Employment and Development brings together the contributions of 2014 IZA Prize in Labor Economics award winner Gary S. Fields to address global employment and poverty problems. Most of the poor in developing countries live in households in which people work, but still they are poor because the best available work pays so little. Employment and Development: How Work Can Lead From and Into Poverty questions how economic growth affects standards of living, how labor markets work in developing countries, and how different labor market policies affect well-being. Through a collection of essays, this book tackles major questions in development and labor economics. Who benefits from economic growth and who is hurt by economic decline? Why are distributional factors and labor market conditions improving in some countries but not in others? How do developing countries' labor markets work? How would labor market conditions change if different policies were to be put into effect? What are the welfare consequences of these changes? Through distributional analysis, Fields examines inequality, poverty, income mobility, and economic well-being, and through analysis of changing labor market conditions he examines employment and unemployment, employment composition, and labor earnings. By concentrating on the poor and understanding how the labor markets work for them and how their labor market earnings might be raised in response to different policy interventions, Fields addresses questions of first-order importance for human well-being.

Youth Unemployment and Vocation Training focuses on the creation of good jobs for the young. The first part reviews the main factors influencing youth unemployment and the transition into the work force, bringing together evidence on demographic issues, economic growth and their interaction with institutions. Stressing the difference between general education and vocational education and training, the authors differentiate between four types of education and outline differences in the skills they convey, their places of learning and their transferability across occupations and firms. The second section provides an overview of young people's situations in major world regions, with a particular emphasis on the role of training systems and complementary active labor market policies. The authors adopt a broad understanding of regional clusters reflecting similar challenges with respect to youth unemployment on the one hand and institutional factors influencing the situation of young people on the other. Youth Unemployment and Vocation Training concludes by reviewing the most pressing policy challenges in different world regions and providing policy recommendations. The authors argue in favor of promoting vocational education and training tailored to labor market needs, all the while taking into account specific conditions found in a given national or local context. While good education and training can contribute to economic productivity and social cohesion, vocational education and on-the-job training with young workers and companies also need to involve governments, social partners or other societal actors in order to be stable and effective. Given major differences in the institutional setup in different parts of the world, the authors present options for implementing vocational training under largely differing economic and institutional conditions.