TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Girsberger, Esther Mirjam
AU  - Meango, Romuald
        TI  - The Puzzle of Educated Unemployment in West Africa
        PY  - 2022/Nov/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 15721
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp15721
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - unemployment
KW  - education
KW  - search and matching model
KW  - urban West Africa
        ER  -