%0 Report
        %A Girsberger, Esther Mirjam
%A Meango, Romuald
        %T The Puzzle of Educated Unemployment in West Africa
        %D 2022
        %8 2022 Nov
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 15721
        %U https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp15721
        %X Many developing countries exhibit a puzzling pattern given their scarce human capital: unemployment rates increase with education. We develop and estimate a model where educated unemployment arises from heterogeneous workers participating in a frictional labour market with three sectors (public, private and self-employment). We estimate that public sector distortions explain around two-thirds of educated unemployment in urban Burkina Faso and one-quarter in Senegal. We then simulate three equally costly policies. In contrast with public job creation and subsidies to self-employment income, subsidies for private sector vacancy creation effectively reduce educated unemployment and improve aggregate workers' welfare.
        %K unemployment
%K education
%K search and matching model
%K urban West Africa