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This study offers an uncommon perspective on household poverty dynamics over a 16-year period of sustained strong economic growth. We combine the large and high-quality consumption surveys used to produce official poverty statistics with information from a nationally representative household panel for rural areas to study poverty dynamics in Bangladesh between 2000 and 2016 using synthetic panel methods. We document the steady and substantial decline of persistent poverty, which has been particularly pronounced in rural areas. Transient poverty declined at a slower pace and affected twice as many households than persistent poverty (30% vs. 14%) between 2010 and 2016. There are stark differences in poverty dynamics across divisions, large and persistent disparities across education levels, and a strong but diminishing association with employment type in urban areas. High levels of mobility, relatively greater in urban Bangladesh, and the growing importance of transient poverty stress the need to consider measures to help poor households cope with income fluctuations and initiatives to address the needs of vulnerable households as core components of poverty reduction efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from children suggest that the prevalence of child labour in the cocoa industry in Côte d’Ivoire is a worrying 38%. However, while surveying children has the potential to reduce sensitivity biases such as social desirability bias, it presents significant ethical dilemmas and may also be associated with other reporting biases, making accurate estimates of child labour difficult. To address this, we collected data from 1741 cocoa producers to assess whether parents could provide more accurate estimates using indirect survey methods. We compared direct questioning with a list experiment and a novel non-verbal method (‘colorbox’). We found higher prevalence rates of child labour using indirect elicitation methods, but lower than those obtained from children’s surveys. Qualitative in-depth interviews revealed motivations for underreporting, including fear of legal consequences and mistrust of stakeholders. Indirect methods alone are not sufficient to correct for underreporting when child labour is collected from parents. Future research should prioritise direct data collection from children and address ethical concerns to obtain more accurate estimates of child labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the determinants of international migration flows within the European Union and specifically focuses on the role of cultural and linguistic differences in explaining the size of these flows. For that purpose, a set of indicators of cultural distance is controlled for along with economic, demographic, geographical, political and network variables using data from 28 member states of the EU over the period 1998–2018. Economic factors play an important role in examining migration flows, but economic differentials alone may be insufficient to explain the uneven real-life migration pattern in the EU. The results suggest strong evidence of the importance of linguistic distance in explaining the direction of migration flows across the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of Social Financial Grants (SFGs) in poverty reduction in South Africa, focusing on their impact on economic stability and income inequality. Using a structured model, it explores both the direct and mediated effects of SFGs on poverty alleviation. Results indicate that SFGs significantly reduce poverty by decreasing income inequality and enhancing economic stability, key factors in a highly unequal society. Effective administration and expansion of SFGs could further benefit vulnerable populations. The study notes limitations, such as the need for longitudinal data to assess sustainability and attention to regional disparities. Recommendations include integrating SFGs with job training, improving distribution, and reducing stigma. Implications extend beyond South Africa, offering insights for other developing nations. Future research should investigate additional mediators and conduct comparative regional studies to optimise social grant programmes globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population displacement from Puerto Rico to the United States following Hurricane Maria is considered and distinguished from ongoing outmigration from the island. Administrative data from two sources is used to estimate displacement with a capture-recapture method which, unlike existing estimates, excludes outmigration that occurs independent of the hurricane. The estimates are compared with preceding trends in outmigration from the US Census Bureau. The results show that nearly 90,000 individuals or about 2.7% of Puerto Ricans (95% CI: 2.5%, 2.9%) were displaced through May 2018. Displacement was highest (approximately 4.7%) from southeastern Puerto Rico where the hurricane made landfall and, counter to earlier outmigration patterns indicated by data from the American Community Survey, was comparatively low from the region near San Juan (4.0% pre-hurricane outmigration against 2.4% post-hurricane displacement). Displacement rates were higher in areas with higher levels of Federal Emergency Management Agency-certified damage to housing (3.3% in areas with high damage against 2.2% in areas with low damage) but did not consistently differ by indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage, including poverty and unemployment rates. Households’ intent to return indicates that those who will not return are more likely to be younger or be unemployed (86% of individuals under the age of 30 will not return, whereas 58% of individuals aged 65 and up will not return, and 84% of employed households will return, whereas 68% of unemployed ones will); these characteristics align with those commonly observed among outmigrants in the decade prior to the hurricane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research studies the effect of information campaigns on migration on perceptions and intentions to migrate among high school students in Dakar, Senegal. First, I analyze the role of expectations, migration perceptions, and intention to migrate. Through a randomized experiment, I also assess which actors and types of information are most effective in shaping these intentions and perceptions. I find that students display a high level of distrust in domestic labor markets, and an information treatment with an external expert reduces the misperceptions of some measures of labor market statistics but has no effect on the perception of the risks of the irregular migration journey. In addition, narratives are more effective in reducing the willingness to migrate irregularly, but none of the treatments has an impact on the intention to migrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to review the computational framework of SDGs in India, so that a mid-course correction can be contemplated. Design/methodology/approach: This study deploys, inter alia, econometric analysis to probe the robustness of indicators of SDG India Index 3.0. Methodologically, the study intensively probes the robustness of SDG India index and extensively refers to the global SDG indexes for cross-checking. Findings: Though the three editions of SDGI index mark significant efforts taken towards measuring the progress of SDGs in India, the paradigm suffers from the problem of too many indicators chasing only few targets, quantitative and qualitative issues with indicators, vintage pollution, partial coverage of targets and robustness issues. Research limitations/implications: This study has the limitation that it could not check the robustness of SDG scores with different weights assigned to indicators and future researchers can take up that interesting assignment. Practical implications: Since measuring the SDG progress through SDG index is a global endeavour, the findings of this study are important for almost all countries of the world, as it is still not too late to do mid-course correction because it is not the measurement that matters at the end of the day, rather it is the outcome of sustainable development that every country cares about. Social implications: The obfuscation of layers of SDG index in crafty, glossy and power-point-presentation-oriented SDG reports should get the reality check through such review of the computational framework of SDGs. Originality/value: This is the first study that unpacks the layers of SDG index computation in general and comprehensively reviews the Indian SDG indexing method in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a model with corrupt and honest examiners, and applicants with heterogeneous innate ability in the education sector with effort and bribe modelled as substitutes. The results show that ‘strong’ candidates rely only upon effort; ‘medium’ candidates choose positive levels of bribe and effort; ‘weak’ candidates rely only on bribery. They also show that corruption may decrease education quality by lowering aggregate effort while increasing education quantity by increasing the aggregate chances of obtaining a degree, depending on candidates’ ability and the proportion of corrupt examiners. We also find empirical support for the key predictions of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Workplace Health Reports 2023, around 76% of employees worldwide have experienced moderate-to-high stress levels. Around 26% of Indians are stressed due to their current work environment with long working hours, lack of job security, low wages, and growing competition. It is often believed that teaching is an extremely difficult job, in particular, academic staff experience a lot of stress due to several stressors. Emotional intelligence is a set of non-cognitive abilities, to effectively handle environmental demands and stresses. The current investigation seeks to project the effect of psychological capital as a mediator linking emotional intelligence (EI) and occupational stress to academic teaching faculties in Chennai City.

The problem towards measuring the level of inclusive development of the national economy is one of the most important and controversial problems the modern scientists faced with in the 21st century. The objectives of the named research are the analysis of the various methods of assessing the level of the inclusive development of countries, defining their main advantages and disadvantages, likewise the development of the universal comprehensive method and its use for the further research on the inclusive development of the Ukraine’s economy. The calculation of the integral indicator of the inclusive development of the economy of Ukraine was carried out on the basis of the data of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine according to the author’s methodology using the Excel program. The given method helps to reveal the actual asymmetries in the field of the inclusive development, which should become an analytical basis for making the further managerial decisions. To increase the level of the inclusive development of the economy of Ukraine, it is necessary to: ensure the national security and territorial integrity of the country; improve the institutional support for the inclusive development of the national economy; implement an inclusive approach at all levels of the national economy; stimulate the development of the inclusive entrepreneur-ship; modernize the infrastructure based on the principles of the «universal design»; create conditions for the development of the inclusive education and medicine; stimulate the development of «green», «silver», digital, circular and serial economies.

Efficiency and effectiveness in treating workers are the focus of this research in an era completely limited by circumstances to adapt to these rapid changes by analyzing the influence of leadership and training on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and the subsequent impact on performance.

This research highlights a neglected paradox of migration policies: whereas narratives on migrants as a security threat in their countries of destination find little support in empirical studies, forcing migrants to return may increase violence and crime back home. Using migrants' exposure to deportation threats at destination as an exogenous source of identification, this paper traces the long shadow of immigration enforcement on violent crime in Mexico, recipient of more than 3.5 million deportees from the US over the period 2000–2015. Enforced return is associated with more homicides and a stronger presence of cartels in migrants' municipalities of origin, as well as a higher sense of insecurity among the population and a higher probability of being assaulted. Identifying these local effects of enforced return are a first step towards unpacking the various direct and indirect channels through which immigration enforcement generates unintended negative outcomes in migrants' communities of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper explores the effect of China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) policy by considering the child human capital of households targeted by the policy. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy to identify the effect of TPA on child human capital. The evidence indicates that TPA significantly enhances beneficiary children’s health, cognitive, and non-cognitive abilities. The most substantial improvement is observed in cognitive ability, reaching 49.8 per cent of its standard deviation (0.999). Mechanism tests suggest that TPA achieves these positive outcomes primarily through improving infrastructure, alleviating resource constraints, and enhancing family-process capacity. Specifically, TPA contributes to local infrastructure enhancement to facilitate child human capital development while increasing targeted households’ utilization of medical services for their children and promoting educational inputs in children. Moreover, TPA substantially improves parent–child relationships, increases quality time spent together, and considerably reduces mothers’ depression in targeted households. A back-of-envelop calculation suggests that exposure to the TPA policy during childhood leads to a 0.562 increase in years of schooling and a 13.1 per cent increase in wages for adults in their twenties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Millions of children are forcibly displaced worldwide due to wars, civil conflicts, and natural disasters. Displacement disrupts the lives of children making child labor a serious risk. However, little is known about this topic due to the difficulty of finding datasets for this population. In this study, we use a large representative dataset of Syrian refugees in Turkey, the largest refugee group in any single country, to examine the incidence of child labor and its determinants. The incidence of paid work is remarkably high among boys: 18.8 percent of 12–14 year-olds and 48.0 percent of 15–17 year-olds are in paid employment. These percentages are considerably higher than the corresponding values we estimate for pre-war Syria at 7.6 percent and 29.0 percent, respectively. We find that children from poorer households with more dependents and younger, less educated, and female household heads and children living in industrialized regions of Turkey and originating from rural Syria are more likely to work. A key finding is that being older at arrival is highly associated with child labor. Difficulties with school integration, on the one hand, and availability of job opportunities, on the other, have created a group of young out-of-school children at work. Placing these children in vocational training that allows them to work while learning a trade under the scrutiny of the Ministry of Education may help protect their well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 23 June 2016, the people of the UK voted to leave the European Union. This article examines how Brexit impacted international student applications. Using administrative data along with a difference-in-differences approach, we find that Brexit curtailed the growth rate of international student applications by 7 per cent even before tuition fees had changed, ultimately lowering enrolment as well. The impact is larger for applications to pursue STEM studies, as well as for those from countries with worse employment prospects and weaker economies, hinting on students' ability to stay long-term in the UK as an important pull factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of exports on productivity is a central theme in macroeconomics, explored in both the ‘learning by exporting’ and ‘Kaldor-Verdoorn law’ literature. We utilize a novel dataset of Italian firm microdata to build an empirical model examining the effect of persistent exporting on firm productivity. The model endogenizes a firm's export propensity using a probit specification that enables us to derive consistent estimates of the impact of exporting on productivity. In addition, we use the share of highly educated workers as a proxy of human capital to test the ability of persistently exporting firms to learn. This impact is derived using a biprobit specification, which enables us to endogenize the joint probability of being a continuously exporting firm while highly endowed with a skilled workforce. The results strongly support the hypothesis that persistent exporters show a significant productivity premium compared to occasional exporters. Moreover, the workforce's education level further increases productivity, with results supporting the hypothesis that highly educated shares of a firm's workforce enhance the ability to learn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the socioeconomic determinants of early childhood development (ECD) in Türkiye, focusing on maternal education and household wealth, using representative microdata from the 2018 Türkiye Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS), which collected data on the developmental status of young children aged 36–59 months for the first time. Using this data, we construct an ECD index based on four developmental domains (i.e., literacy-numeracy, physical development, learning readiness and socio-emotional). Our results suggest that 74 percent of children (70.3 percent of boys and 78 percent of girls) are developmentally on track. We find that while over 96 percent of children are developmentally on track in physical and learning readiness domains, only 14.5 percent and 73.6 percent are in the literacy-numeracy and socio-emotional development domains, respectively. The multivariate regression results suggest both maternal education and household wealth improve children's ECD outcomes but the latter has a stronger effect. In fact, we find that mother's schooling is only positively and statistically associated with ECD once mothers have at least a high school education. Kindergarten attendance, which stands at a meagre 11.3 percent, is only likely for children from well-to-do and educated households. As a result, we find large gaps in ECD and its components between children with low and high socioeconomic backgrounds. We conclude that leveling the playing field is only possible via a nationwide multisectoral initiative that can support and educate caregivers and children simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate foresight (CF) is considered an organizational capability that contributes to the innovativeness and sustained competitive advantage of firms, particularly in the presence of organizational learning (OL). The business literature positions individuals as important to the CF process but it provides limited clarification about how individuals do foresight or, more specifically, how they experience foresight in organizations. Embracing the resource-based view of the firm, this study provides understanding of how individuals use tacit knowledge in individual foresight (IF) and engage in OL mechanisms to contribute to innovativeness. The micro-foundations of IF are examined to determine how employees experience IF in an organizational context. Adopting a phenomenological approach, 27 interviews were conducted with employees across the finance and insurance and utilities industries, resulting in a theoretical framework of IF. Examining the lifeworld of individuals as they experience foresight revealed a rich tapestry of both personal and intra-organizational social capital interactions useful in demonstrating the role of IF for innovation in firms. Storytelling, mentorship, and group reflection, supported by appropriate culture, leadership, and human resource strategies, confirm the value of fostering IF to encourage innovation. This study advances foresight research by broadening understanding of IF from an employee perspective—specifically, how IF is experienced and can foster OL and innovation outcomes for firms. Implications for firms and opportunities for a future research agenda are proposed.

This study investigates the impact of person-environment fit and job stress on innovative work behavior within Thailand's food industry. Through a comprehensive survey conducted among supervisors in the food industry, validated scales were utilized to measure person-environment fit, job stress, and innovative work behavior while controlling demographic variables. Employing hierarchical regression analysis and moderation analysis, the study examines the direct and moderating effects of person-environment fit and job stress on innovative work behavior. Results reveal a significant positive relationship between person-environment fit and innovative work behavior, with job stress moderating this relationship. Notably, specific points of interaction between job stress levels and person-environment fit are identified, shedding light on nuanced dynamics within the food industry. This research introduces a novel approach by integrating the Job Demands-Resources Model with person-environment fit theory to explore how specific stressors unique to the food industry can influence innovation. The study also pioneers the use of industry-specific measures for assessing job stress and innovation, which were developed and validated within this context. This research contributes to both theoretical and practical knowledge by enhancing our understanding of innovation mechanisms in the food industry and providing actionable insights for fostering creativity and innovation among employees. The study's originality lies not only in its emphasis on the context of the food industry but also in its development of tailored theoretical and methodological approaches to address the sector's unique challenges and opportunities.

This article investigates whether a micro-entrepreneur's personality influences their innovativeness. Using the Big Five theory and a broad definition of innovation from the 4th version of the Oslo Manual (two types and nine categories of innovations in total), the study analyses data from 1,848 Polish micro-entrepreneurs. Since innovativeness is a complex process with several interdependencies, and previous research shows that introducing one type of innovation is not independent of introducing other types, Multivariate Probit (MVP) regression was used to estimate the models. The results allow two conclusions to be drawn. Firstly, in the case of product innovations implemented by micro-entrepreneurs, three personality traits have a positive impact. These are Openness to experience, Conscientiousness and Extroversion. Secondly, in the case of business process innovations, all 7 types are positively influenced by two personality traits, namely Openness to experience and Extroversion.