Bibliography

Abstract

Jan Kregel’s wide-ranging work has covered many issues of direct and contemporary relevance to developing countries, and is marked by his careful attention to both the broad sweep and the detail of policy interventions. His contributions to the issues of financing development, macroeconomic instabilities generated by financial deregulation, including capital account liberalization and how to alter patterns of development toward diversification to higher value added activities, are all well known. But he has also been an insightful advocate of specific types of demand management policies that can play multiple roles in developing economies. One such strategy is of implementing public works as part of employment guarantees, which can then have positive effects on both the demand side of the labor market and the supply-side of production conditions.

https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137450968_7

Implementation India

Abstract

This article examines the impact of austerity policies in seven EU Member States on municipal employment and the ways in which social dialogue can influence consequences for employees. It provides a comparative institutional framework, looking at municipal tasks and powers, and the social dialogue institutions available in the respective countries. In addition, the outcomes of austerity policies are compared with regard to wages, employment levels and the public service provision, as well as the influence of social dialogue institutions on these outcomes. Trade unions and workplace employee representatives face a dilemma, having to choose between concession bargaining and opposition to employer plans in order to preserve public sector employment. Between and within countries there seem to be significant differences in their success. Generally speaking, however, these are tough times for municipal workers, their representatives and citizens dependent on the services municipalities offer.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1024258914538351

Europe Implementation Quantitative

Abstract

Who deserves what types of entitlements? On what grounds? In this moment of rampant and structural joblessness, there is an increasing critique of universities for their failure to create appropriate routes to employment for their graduates who are borrowing increasing sums of money to attend. Do these good students, who make, what President Obama has dubbed “good choices,” deserve jobs? If so, why only them? Or, with the extreme wealth of the U.S., should these good students, along with the bad, and everyone else, be entitled to a job or income? And what do employment rates for undergraduates have to do with the university anyway?

https://csalateral.org/issue/3/full-employment-for-the-future/

Gender Human Rights North America Racial Justice

Abstract

It is common knowledge that John Maynard Keynes advocated bold government action to deal with recessions and unemployment. What is not commonly known is that modern “Keynesian policies” bear little, if any, resemblance to the policy measures Keynes himself believed would guarantee true full employment over the long run. This paper corrects this misconception and outlines “the road not taken”; that is, the long-term program for full employment found in Keynes’s writings and elaborated on by others in works that are missing from mainstream textbooks and policy initiatives. The analysis herein focuses on why the private sector ordinarily fails to produce full employment, even during strong expansions and in the presence of strong government action. It articulates the reasons why the job of the policymaker is, not to “nudge” private firms to create jobs for all, but to do so itself directly as a matter of last resort. This paper discusses various designs of direct job creation policies that answer Keynes’s call for long-run full employment policies.

https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2407543

Macroeconomics

Abstract

This research explores the implications of social protection in urban poverty reduction; in particular the study focuses on public works programmes as a component of broader social protection programmes in Kenya. While exploring the implications the study pays attention to community participation, targeting procedures as well as synergies in relation to KKV programme. This focus is informed by the fact that active community participation is very crucial in poverty reduction strategies. Contrary, development interventions have been engaging the poor passively which is basically associated with top down approaches thus treating them as dormant actors rather than equal partners. Notably, the study focuses on a case study of Kazi kwa Vijana (KKV) Swahili for Work for Youth Work, this is a public work programme that was initiated by the Government of Kenya in 2009 that targeted the youth with an overall aim of providing labor intensive work in return get a minimum wage for their daily upkeep. Considering that the Kenyan youth constitute 78.31 % of the entire national population, the initiative targeted this population cluster (youth). Additionally, the study focus was motivated by the zest to know whether the initiative managed in any way to improve livelihoods among the slum dwellers as one of its intended objective. Notably, the KKV targeting process was meant to be self-targeting based on first come first serve, despite the planned self-targeting mechanisms the implementers were forced to use the village elders to identify the neediest in situations where the vacancies were few than the applicants. Despite the great role played by the village elders in the participants‟ selection, the findings indicates that the process was not smooth in the sense that 36% of the total respondents cited that it was based on corruption and nepotism. Particularly, while exploring the level of community participation and synergies I focused on the informal community networks and how these net-works can create synergies to improve livelihoods consequently reducing poverty.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Implications-of-social-protectio...

Africa Development Implementation Quantitative Urban Youth

Abstract

This paper aims at formalising and assessing the validity of the critiques of the Job Guarantee (JG) policy proposed by Minsky (1965). In order to do so, we develop a multisectoral Post-Keynesian Stock-Flow Consistent (PK-SFC) model. Our paper is a step, following Missaglia (2011), towards the creation of a structuralist/ SFC model. We introduce several new features in an PK-SFC model: (i) a more disaggregated households sector than usual, (ii) three production sectors and the possibility of constrained output, and (iii) a more elaborated labor market with endogenous labor supply. We use the model to compare and contrast two Keynesian policies: the JG and a traditional Keynesian Demand Spur (KDS).

https://doi.org/10.4000/regulation.10988

Macroeconomics Modeling Quantitative

Abstract

In 2006, India embarked on an ambitious attempt to fight poverty by attempting to introduce a wage floor in a setting in which many unskilled workers earn less than the minimum wage. The 2005 national rural employment guarantee act (NREGA) creates a justiciable “right to work” by promising 100 days of wage employment in every financial year to all rural households whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. In attempting to fight poverty in poor places with weak administrative capabilities, the idea of “rights” has often been invoked. This book aims to contribute to the understanding of the efficacy of poor states in fighting poverty using an ambitious rights-based program – the largest antipoverty public employment program in India, and possibly anywhere in the world. The program authors study is India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), which was launched to implement the NREGA. This book presents survey-based estimates for India as a whole as well as results for Bihar. Results for India are based on the 2009-10 national sample survey. Two surveys were carried out in 2009 and 2010 and spanned 150 villages spread across all 38 districts in Bihar. These data are supplemented by qualitative research in six districts to better understand supply-side challenges. A distinctive feature of the methodology is that the authors identify the key counterfactual outcomes of interest – that is, what Bihar Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (BREGS) participants will have done in the absence of the program – by directly asking individual BREGS participants. The advantage of this approach is that it produces an individual-specific estimate of impact – exploiting the information available for each participant – rather than delivering only a mean impact. The authors find compelling evidence that the scheme is reaching relatively poor families. It is important that reform efforts for MGNREGS work on both of these aspects – a stronger, more capable, local administration, plus more effective participation by civil society.

https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/docum...

Development Human Rights India Quantitative

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, currently the world’s largest public employment program, on household consumption and poverty rates in rural India. Combining regionally coded data from consumption surveys with information on the district-wise rollout of the program, we employ a regression discontinuity design to estimate program effects during the years 2007 and 2008. We find large, season-specific effects among a traditionally deprived sub-group of the rural population, whose incomes are particularly dependent on agricultural wage labor. We find that for this group of households,which accounts for thirty percent of India’s rural population, employment opportunities under the scheme have cut poverty during the agricultural lean season by as much as one half while we find no effect during the agricultural peak season. In a cost-benefit analysis we find that consumption increases among this group of households are of the same order of magnitude as the wage outlays of the program. We document that consumption among this group of households had previously exhibited severe systematic seasonal fluctuations and conclude that the employment program has had a lasting effect on consumption smoothing across agricultural seasons.

https://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00016875

Implementation India Quantitative

Abstract

From the 1960s, Minsky argued that implementing a decentralized job-guarantee policy funded by the federal government was a relevant way to promote full employment and price stability, and to alleviate poverty. This policy aims at providing a job to anybody willing to work and to pay a living wage. Over the past fifteen years, this idea has been subject to greater scrutiny and this paper contributes to that literature by estimating the gross cost of implementing a job-guarantee policy (JG). In order to calculate this cost, the paper uses the data available from the 1930s work programs. These work programs provide some interesting insights because enough data are available to determine the cost of JG under widely different rates of unemployment. The paper shows that JG would have been quite expensive during the early part of the 1930s when the unemployment rate was at 20 percent or more. Once unemployment receded to a usual level, the gross cost of JG would have been low.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0486613414532767

Implementation Macroeconomics Modeling North America Quantitative

Abstract

This article reviews public works programmes as a way to alleviate poverty using experiences from around the world in general and South Africa in particular. It interrogates the targeting mechanisms including the question of who benefits, the type of benefit as well as the type of public works. The article argues that the design of public works must take cognizance of whether the initiative is attempting to address chronic and/or transient unemployment as this has a bearing on the thrust of the initiative either to address transient and/or chronic unemployment especially given the multi-dimensional nature of poverty. The article also argues that public works have multiple effects which include distributional effects; real (household) income effects; participation effects; labour market effects; decentralization effects; sustainability effects; investment effects; productivity effects; political economy effects; technical effects; as well as targeting effects. It also argues, using perceptual maps, that when developing public works, it is critical to define the issue which needs to be addressed a priori such as sanitation, HIV/AIDS, food security, unemployment, rural infrastructure development, income, poverty and so forth. The perceptual maps, and the trajectories which they portray, are the major contribution of this article. Public works can span various social and economic sectors such as social services, infrastructure development, early childhood development (ECD) and home- and community-based care (HCBC); community-based waste management, environmental conservation, wildfire management and so forth. The article argues that all interventions should be tested for viability, sustainability and appropriateness within a given context. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n8p544

https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n8p544

Africa Implementation

Abstract

This article aims to assess the type of social contracts that led to the passage of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by analysing the debates prevalent during the Act’s formulation, and the underlying beliefs about the existing social contract. The article argues that while existing social contracts shape the design of social policies, each policy may also have an aspiration of a particular type of social contract built into its design. Accordingly, it analyses the nature of social contract envisioned in the design of the MGNREGA, and the extent to which this social contract is being realised through the Act’s implementation.

https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2014.6

Human Rights India

Abstract

The job guarantee is a proposal that provides greater macroeconomic stability and secures a fundamental human right. Despite the economic and moral merits of this policy, often the program is rejected because of concerns about its administration. How would the program be implemented? Who will create the jobs? Can work be found for every unemployed individual who wishes to work? This policy note addresses these concerns by elaborating on a proposal for the United States that would run the job guarantee through the social enterprise sector, which includes traditional nonprofit organizations and emerging nonprofit social entrepreneurial ventures.

https://www.levyinstitute.org/files/download.php?file=pn_14_1.pdf&pubi...

Implementation

Abstract

In his 1904 The Theory of Business Enterprise, Thorstein Veblen advanced a theory of the then-modern corporation that fundamentally differed than that portrayed in standard economic theory.  Veblen developed his argument within the stage of the “credit economy” in which the capital market dominated the goods market. Rather than production in order to “earn a livelihood,” the point of the modern business enterprise is to make “profits on investment.” As a consequence of the changes in the structure of capitalism, there arises a conflict of interest between the business enterprise and the community. In particular, “sabotage” of production, thus increasing monetary gain, is standard business practice when sufficient control of an industry has been established, and this obviously runs counter to the objectives of the community which is interested in increasing that production. To increase monetary returns, when capitalists have sufficient control over the production process, they then can control pricing. But to control pricing, output must be controlled. As the majority of the population must sell their skills for wages and salaries, it is necessary that a sufficient number of jobs be offered to allow them to do so—full employment. However, the number and types of jobs offered are based on decisions made by owners and/or managers based on decisions to produce output. While Veblen does not address any program equivalent to that of a job guarantee program, the main point, however, is that the normal functioning of a modern capitalist economy is unlikely to satisfy the requirements of the provisioning process necessary to allow a viable social organization. Beyond the issue of unemployment, a host of other concerns can at least partially be addressed with such a program.

https://www.global-isp.org/publication/thorstein-veblen-the-provisioni...

Implementation Inflation Macroeconomics

Abstract

This article proposes a collaboration between post-Keynesians and feminist economists with regard to macroeconomic policies aimed at the socialization of investment, in particular the proposal for the government to act at once as the Employer of Last Resort and as a social provider. This is particularly important in the UK because the coalition government’s Spending Review and Plan for Growth have dismantled public services and welfare benefits while emphasizing a narrow range of productive activities. This strategy threatens to widen the inequality that has led to low levels of demand and reliance by low- and middle-income households on unsustainable borrowing in order to maintain living standards. The article therefore contributes to current debates about alternative macroeconomic policies: it argues that the current emphasis on austerity needs to be replaced by a social provisioning approach that requires us to first pose the question of what the economy should be for.

https://doi.org/10.13169/worlrevipoliecon.4.2.0230

Gender Macroeconomics

Abstract

The efficacy of the Job Guarantee (JG) as a strategy for sustained full employment has been the subject of ongoing debate between its advocates, who typically align themselves with the principles of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), and other heterodox economists. The latter group have raised issues, including the stabilisation of inflation, balance of payments constraints, political and intellectual constraints, invisible under-employment, and the sustainability of full employment. The focus of this paper is on the achievement and maintenance of full employment through the adoption of a JG in comparison to pump priming, which is advocated by a number of progressive economists. In particular, it is generally recognised that a reduced rate of growth of capacity during a recession can cause capacity constrained unemployment in the recovery which would be exacerbated if there was a significant pro-cyclical labour supply response, in addition to labour force increases driven by the rising working age population. Consequently an expansion in spending may have an insignificant real effect on employment and output and is likely to impact on inflation. In other words, the real output gap, which relief from the high unemployment is defined as the actual level of output minus potential output associated with the full utilisation of existing capacity, is not large enough to allow all the unemployed to gain productive jobs in the private sector. We shall argue that, while private sector investment, which is governed by profitability considerations, may be insufficient to expand potential output sufficiently in a recovery to re-absorb the unemployed who lost their jobs in the downturn, this contention does not apply to a currency-issuing government which introduces a JG. While a major planning exercise is required, when the JG is first implemented, which must address the prevailing rate of labour underutilisation, the creation of additional JG jobs simultaneously creates the extra productive capacity required for program viability. On the other hand, the prospective fluctuations in JG employment arising from the fluctuations in non-government employment are likely to be relatively modest within a fully employed economy, which makes the planning process less challenging.

https://www.fullemployment.net/publications/wp/2013/13-04.pdf

Australia Implementation Macroeconomics Modeling Quantitative

Abstract

This inquiry seeks to establish that a job guarantee would animate the non-invidious re-creation of community, challenge the hierarchy which permeates social and economic relations, and facilitate an institutional adjustment toward a more inclusive provisioning process. In so doing, the analysis commences by revealing how the current institutional structure fails to provide a non-invidious provision of the material means of life.

https://ebrary.ifpri.org/digital/collection/p15738coll2/id/127160

Implementation India

Abstract

Using 2009-10 National Sample Survey data, this paper describes patterns of job-seeking, rationing, and participation in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. At the national level, it finds that the self-targeting design of MGNREGS leads to greater rates of self-selection into the programme by poorer and scheduled tribe or scheduled caste households. However, the administrative rationing of MGNREGS jobs is not pro-poor but exhibits a sort of middle-class bias. At the state level, roughly half of 27 states exhibit rationing and participation profiles that signal effective pro-poor targeting; the other half struggle to avoid high rates and regressive patterns of administrative rationing of jobs to which the poor have a legal right.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23391359

Development Implementation India Quantitative

Abstract

Unemployment brings economic, psychological, and social hardship to individuals and their community. Common policies to combat unemployment include the promotion of economic growth and training, but a less common policy focuses on the right to work. This policy proposal decouples the goals of economic growth and full employment, and allows willing individuals to work in order to maintain their morale and employability while participating in socially beneficial activities. Since the 1990s, debates regarding the right to work have been revived. Criticisms have been wide ranging and the paper evaluates some of them by going back to the New Deal work programs. The paper shows that some of these criticisms are warranted while others are not. The paper concludes that a job guarantee program can provide significant benefits as long as it is organized around a vision of labor as a fulfilling and rewarding activity. However, this vision is almost certain to clash with existing labor market structures and dominant political interests. As a consequence, if put in place, Job Guarantee may be organized as a minimalist, make-work, low-wage program and that would be a mistake.

https://doi.org/10.2753/ijp0891-1916420203

Macroeconomics North America

Abstract

Much of the literature regarding the Job Guarantee (JG) has been on the development of theoretical foundations for their adoption to developed and developing economies. Unfortunately, few countries have adopted this proposal with the notable exception of Argentina’s Jefes de Hogar program (Kostzer 2008). Consequently, limited real-world data puts constraints on the further development and implementation of JG programs.

https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313997_3

Asia Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

The crisis has had major consequences for public service employment relations in the liberal market economies of the UK and Ireland. However, variations in the process of fiscal consolidation refle…

https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680113505036

Europe Implementation

Abstract

Degrowth should consider the right to work – a Job Guarantee (JG) – as a way of making a smaller economy more just and socially sustainable. Economic shrinkage in richer countries is accompanied by increased unemployment, a bad enough problem in itself but also a barrier to voters’ acceptance of the degrowth path. Since being out of work is distinct from being poor, anti-poverty income policies should be approached separately. The JG is one of several paths to full employment, including reduced working time. This essay only briefly mentions some real-world JG programs and some technical objections. The main suggestion is to move employment from being a matter of economics, particularly economic growth, to being a political right. A right to work is necessarily effective and would avoid sacrificing the ecological and social goals of degrowth on the altar of full employment.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.06.007

Environmental Sustainability Macroeconomics

Abstract

Degrowth should consider the right to work – a Job Guarantee (JG) – as a way of making a smaller economy more just and socially sustainable. Economic shrinkage in richer countries is accompanied by increased unemployment, a bad enough problem in itself but also a barrier to voters’ acceptance of the degrowth path. Since being out of work is distinct from being poor, anti-poverty income policies should be approached separately. The JG is one of several paths to full employment, including reduced working time. This essay only briefly mentions some real-world JG programs and some technical objections. The main suggestion is to move employment from being a matter of economics, particularly economic growth, to being a political right. A right to work is necessarily effective and would avoid sacrificing the ecological and social goals of degrowth on the altar of full employment.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.06.007

Development Environmental Sustainability Macroeconomics

Abstract

This paper critiques the fiscal cliff mythology and the neoliberal push for economic austerity policies and sequestration of government programs. The purpose of the paper is to shift the debate to a social justice alternative that can sustain and enhance the social safety nets by implementing a full employment program that is both financially affordable and economically productive. First, the paper critically assesses the laissez-faire approach to job creation and lays out the mechanics of the job guarantee (JG) program as an alternative to the neoliberal model. Next, the paper critiques the deficit hawks and deficit doves fiscal cliff debate and demonstrates how the JG program can be financed according to modern money theory (MMT). Finally, the paper presents the cost estimation of the JG program for the United States to demonstrate its financial affordability and its productive capabilities.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0486613413487162

Macroeconomics Modeling Quantitative

Abstract

Can we ever practically control the degradation of the environment if the world continues to emphasize economic growth as its answer to social justice? Guarantee employment and grow less rapidly, says the author. He offers an unorthodox idea that deserves a hearing.

https://doi.org/10.2753/0577-5132560203

Environmental Sustainability Macroeconomics

Abstract

Since independence in 1957, the Ghanaian state’s role in employment creation and economic development has followed a dichotomous pattern of heavy or limited state involvement. Heavy state involvement occurred mostly in the period circa independence. The charisma of Kwame Nkrumah and his government allowed for the pursuit of several large government-sponsored projects such as the Volta Dam, which had immense implications for job creation. This project, along with several infrastructure projects in education, roads, and industry, created many jobs and the Ghanaian economy experienced some of its fastest rates of growth and social development in the past five decades. In the period 1966–1981, coup d’états changed the political landscape of the country and even though heavy state intervention was common it was largely not of a developmental nature. Such involvement can be characterized as being akin to the predatory state typology of Evans (1995). Attempts to return the Ghanaian state to democratic principles and stable governments in 1969–1970 and 1979–1981 failed. The failure of these efforts derailed hopes of returning to the earlier period where the state engaged civil society in ways that helped create jobs and promote economic development initiatives. Growth rates in this period of coup d’états were abysmal. Employment stagnated, emigration increased, and the prospects of development were at a standstill.

https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313997_6

Macroeconomics Youth

Abstract

Since independence in 1957, the Ghanaian state’s role in employment creation and economic development has followed a dichotomous pattern of heavy or limited state involvement. Heavy state involvement occurred mostly in the period circa independence. The charisma of Kwame Nkrumah and his government allowed for the pursuit of several large government-sponsored projects such as the Volta Dam, which had immense implications for job creation. This project, along with several infrastructure projects in education, roads, and industry, created many jobs and the Ghanaian economy experienced some of its fastest rates of growth and social development in the past five decades. In the period 1966–1981, coup d’etats changed the political landscape of the country and even though heavy state intervention was common it was largely not of a developmental nature. Such involvement can be characterized as being akin to the predatory state typology of Evans (1995). Attempts to return the Ghanaian state to democratic principles and stable governments in 1969–1970 and 1979–1981 failed. The failure of these efforts derailed hopes of returning to the earlier period where the state engaged civil society in ways that helped create jobs and promote economic development initiatives. Growth rates in this period of coup d’etats were abysmal. Employment stagnated, emigration increased, and the prospects of development were at a standstill.

https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313997_6

Implementation Youth

Abstract

The objective of this note is to provide policy-makers and practitioners with tools to better assess and understand the nature and complexity of the working age population, and unemployment and underemployment in their countries. This is important for the design of a public employment programme (PEP) 1 especially in terms of planning for the desired impact on reducing unemployment and underemployment, required scale and geographical targeting.

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Macroeconomics

Abstract

Over the past decade and a half the ability of the employer-of-last-resort (ELR) proposal to deliver full employment and price stability has been discussed at length in the literature. A different issue has received relatively little attention—namely, the concern that even when the ELR produces these macroeconomic benefits, it does so by offering “low-paying” “dead-end” jobs, further denigrating the unemployed. In this context, the important buffer stock feature of the ELR is misconstrued as a hydraulic mechanism that prioritizes macroeconomic stability over the program’s benefits to the unemployed. This paper argues that the two objectives are not mutually exclusive by revisiting Argentina’s experience with Plan Jefes and its subsequent reform. Plan Jefes is the only direct job creation program in the world specifically modeled after the modern ELR proposal developed in the United States. With respect to macroeconomic stability, the paper reviews how it exhibits some of the key stabilizing features of ELR that have been postulated in the literature, even though it was not designed as an unconditional job guarantee. Plan Jefes also illustrated that public employment programs can have a transformative impact on persistent socioeconomic problems such as poverty and gender disparity. Women-by far the largest group of program beneficiaries-report key benefits to their communities, families, children, and (importantly) themselves from participation in Jefes. Argentina’s experience shows that direct job creation programs that offer employment at a base wage can have the unique capacity to empower and undermine prevailing structures that produce and reproduce poverty and gender disparities. Because the latter two problems are multidimensional, the ELR cannot be treated as a panacea, but rather as an important policy tool that remedies some of the most entrenched and resilient causes of poverty and gender inequality. The paper examines survey evidence based on narratives by female participants in Jefes to assess these potentially transformative aspects of the ELR proposal.

https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2153220

Gender Implementation Macroeconomics Quantitative South America

Abstract

The objective of this note is to clarify the issues on which a PEP depends, because before you can cost a programme, there are a complex set of policy and design choices to be made.

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Implementation Macroeconomics

Abstract

The objective of this note is to better understand how the concept of ‘fiscal space’ is used, how it can be created, and how it impacts on the scope of public employment programmes1 (PEPs).

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Implementation Macroeconomics

Abstract

The objective of this note is to outline the different functions associated with a public employment programme (PEP) so that participants are able to assess how these functions can best be fulfilled in their own context and institutional structures. The trade-offs between using existing and establishing new institutions are explained and some examples of institutional arrangements are provided.

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Implementation

Abstract

The objective of this note is to enable participants to understand the inter-relationship between monitoring, programme evaluation and impact evaluation, as different steps within an overall monitoring and evaluation framework, and to highlight key considerations in the design of public employment programmes (PEP).

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Implementation Macroeconomics

Abstract

The objective of this note is to provide information and insights into public employment programmes (PEPs) and employment guarantee schemes (EGSs), paying particular attention to issues of gender equality. It is hoped that it will stimulate discussion, provide the necessary dialogue tools for ‘en-gendering’ job-creation initiatives, and increase awareness of how gender equality can be promoted within government public employment initiatives.

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Gender Implementation

Abstract

The conventional approach of fiscal policy is to create jobs by boosting private investment and growth. This approach is backward, says Research Associate Pavlina R. Tcherneva. Policy must begin by fixing the unemployment situation because growth is a byproduct of strong employment-not the other way around. Tcherneva proposes a bottom-up approach based on community programs that can be implemented at all phases of the business cycle; that is, a grass-roots job-guarantee program run by the nonprofit sector (with participation by the social entrepreneurial sector) but financed by the government. A job-guarantee program would lead to full employment over the long run and address an outstanding fault of modern market economies.

https://www.levyinstitute.org/files/download.php?file=pn_12_02.pdf&pub...

Implementation

Abstract

The objective of this note is to give policy-makers and practitioners an overview of various approaches to exiting and graduating from public employment programme (PEP) and to address some of the key issues that one needs to keep in mind in designing a programme with a proper strategy. The guidance note also provides some ideas on determining the right strategy based on the nature of the PEP (i.e. short- and long-term, emergency response, etc.) and will highlight the role of complementary programmes that can support graduation and how they can be better linked to PEPs.

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Implementation Macroeconomics

Abstract

Unemployment is a fact in present economies. Even without a crisis, unemployment exists and costs a lot to society. Reasons for unemployment are multiple and differ according to the theory at hand. Lack of effective demand, imperfect markets, and friction are examples of unemployment justifications. All sorts of policies based on these different theories have been implemented with varying results but none have proven effective in tackling unemployment. Full employment has never been achieved during the last 40 years. Often the problem is that these policies promote indirect jobs creation: public spending, wage subsidies, incentives, tax cuts, job training. Another issue is the change in the dimension of these policies; we now have microeconomic supply of labor policies instead of macroeconomic demand stimulation policies. Even if they meet some objectives, these policies do not provide an answer to unemployment.

https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2026529

Environmental Sustainability Macroeconomics

Abstract

The objective of this note is to provide policy-makers and practitioners with an overview of the various key issues related to the potential impacts of public employment programmes (PEP) and to understand the nature and complexity of conducting a comprehensive impact assessment. This Note also provides a selection of results from past impact evaluations and provide an overview of the type of results that have been obtained at times to highlight some of the implications for designing programmes to maximize their desired impact.

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Implementation Macroeconomics

Abstract

This paper augments the basic Post-Keynesian markup model to examine the effects of different fiscal policies on prices and income distribution. This is an approach à la Hyman P. Minsky, who argued that in the modern era, government is both “a blessing and a curse,” since it stabilizes profits and output by imparting an inflationary bias to the economy, but without stabilizing the economy at or near full employment. To build on these insights, the paper considers several distinct functions of government: 1) government as an income provider, 2) as an employer, and 3) as a buyer of goods and services. The inflationary and distributional effects of each of these fiscal policies differ considerably. First, the paper examines the effects of income transfers to individuals and firms (in the form of unemployment insurance and investment subsidies, respectively). Next, it considers government as an employer of workers (direct job creation) and as a buyer of goods and services (indirect job creation). Finally, it modifies the basic theoretical model to incorporate fiscal policy à la Minsky and John Maynard Keynes, where the government ensures full employment through direct job creation of all of the unemployed unable to find private sector work, irrespective of the phase of the business cycle. The paper specifically models Minsky’s proposal for government as the employer of last resort (ELR), but the findings would apply to any universal direct job creation plan of similar design. The paper derives a fundamental price equation for a full-employment economy with government. The model presents a “price rule” for government spending that ensures that the ELR is not a source of inflation. Indeed, the fundamental equation illustrates that in the presence of such a price rule, at full employment inflationary effects are observed from sources other than the public sector employment program.

Keywords: Minsky; Kalecki Model; Alternative Fiscal Polices; Income Transfers; Investment Subsidies; Direct Job Creation; Employer of Last Resort; Inflation; Income Distribution

https://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/inflationary-and-distributi...

Inflation Macroeconomics Modeling

Abstract

The objective of this note is to look at the challenges PEPs face in tackling the risks of corruption, and highlight innovative ways in which programmes are doing so. Different forms of corruption are defined, high risk areas for corruption in PEPs are outlined, and strategies to address such corruption are explored. These include the use of participatory local processes, high
levels of transparency and access to information, strategies to harness the power of new technology, and empowerment of stakeholders to hold different role players accountable. Monitoring and evaluation systems have a vital role to play, and the mechanisms for investigating allegations of corruption and taking decisive action where required are also vital.

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Implementation

Abstract

The design of payments systems is not simply a ‘technical issue’. There are also social and economic dimensions that need to be considered. Without a clear focus on transparency and social accountability mechanisms to ensure that work done is appropriately paid for and that corruption and leakages are minimized, the new systems can also be exploited. Further, the large-scale PEPs also have the potential to serve as a catalyst and as a
platform for scaling-up service delivery and financial inclusion. This would involve identifying how the PEP payment system can potentially be designed in a progressive way.

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Implementation Macroeconomics

Abstract

The objective of this note is to assist policy-makers and practitioners to create decent jobs for young people, both through targeted approaches and by integrating youth employment dimensions into public employment programmes.

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Implementation Youth

Abstract

This paper argues that the direct job-creation strategy adopted by the New Deal administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in programs like the WPA (the “New Deal strategy”) is best understood as an effort to secure what the New Dealers came to regard as a human rights entitlement—the right to work—rather than as an economic policy designed to promote the economy’s recovery from the Great Depression. The paper goes on to argue, though, that in fashioning a policy to secure the right to work, the New Dealers unknowingly developed a strategy for delivering a Keynesian fiscal stimulus that is markedly superior to other anti-recession strategies. Unfortunately, neither the New Dealers themselves nor the generation of progressive policy makers that followed them understood the multiple strengths of the New Deal strategy. Consequently, the strategy was permitted to languish, and its potential contribution to public policy in the post World War II era was lost. In an effort to rekindle interest in the New Deal strategy, the paper concludes by pointing out how much more effective the New Deal strategy would have been in combating the so-called Great Recession than the more conventional spending and tax-cut policies the Federal Government actually has deployed. For a fraction of the sum the Federal Government has allocated to stimulate the American economy since the fall of 2008, the New Deal strategy could have immediately reduced the nation’s unemployment rate to pre-recession levels while simultaneously promoting a more rapid recovery in private-sector hiring.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12114-011-9127-x

Environmental Sustainability North America

Abstract

This book, MGNREGA Sameeksha: An Anthology of Research Studies on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act, 2005, is an analytical anthology of all major research studies done on MGNREGA that were published in academic journals or came out as stand-alone reports. Newspaper and magazine articles, as well as opinion pieces, have not been included in the volume. In compiling the reports we have tried to be as comprehensive as possible. My young colleagues Ms Neelakshi Mann and Mr Varad Pande not only ensured this but also wrote most of the commentary. I am also grateful to Dr Mihir Shah, Dr C. Rammanohar Reddy and Dr Jean Dreze for having made very useful suggestions and critical comments on the manuscript.

At a time when the Ministry of Rural Development is endeavouring to put in place an independent, professionally-run concurrent evaluation network for all rural development programmes, I think this volume will be a useful reference and resource publication and would stimulate further field-level research.

https://www.im4change.org/docs/63503975mgnrega_sameeksha.pdf

Development Environmental Sustainability Gender Health Human Rights India Macroeconomics Quantitative

Abstract

The cost and effectiveness of a basic income guarantee and a job guarantee (combined with conventional transfer payments) are compared with respect to their ability to eliminate poverty and unemployment. It is argued that a BI guarantee provided in the form preferred by most advocates of the idea (a universal basic income grant or equivalent negative income tax) would be both more costly and less effective than a job guarantee—if the latter is properly designed to secure the right to work and income security recognized in in the Universal Declaration of Human Right. It is further argued that the job guarantee strategy configured in this way also would do more to promote the real freedom goals of the basic income advocacy movement.

https://doi.org/10.1515/bis-2013-0006

Implementation Macroeconomics

Abstract

Responsibility of Government of India to provide funds through an easy and convenient mechanism, In the present funding pattern GOI provides funds to the states to meet full cost of wages and upto 75% of the material cost of work including wages to skilled and semiskilled workers. (subject to material – wage ratio not exceeding 40:60); release of funds is made not to the state but directly to each district. This system involves need for detailed calculations and scrutiny of figures of expenditure on wages, material component and staff. It also entails heavy workload in having to keep district – wise account. This cumbersome procedure compels district officers to make frequent visits to Delhi to chase their proposals for release of funds. The whole process can be greatly simplified by having a new funding pattern in which central government meets full cost of employment wages and in addition funds equal to 50% of wages are given towards all other costs (including material component, staff etc). This simple pattern of funding would dispense the need for getting from states details of expenditure on material, staff etc. or having to calculate the wage-material ratio in REGS works, Also, the release of funds should be to the state and not directly to the district; on-account automatic release of funds to the states will be based on the Utilization Certificate of earlier released funds given by the finance department of the state. GOI will then be concerned with maintaining only state-wise accounts and not nearly 600 accounts for the districts.

https://updatepublishing.com/journal/index.php/imrj/article/view/1574

Implementation India

Abstract

The objective of this note is to expose policy-makers and practitioners to possible opportunities for public employment programmes (PEPs) to create green jobs which comprise work in activities that improve natural resources productivity and are linked to climate change adaptation, environmental conservation and rehabilitation. Some of the challenges and opportunities for promoting these activities are also discussed and examples of projects provided. A number of potentially high impact opportunities are also identified.

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Environmental Sustainability Implementation

Abstract

The objective of this note is to give policy-makers and practitioners an overview of the most common approaches and issues related to the implementation of public employment programme (PEP) infrastructure and construction activities. The guidance note also provides some guidance on the selection of suitable projects.

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Implementation

Abstract

The objective of this module is to expose policy-makers and practitioners to the opportunities to include work in the social sector within the spectrum of work undertaken in public employment programmes (PEP), to examine the kinds of work being undertaken in the social sector, and the particular policy and practical issues these raise. It will also explore the ways in which PEPs are being used to tackle a range of social challenges as part of wider strategies of social development, and some of the innovations in work undertaken that has arisen from using participatory community involvement in the identification and prioritization of work.

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-intensive-investment/publ...

Implementation