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Unemployment is often cited as a measure of the low employment content of Ghana's strong growth performance over the past three decades. The paper presents evidence to suggest that employment growth in Ghana continues to trail economic growth due to high growth of low employment generating sectors against sluggish growth of high labour absorption sectors. A cross-sectional estimation of a probit regression model also indicates a strong effect of demand factors on unemployment, indicating a weak employment generating impact of economic growth. Empirical analysis also confirms higher vulnerability of youth and urban dwellers to unemployment with education and gender explaining unemployment in some instances. Reservation wage is also observed to have an increasing effect of unemployment. The paper recommends policies that promote investment in agriculture and manufacturing which is associated with higher employment elasticity of output. High incidence of unemployment among the youth and secondary school leavers in the most recent period requires targeted intervention including support for entrepreneurial training and start-up capital to attract young school leavers to become 'creators' rather than 'seekers' of jobs. A downward review of expectations on the part of jobseekers in terms of their reservation wage could help reduce unemployment in Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past two decades have witnessed numerous attempts in developing countries at institutionalizing decentralization. Political leaders tended, before then, to believe that centralized planning was the key to economic growth and development. Ghana has not been excluded from this wave towards the transfer of power, competences, resources and functions from the centre to local levels of government. While Ghana has achieved significant political and administrative decentralization as well as decentralized planning, fiscal decentralization has been the unyielding component of the process. This paper examines the desirability, or otherwise, of fiscal decentralization in the context of funding arrangements. It uses the funding regime model as a basis for analysing how regulatory provisions, political and economic factors and practices, determine financial capacity of sub-national governments. Evidence in the paper leads to the conclusion that sub-national governments in Ghana do not support fiscal autonomy. They, instead, prefer being served and financed by the central government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]