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Tunisians are striving for the opportunity to realise their
potential and aspirations in a country that is rich in both human
and physical capital, but whose recent economic growth has failed
to create enough opportunities in the form of good and productive
jobs. This report highlights the main barriers that hinder the
Tunisian labour market from providing income, protection, and
prosperity to its citizens and proposes a set of labour policies
that could facilitate the creation of better, more inclusive, and
more productive jobs. The weak economic performance and
insufficient and low-quality job creation in Tunisia is primarily
the result of an economic environment permeated by distortions,
barriers to competition, and excessive red tape, including in the
labour market. This has resulted in the creation of a insufficient
number of jobs, especially in the formal sector. To change this
situation, policy makers need to address five strategic directives
that can promote long-term inclusive growth and formality: foster
competition; realign incentives, pay, and benefit packages in the
public sector; move toward labour regulations that promote labour
mobility and provide support to workers in periods of transition;
enhance the productivity of informal workers through training and
skills building; and reform existing social insurance systems and
introduce new instruments to attain broader coverage.
Working through the Crisis documents how the Great Recession
affected employment outcomes in developing countries and how those
countries governments responded. The chapters comprise a unique
compilation of data and analysis from different sources, including
an inventory of policies implemented during the crisis, among
countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. The
effects of the crisis depended on the size of the shock, the
channels through which it was manifested, the structure of
institutions in the country especially labor institutions and the
specific policy responses undertaken. Although these factors
resulted in differing outcomes among the countries studied, common
patterns emerge. In terms of impacts, overall adjustments involved
reductions in earnings growth rather than in employment growth,
although the quality of employment was also affected. Youth were
doubly affected, being more likely to experience unemployment and
reduced wages. Men seemed to have been more severely affected than
women. In most countries where data are available, there were no
major differences between skilled and unskilled workers or between
those living in urban and rural areas. In terms of policy
responses, this crisis was characterized by a high prevalence of
active interventions in the labor market and the expansion of
income protection systems, as well as countercyclical stimulus
measures. When timed well and sufficiently large, these stimulus
measures were effective in reducing adverse employment effects.
Specific sectoral stimulus policies also had beneficial effects
when they were well targeted. However, social protection and labor
market policy responses were often ad hoc, and not in line with the
types of adjustments workers experienced. As a result, these
policies and programs were typically biased toward formal sector
workers and did not necessarily reach those who needed them the
most. In retrospect, there is a sense that developing countries
were not well prepared to deal with the effects of the Great
Recession, and that the further development of social protection
systems is crucial to better protect workers and their families
from the next crisis."
Nonfinancial Defined Contribution (NDC) schemes are now in their
teens. The new pension concept was born in the early 1990s,
implemented from the mid-1990s in Italy, Latvia, Poland and Sweden,
legislated most recently in Norway and Egypt and serves as
inspiration for other reform countries. This innovative unfunded
individual account scheme created high hopes at a time when the
world seemed to have been locked into a stalemate between piecemeal
reforms of ailing traditional defined benefit schemes and
introducing pre-funded financial account schemes. The experiences
and conceptual issues of NDC in its childhood were reviewed in a
prior anthology (Holzmann and Palmer, 2006). This new anthology
serves to review its adolescence and with the aim of contributing
to a successful adulthood. To this end the book offers a deep and
comprehensive review of the experience of countries where NDC
schemes have been in place for a decade or more, takes stock of the
discussions of the place of NDCs in the world of pension reform,
and addresses in detail important issues related to implementation
and design, such as the of the "NDC story", making transparent the
legacy costs, financial accounting, balancing, creation of a
reserve fund, gender, and longevity. The book also contains
analyses of the pros and cons of NDC contra FDC and a typical paygo
DB scheme in two Latin American countries. The key policy
conclusions include: (i) NDC schemes work well (as documented by
the experience of Italy, Latvia, Poland and Sweden during the
crisis) but there is room to make them work even better; (ii) Go
for an immediate transition to the new scheme to avoid future
problems; (iii) Identify the legacy costs and their explicit
financing during the transition as they will hit you otherwise
soon; (iv) Adopt an explicit stabilising mechanism to guarantee
solvency; (v) Establish a reserve fund to guarantee liquidity; (vi)
Elaborate an explicit mechanism to share the systemic longevity
risk; and, last but not least; (vii) Address the gender
implications of NDC with deeper analysis and open political
discourse.
Creating jobs and increasing productivity are at the top of agenda
for policymakers across the world. Knowledge accumulation and
skills are recognized as central in this process. More-educated
workers not only have better employment opportunities, earn more,
and have more stable and rewarding jobs, but also they are more
adaptable and mobile. Workers who acquire more skills also make
other workers and capital more productive and, within the firm,
they facilitate the adaptation, adoption, and ultimately invention
of new technologies. This is crucial to enable economic
diversification, productivity growth, and ultimately raise the
standards of living of the population. This report brings new ideas
on how to build and upgrade job relevant skills, focusing on three
types of training programs relevant for individuals who are leaving
the formal general schooling system or are already in the labor
market: pre-employment technical and vocational education and
training (TVET); on-the-job training (OJT); and training-related
active labor market programs (ALMPs). Several previous studies have
discussed some of the flaws in current systems and outlined options
for reform. As a consequence, there has been a shift away from the
investment in pre-vocational training courses to programs to
improve access to and the quality of general secondary education.
There have also been calls to encourage a stronger involvement of
the private sector in the provision of training, together with
increased emphasis in the quality and relevance of the content. One
result has been a push to rethink the governance and financing
arrangements of training institutions. But overall policies at
these three levels of the training systems remain disconnected and
there has not been an integrated framework linking them to the
market and government failures that need to be addressed. This book
makes two important contributions. First, it takes an in-depth look
at the types of market and government failures that can result in
underinvestment in training or the supply of skills that are not
immediately relevant to the labor market. Second, building on the
analysis of the limitations of both markets and governments and the
results of case studies and recent impact evaluations, the report
develops new ideas to improve the design and performance of current
training systems.
Inequality and entrenched poverty has been decreasing in countries
of Latin America and the Caribbean, due in significant part to
expansion of social protection programs within the region.
Innovations such as well-targeted conditional cash transfer
programs and noncontributory pensions or health insurance systems
have been adopted by several countries. Yet several challenges
remain. The majority of informal sector workers lack access to
social protection; programs tend to be fragmented and operate with
little or no coordination; and redistributive arrangements are
non-transparent and can distort labor markets by inducing
informality, lowering labor participation, or producing longer
unemployment spells. From Right to Reality: Incentives, Labor
Markets, and the Challenge of Universal Social Protection in Latin
America and the Caribbean addresses these challenges in a thorough
yet accessible manner. Building on careful, detailed analysis of a
wealth of data, this book takes stock of current social protection
systems in the Latin America and the Caribbean region, highlighting
their interaction with labor markets. The book presents an in-depth
assessment of the main social protection programs including
pensions, health, unemployment insurance, active labor market
interventions, and safety net transfers. A central theme is that a
well-functioning social protection system must take into account
both the realities of labor markets, including high levels of
informal sector employment where governments are unable to impose
compulsory social insurance, and the effects of policies on the
behavior of their beneficiaries, employers, and of service
providers. Of interest to policy makers, academics, and
practitioners, From Right to Reality presents practical
recommendations to expand the coverage of social protection
programs, improve their design, and create the conditions for the
creation of more and better jobs.
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