Google Hangout: Labour Regulations and Enforcement

The Development Policy Research Unit will host an hour-long debate via Google+ Hangouts, as part of the World Bank research programme: the Network on Jobs for Development (NJD): 

Labour Regulations and Enforcement

Date and time: Monday, 22nd August 2016 at 14:00 SAST

Click here to join live.

Increasingly, developing countries around the world have been expanding labour regulations that aim to protect workers from exploitation. However, a substantial gap remains between regulatory intent and regulatory outcomes. The existence of widespread non-compliance with various labour regulations has important implications for policymakers and researchers. Consequently, enforcement remains central to any debate regarding the effects of minimum wage regulations and labour regulation more generally.

This Google+ Hangout brings together experts from different regions to discuss issues of regulation, enforcement, and compliance.

Click here to join live, or go to YouTube:

Moderator: Professor Haroon Bhorat – Director at the DPRU 
Haroon Bhorat is Director of the Development Policy Research Unit and Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town. He’s co-authored two books and published over 150 academic journal articles, book chapters, and working papers, covering labour economics, poverty and income distribution. He recently co-edited The Oxford Companion to the Economics of South Africa. He is a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, an IZA Research Fellow (Institute for the Study of Labour), a member of the World Bank’s Commission on Global Poverty, and a member of the UN-WHO’s High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth. He holds a highly prestigious National Research Chair, is an Advisor on the South African Parliament’s High-Level Panel on Acceleration of Change and Transformation, and has served as economic advisor to former Presidents, and former South African Ministers of Finance, also serving on the Presidential Economic Advisory Panel.

PARTICIPANTS:

Piotr Lewandowski – President of the Board at IBS

Piotr Lewandowski is one of the founders and the President of the Board of the Institute for Structural Research (IBS), a research institute based in Warsaw, Poland. His main research interest is labour economics, in particular, labour regulations, non-standard and temporary contracts, and minimum wages. In the past, he was employed at the Warsaw School of Economics’ Department of Economics. He has also collaborated with UNDP Poland and the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy in Poland.

Lucas Ronconi – Centro de Investigación y Acción Social & CONICET

Lucas Ronconi is an Economist and Ph.D. in Public Policy scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a Fulbright Scholar and received a Global Development Network award for research on development. His research areas are labor economics, applied econometrics, and social policies. He has published in World Development, Economics Letters, Industrial Relations, The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Economics, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Urban Studies, Do Bois Review, Studies in International Comparative Development, and Health Economics.

Uma Rani – Research Department, International Labour Office

Uma Rani has been a Senior Economist at the ILO's Research Department since 2008. Prior to joining the ILO, she worked as an Associate Professor at the Gujarat Institute of Development Research, in Ahmedabad, India. She has also held Visiting Fellow positions at the Institute of Developing Economies, Japan; ETH-NADEL, Zürich; and Institut de Recherche pour le Development, Paris, to undertake research on informal employment, precarious and non-standard forms of work. Her main research interests lie in development economics, the informal sector, minimum wages, poverty, inequality, social policies and gender. She is author and co-author of numerous articles in refereed journals and books. Two recent books she has co-authored are “Social Income and Insecurity: A Study in Gujarat” (Routledge, 2010) and “Flexibility of Labour in Globalizing India: The Challenge of Skills and Technology” (Tulika Books, 2008).

Tim Gindling - University of Maryland Baltimore County

Tim Gindling is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and a Research Fellow at IZA. He conducts research on the factors influencing the distribution of wages, income, and work in Latin America and East Asia. A focus of his recent research has been the study of compliance with legal minimum wage regulations in Central America and China.

 

Click  HERE to listen to the live discussion, and ask questions.