness, a loss of interest in further schooling, delayed family formation, mental distress, and negative manifestations of citizenship' (World Bank 2007). Increased expenditure on infrastructure projects has a short-run effect on employment creation as more workers are hired to build infrastructure. These jobs last only during the investment phase of the project, and, without a continuous injection as in a stimulus-type program, such jobs will be temporary. However, the investment program will have created a larger stock of infrastructure capital and this permanent addition facilitates additional growth in the economy. The extra demand from this incremental growth creates more jobs, and these tend to be permanent. Furthermore, an employment experience in an infrastructure-related employment program, even if temporary, might improve the chance of being re-employed at a later date. This study capitalizes on the World Bank's long-standing knowledge on infrastructure, employment, and growth and applies it to the case of MENA to assess the employment creation potential of infrastructure investment.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Caroline Freund & Elena Ianchovichina, 2012. "Infrastructure and Employment Creation in the Middle East and North Africa," World Bank Other Operational Studies 10853, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wboper:10853
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/10853/677300BRI00PUB0ent0creation0in0MENA.pdf?sequence=1
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gerfin, Michael & Lechner, Michael & Steiger, Heidi, 2005. "Does subsidised temporary employment get the unemployed back to work? Aneconometric analysis of two different schemes," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(6), pages 807-835, December.
    2. Brown, Alessio J.G. & Merkl, Christian & Snower, Dennis J., 2011. "Comparing the effectiveness of employment subsidies," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 168-179, April.
    3. Martin, John P. & Grubb, David, 2001. "What works and for whom: a review of OECD countries' experiences with active labour market policies," Working Paper Series 2001:14, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    4. van Ours, Jan C., 2004. "The locking-in effect of subsidized jobs," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 37-55, March.
    5. Aki Kangasharju, 2007. "Do Wage Subsidies Increase Employment in Subsidized Firms?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(293), pages 51-67, February.
    6. Forslund, Anders & Johansson, Per & Lindqvist, Linus, 2004. "Employment subsidies - A fast lane from unemployment to work?," Working Paper Series 2004:18, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    7. Etienne Wasmer, 2006. "General versus Specific Skills in Labor Markets with Search Frictions and Firing Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 811-831, June.
    8. Betcherman, Gordon & Daysal, N. Meltem & Pagés, Carmen, 2010. "Do employment subsidies work? Evidence from regionally targeted subsidies in Turkey," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 710-722, August.
    9. Boeri, Tito, 1997. "Labour-Market Reforms in Transition Economies," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(2), pages 126-140, Summer.
    10. Anna McCord & Dirk Ernst van Seventer, 2004. "The economy-wide impacts of the labour intensification of infrastructure expenditure in South Africa," SALDRU/CSSR Working Papers 093, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    11. Richardson, James, 1998. "Do wage subsidies enhance employability? Evidence from Australian youth," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 20280, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Gagliarducci, Stefano, 2005. "The dynamics of repeated temporary jobs," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 429-448, August.
    13. Ive MARX, 2001. "Job subsidies and cuts in employers' social security contributions: The verdict of empirical evaluation studies," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 140(1), pages 69-83, March.
    14. Oskamp, Frank & Snower, Dennis J., 2006. "The effect of low-wage subsidies on skills and employment," Kiel Working Papers 1292, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW).
    15. Bucher, Anne, 2010. "Impacts of hiring subsidies targeted at the long-term unemployed on the low-skilled labor market: The French experience," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 553-565, March.
    16. Samia Amin & Jishnu Das & Markus Goldstein, 2008. "Are You Being Served? New Tools for Measuring Services Delivery," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 6921.
    17. Mark A. Loewenstein & James R. Spletzer, 1999. "General and Specific Training: Evidence and Implications," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 34(4), pages 710-733.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dominique Lallement, 2013. "Infrastructure and gender equity," Chapters,in: Handbook of Research on Gender and Economic Life, chapter 9, pages 132-149 Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. International Labour Office., 2015. "Global employment trends for youth 2015 : scaling up investments in decent jobs for youth," Global Employment Trends Reports 994891803402676, International Labour Office, Economic and Labour Market Analysis Department.
    3. Shimeles Abebe & Adeleke Oluwole Salami & Anthony M. Simpasa, 2015. "Working Paper 221 - Employment Effects of Multilateral Development Bank Projects The Case of the African Development Bank," Working Paper Series 2160, African Development Bank.
    4. Roberta Gatti & Matteo Morgandi & Rebekka Grun & Stefanie Brodmann & Diego Angel-Urdinola & Juan Manuel Moreno & Daniela Marotta & Marc Schiffbauer & Elizabeth Mata Lorenzo, 2013. "Jobs for Shared Prosperity : Time for Action in the Middle East and North Africa," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 13284.

    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:wbk:wboper:10853. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Thomas Breineder). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.