Opportunities and competition in thick labor markets: Evidence from plant closures

Since Marshall (1890), it has been widely held in urban economic theory that cities insure workers against the risk of unemployment by offering a larger pool of potential jobs. Using a large administrative panel data set on workers displaced as a result of plant closures, we examine whether positive effects from a higher urban job density are offset by more intense competition between workers. When controlling for the sorting of workers between regions, we find robust evidence that the effect of job competition on unemployment duration exceeds that of job opportunities in absolute value. Our results put the idea of urban risk-sharing into perspective and provide an explanation for observed longer unemployment durations in cities.     

Gendered division of labour and feminisation of responsibilities in Kenya; implications for development interventions

Analysing gender roles as a social organisation element of a community is critical for understanding actors’ rationales and agency with regard to allocation and use of resources. This article discusses gender relations and how they determine development outcomes, based on a highland-lowland case-study of participants of Farmer Field Schools in Kakamega Central Sub-County (highland) and Mbeere South Sub-County (lowland). The gender relations at stake include the gendered division of labour, gender roles and intra-household power relations as expressed in access and control of resources and benefits and their implications for agricultural development. The study used mixed methods, the Harvard Analytical Framework of gender roles and draws on the Neo-Marxist position on exploitation, categorisation and institutionalisation of power relations, empowerment and the critical moments framework to discuss the results. Results in both Sub-Counties show that patriarchy prevails, determining institutional design, access and control of resources and benefits. Social positions shape capabilities and strategies of actors in decision-making and use of resources to justify gender-specific institutional arrangements. In Kakamega, men get the lion share of incomes from contracted sugarcane farming despite overburdening workloads on women, while in Mbeere, both men and women derive incomes from Khat (Catha Edulis) enterprises. However, women are expected to spend their earnings on household expenditures, which were hitherto responsibilities of men, thereby contributing to the feminisation of responsibilities. Development policies and interventions thus need to be based on an understanding of men and women’s differential access and control over resources and the institutions underpinning men and women’s bargaining power in order to adopt more effective measures to reduce gender inequalities.