Blog

In an op-ed for Project Syndicate, Rema Hanna and Ben Olken explain that expanding social protection to reach the most vulnerable people must be a pillar of every country’s COVID-19 strategy.

Job creation is an all-time favorite talking point for politicians around the world as economies adapt to new trade patterns and technological innovation causes tectonic shifts in older industries. But how do we actually create more jobs?

From 2011 to 2014, J-PAL affiliates David Atkin and Adam Osman, with co-author Amit K. Khandelwal, evaluated small rug producers in Egypt to understand how exporting affects firms’ profits and productivity.

While there are many theories of the sources of the differences in size and wealth of economies between countries, economists have long argued that productivity gaps between firms in the private sector are a major contributor.

What role do policies that affect private sector firms play in closing the productivity gap between higher-income and lower-income countries, and what are the implications of firms’ policies on economic growth and worker welfare?