South Asia has a huge need to create more and better jobs for a growing population especially in the manufacturing industries where it is underperforming as compared to East Asia. The report examines three critical and relatively understudied drivers of competitiveness: -Economies of...

We study the dynamic effects of export exposure over local labor markets in Indonesia. We develop an empirical strategy to instrument exposure to exports using exposure to foreign demand shocks and validate it showing that the labor market responses are consistent with those expected from demand...

South Asia is in the midst of a demographic transition. For the next three decades, the growth of the region’s working age population will far outpace the growth of dependents. Close to one million individuals will enter the workforce every month. This large, economically active population can...

This paper studies how a positive export shock - the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) - spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, we instrument export demand with...

This paper studies how a positive export shock -- the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) -- spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, the authors instrument export...

This paper studies how a positive export shock - the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) - spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, we instrument export demand with...

This paper studies how a positive export shock - the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) - spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, the authors instrument export...

Are the wage gains from exports specific to exporting industries, or do they dissipate throughout the economy? In the language of trade theory, are the benefits from exporting industry specific or factor specific? To analyze this question, we study the case of Bangladesh. Bangladesh was the 4th...