The financial and economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 took a heavy toll on the South African economy. The economy contracted for the first time since 1998 and entered recession during the fourth quarter of 2008. The gross domestic product contraction was soon transmitted to the labour market....

South Africa simultaneously lost more than 890, 000 jobs, and saw an increase in the number of skilled workers, from 1989 to 1999. We argue this is the consequence of 'well-documented acute apartheid-era distortions which led to a current coordination failure where (i) firms are locked into a...

This paper studies the impact of family structures and elders' participation status on sectoral labor allocation in developing agricultural economies. In an overlapping generations framework with adult and old agents, we model a landlord's decision to hire adult apprentices and elder unskilled...

Information asymmetry is a necessary prerequisite for testing adverse selection. This paper applies this sequence of tests to Mauritian slave auctions. Dynamic auction theory with private value highlights more aggressive bidding by uninformed bidders and higher prices when an informed...

This paper studies the impact of families on sectoral labor allocation in developing agricultural economies. In an overlapping generations framework, we equate a family to a contingent-claims contract. Families are endogenous by design. A risk-averse adult facing possible unemployment may be...

The authors study labor supply of elderly couples by means of a collective model. The model allows individuals to enjoy leisure more (or less) in company of their spouse (complementarity/ externalities in leisure). Preferences and the intra-household bargaining process are identified by using...

The authors use a unique cross-country data set covering nearly 22,000 elderly individuals (age 50+) from 10 European Countries. Cross-country differences in the prevalence of obesity in older Europeans are substantial and exceed sociodemographic differentials in obesity. Obesity is strongly...