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Call for Papers

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9th IZA/World Bank Conference on Employment and Development

Organizers: Arup Banerji (World Bank and IZA), Corrado Giulietti (IZA), Linguère Mously Mbaye (IZA), Carmen Pagés (Inter-American Development Bank and IZA), Maria Laura Sanchez Puerta (World Bank and IZA), Jamele Rigolini (World Bank and IZA), David A. Robalino (World Bank and IZA), Stefano Scarpetta (OECD and IZA), Theodora Xenogiani (OECD and IZA), Gustavo Yamada (Universidad del Pacifico)
Location:Lima, Peru
Date:June 25 - June 26, 2014

Submission Deadline:January 15, 2014
Notification of Acceptance:February 20, 2014
Deadline for Registration:March 20, 2014

Event Manager:

Dominik Spitza
 

About the Conference

While most research in labor economics focuses on advanced economies, the majority of the world’s population and particularly of the poor live in countries where labor markets often work quite differently. To stimulate and promote research on employment and labor economics in low and middle income countries, the World Bank and IZA initiated in 2006 a work program on “Employment and Development”. Since 2006, the annual conference on Employment and Development provides a platform for researchers and policy experts to discuss new research findings and identify areas where further analytical and policy oriented work is needed.
IZA and the World Bank will organize the 9th annual conference in Lima (Peru), this year in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Universidad del Pacifico, on June 25-26, 2014.
In addition to the regular sessions in all fields of labor economics and development, special sessions on the Skills for Productive Employment will be featured. Countries across the developing and developed world increasingly recognize the importance of investing in quality education and promoting skill use in the labor market to foster sustainable and inclusive development. Youth unemployment has become a structural issue in many countries and governments look into ways for unemployed youth to find productive jobs and retain them. Changes in the labor market and the way production is organized have led to important changes in the type of skills required in today’s labor market. Technological change has also highlighted the importance of life-long learning to cope with changes in the labor market. However, there are knowledge gaps in how these skills are rewarded in the labor market, what are the complementarities between different sets of skills and the links between skills, formal education and training. A lot can be learned from the plethora of programs that have been introduced in developing and emerging economies and their formal evaluation.
This conference will provide an opportunity to analyze some of the issues mentioned above and review what we know on the role of skills and their use for promoting productive employment. The thematic sessions welcome papers:
  • Reviewing the measures of skills available in developing and emerging economies, paying attention to the interlinkages between different types of skills, such as cognitive skills, personal, communication and social skills, those acquired in formal education and during the working life,
  • Exploring the channels through which workers accumulate the skills required in the labor market,
  • Assessing the returns to skills in the labor market and analyzing the links between skills, productivity and growth,
  • Evaluating specific education and training programs implemented in developing and emerging economies.
 

Submission

We invite you to submit your contribution by January, 15 using our online application form. Only one submission per person is accepted. We invite submissions of papers in all areas of labor economics in developing countries. The scientific committee will review all papers and make a decision by February, 20. Detailed abstracts will also be considered, but full papers, in particular empirical ones, will be strongly favored. A selection of papers from the conference will be considered for publication in a special issue of the IZA Journal of Labor and Development.

To prepare your travel on time please find information on VISA requirements and recommended vaccinations here.
 

Funding

Selected participants to parallel sessions must arrange and fund their trip to Lima but are offered three nights accommodation in 24-26 June as well as meals during the conference, including participation in the conference dinner. A limited amount of travel grants is available, particularly for participants from developing countries, based on a need assessment. There are no conference fees. For enquiries, please contact Linguere Mbaye.
 

Previous Conferences

Previous IZA / World Bank conferences have been held in Berlin, Bonn, Cape Town, Mexico City, New Delhi and Skhirat (Morocco) and have attracted prestigious researchers and policymakers from a wide variety of developed and developing countries, including keynote speeches of Kaushik Basu, Francois Bourguignon, Felipe Calderón, Ottaviano Canuto, Marcel Fafchamps, Elsa Fornero, Gary Fields, Richard B. Freeman, Laurence Kotlikoff, Santiago Levy, Selim El Sayegh, Jan Svejnar, Ingrid Woolard and Tarik Yousef.
The programs from these past events may be found online at: http://www.iza.org/development.