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Call for Papers
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10th IZA/World Bank Conference on Employment and Development: Technological Change and Jobs
| Submission Deadline: | March 15, 2015 |
| Notification of Acceptance: | April 05, 2015 |
| Final Papers Due: | May 01, 2015 |
Event Manager: |
Dominik Spitza |
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About the Conference |
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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. |
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IZA and the World Bank will organize the 10th annual conference in Bonn (Germany), on June 4-6, 2015. In addition to the regular sessions in all fields of labor economics and development, special sessions on Technological Change and Jobs will be featured. Over the past decades, new technologies have brought remarkable improvements in standards of living and productivity of developing as well as advanced countries, although the impacts of technology on the life of workers of developing countries are quite different from those of advanced economies. In low income countries, in particular, new technologies are not sufficient to replace major gaps in infrastructures and investment in basic public goods. |
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Still, technological change has transformed, and will continue to transform, labor markets, bringing both benefits and challenges to workers and their families. On the one hand, new technologies, particularly new information and communication technologies, have displaced jobs (or replaced skills) that can be better performed by computers; for instance, tasks that are repetitive and easy to codify. On the other hand, new technologies have unleashed many new opportunities for investment and job creation, not only in countries at the technological frontier, but also in many developing and emerging economies. Technology itself is changing the way workers and firms connect, enabling the creation of much larger marketplaces for jobs. Some of these marketplaces operate through the Internet, others use mobile phone technology. |
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This changing landscape has induced shifts in the demand for skills endowments and in the distribution of top talent across countries. It has also expanded the possibilities for emerging and even low-income countries to create a better management of supply chains in services and manufacturing. These trends will continue and most likely accelerate in the near future, raising important research and policy questions for developing countries that this conference will try to address: |
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- How technological progress is influencing structural change in different countries?
- How can countries unleash the potential of new technologies to create better jobs for farmers, the self-employed, and workers in the informal sector?
- What types of policies can be considered to support workers who are displaced by new technologies and keep them attached to the labor market?
- How education and training and retraining systems need to adapt to prepare new generations of workers to the vagaries of technological change and its effects on employment and development?
- How social protection systems and labor market institutions need to adapt to accommodate the changes in the world of work being induced by technology?
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Submission |
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We invite you to submit your contribution by March, 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. Papers focusing on assessing the consequences and opportunities of technology on labor market outcomes for emerging markets, or the different way it impacted men and women are encouraged. The scientific committee will review all papers and make a decision by April, 5. 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. |
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Funding |
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Selected participants to parallel sessions must arrange and fund their trip to Bonn but are offered three nights accommodation on 3-6 June as well as meals during the conference, including participation in the conference dinner. |
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Previous Conferences |
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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, Tarik Yousef and Hugo Hopenhayn.
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