Gender and skill dimensions of technological transitions at workplaces: the case of The Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia

The study seeks to investigate the impact of technology on employment by gender and skills of the labour markets in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, and employs the VAR model to analyse the impact of technology on employment by gender. It also uses a panel cointegrated autoregressive distributed lag model for the impact of technology on employment by skill groups. The study finds that although technology impacts on employment of gender in the three countries, it is however gender neutral. This study also finds that in the long-term, technology impacts negatively on middle skill employment and positively on low skill and high skill employment in a similar pattern before and after the global financial crises. The impact of technology varies across countries in the short term, attributed to cross-country differences in labour market policies and institutions

Shadow economies and tax evasion: The case of the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary

This paper examines the drivers and the size of the shadow economies of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. It also investigates the tax losses associated with these shadow economic activities in all three countries. The Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model is applied and uses time series data covering the period 1990–2019. The key findings show that the sizes of the shadow economies of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland are 10.44, 11.18 and 20.47% respectively. The results also show that the average size of the shadow economies between 1990–2019 was 14.92% in the Czech Republic, 18.72% in Hungary and 22.85% in Poland. The Czech Republic loses 3.13% of tax revenue from goods and services and 2.83% from incomes and profits as a result of the shadow economy, while Hungary loses 5.05% of tax revenue from goods and services and 1.68% from incomes and profits. Poland loses 5.25% of tax revenue from goods and services and 4.34% from incomes and profits

THE SIZE AND TREND OF THE SHADOW ECONOMY OF GHANA

Abstrac

The New Oil Sector and the Dutch Disease: the Case of Ghana

This paper investigates the impact of the new oil sector on the economic performance of major traditional sectors of the Ghanaian economy. The discovery of resource booming sectors in most countries often comes with several opportunities as well as challenges. Ghana discovered oil in 2007 and started subsequent commercial production and export in 2010. The results from the study show that, there is no clear case of declining performance of sectors in terms of output, growth and export earnings as a result of the oil production. The study could also not establish a sustained appreciation in the real effective exchange rate since commercial oil production commenced which is an indicator of the presence of the Dutch Disease phenomenon. The real effective exchange rate was also found to be highly influenced by oil production, oil prices, total exports and remittances. The study applied an autoregressive distributed lag model due to differences in the level of integration of variables. The data was obtained from the Bank of Ghana, the Ministry of Finance in Ghana and the Energy Information Administration

Opportunities and challenges of the Ghanaian economy with the commercial production of Oil

The study sought to answer three research questions regarding the impact of the new oil sector on the economy of Ghana. The areas covered by these questions include: oil price developments and their impact on economic activities in Ghana, the overall productive impact of the oil sector on economic multipliers and linkages of other sectors of the economy as well as the impact of the sector on traditional agriculture, manufacturing and underground economic activities in Ghana. For the first research question on the impact of shocks to crude oil prices on economic activities, the study employed a Vector Error Correction model for the analysis. The modelled variables were GDP and crude oil prices. GDP was used as the measure of economic activities. Both variables were transformed into logarithmic form. The results show that Ghana as an oil exporting country and a net oil importer is affected by fluctuations in oil prices. It suggests that a one standard error shock to crude oil prices has a transitory and negative effect on GDP in Ghana after one year

Labour mobility as an adjustment mechanism to asymmetric shocks in Europe: evidence from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia

This paper assesses the nature and correlation of shocks in Visegrad countries and investigates the role of labour mobility in the process of adjustment to the effects of asymmetric shocks. Structural vector autoregression (SVAR) models are employed to assess the nature and correlation of shocks while dynamic cointegrated panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models are used to determine the role of labour mobility in the adjustment process. The dataset for the SVAR models is quarterly time series and covers the period 2000-2020. The dataset for the cointegrated panel ARDL models is annual and covers the period 2000-2019. The results show more asymmetries in external supply, domestic supply, demand and monetary shocks before the financial crisis. The findings also show that more symmetries occurred in Visegrad countries after the financial crisis in relation to external and domestic supply shocks. Asymmetries persisted with regard to demand and monetary shocks after the financial crisis. With labour mobility as an adjustment mechanism to asymmetric shocks, the paper finds that the capacity of labour mobility is very low. The percentage of net migration in the total population is less than 1% in the four countries compared to 15% in the United States. The size of the adjustment coefficients shows that it takes 3-5 years for countries to adjust to asymmetric shocks through labour mobility

Job polarization in Europe: Evidence from Central and Eastern European countries

Job polarization simply refers to the decline or disappearance of employment in middle skill occupations. Recent literature focuses on this phenomenon as a source of rising income inequality in countries. The hypothesis is that growth in employment over the last decades has favoured jobs at the low and high skill occupations with declines in employment shares in the middle of the distribution. First, this paper seeks to investigate whether labour polarization occurs in Central and Eastern European countries. Secondly, the paper assesses the role of technology on employment in the Central and Eastern European countries. Using employment shares and a cointegrated panel autoregressive distributed lag model, the paper presents comprehensive results on labour polarization and the impact of technology on employment in the labour markets of the Central and Eastern European countries. The results show positive impact of technology on high skill employment while negative on low and middle skill employment in the long-run. The study finds that though middle skill employment shares declined, there is no clear case of a U-shape employment distribution to indicate labour polarization

Unofficial Economy Estimation by the MIMIC Model: the Case of Kenya, Namibia, Ghana and Nigeria

This study investigates the size and trend of the underground economies in selected African countries. Underground economies are present in all countries, but they are endemic in developing economies. Their presence is not necessarily bad for the economies, in which they prevail. It could however cause huge losses to government revenue and could also constitute serious violation of Labor regulations. The study uses the Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes model (MIMIC), a variant of Simultaneous Equations Model (SEM). It involves two sets of variables: the observed variables and the indicator variables. The former include size of government, indirect tax rates, total tax rates, business regulation, interest rate on deposits, unemployment rate, quality of public services, and GDP per capita. The indicator variables were Labor participation rate in the official economy, the amount of cash held outside the banking system and growth in GDP per capita. This study found the average level of underground economies in Kenya, Namibia, Ghana and Nigeria as 33.7%, 29.1%, 36% and 47%, respectively. The estimated results show that the causes of shadow economic activities vary among the countries. The data was obtained from the World Bank country indicators and the International Financial Statistics