BACKGROUND Skilled birth attendance from a trained health professional during labour and delivery can prevent up to 75% of maternal deaths. However, in low- and middle-income rural communities, lack of basic medical infrastructure and limited number of skilled birth attendants are significant barriers to timely obstetric care. Through analysis of self-reported data, this study aimed to assess t...

It has been suggested that sub-Saharan Africa will not be a significant exporter of manufactured goods because it lacks the necessary skills. Wood 1994 argues that Africa can only export unskilled labour intensive manufactures, as unskilled labour is relatively abundant. Elsewhere it has been argued that African exports will be dominated by natural resource intensive goods, and that manufacturi...

We integrate three hitherto unconnected strands of economic theory; Lewis’ dual economy model, the Balassa-Samuelson model and, segmented labour market theory. With our hybrid model we investigate the implications of migration with labour market segmentation for an economy’s internal competitiveness, where migrants are concentrated in the secondary labour market and this segment supplies unskil...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown far more rapidly than trade during the last two decades. As with the other prominent features of globalisation, FDI is controversial. The impact of FDI on labour markets has been of growing concern, particularly, for source countries. The deterioration of labour market conditions for unskilled workers in many OECD countries during the 1980’s and 1990’s ...

Following Keen and Marchand (1997), the paper analyses the effect of fiscal competition on the composition of public spending in a model where capital and skilled workers are mobile while low skilled workers are immobile. Taxes are levied on capital and labour. Each group of workers benefits from a different kind of public good. Mobility of skilled workers provides an incentive for jurisdiction...

Worldwide, there are an estimated 244 million international migrants (UN DESA, 2016), with 175 million of these originating from developing regions. People migrate for a number of reasons, with the most cited being access to jobs. The International Labour Organization’s (ILO’s) decent work agenda aims to ensure dignity, equality, fair income and safe working conditions, with specific mention of...

a r t i c l e i n f o JEL classification: F43 J31 O31 O33 Keywords: Technological knowledge International trade Human capital Wage inequality By connecting the North–South diffusion and the bias of non-scale technological knowledge and by considering endogenous human capital, we relate the technological-knowledge diffusion with levels, inter-country gaps, growth rates, wage-inequality paths and...

Labour Market Regulation in the EU-15: Causes and Consequences – A Survey Why should floors be set under wages and working conditions by labour market regulations? This paper finds that efficiency arguments are questionable, because of the disemployment effects of strict regulation. Regulation is better explained in terms of the choices of the employed semiand unskilled worker group. This group...

This paper analyses the impact of immigration on the welfare of the native population in an economy that consists of skilled and unskilled workers. Due to unionisation, the wage rate in the market for unskilled labour is above the competitive level. For a given skill endowment of the native population, we show that immigration reduces the welfare of the host country up to a certain threshold an...