Trade and Employment in the Global Crisis

Based on the finding of ILO-sponsored studies of employment impacts in Brazil, Egypt, India, Liberia, South Africa, Uganda and Ukraine during the global crisis, this book analyses how cross-border trade has acted as a transmission channel, spreading the crisis to developing and emerging economies. Key topics covered include the role of export concentration in increasing labour markets’ vulnerability to trade shocks, the effects of global price volatility on household and company investment decisions, the impact of the global slowdown on workers’ and governments’ bargaining power and the impact of negative trade shocks on gender inequality. The book reviews the suitability of the different policy instruments that countries have applied during the crisis. The authors underline the benefits of stimulus packages with infrastructure components for their potential to combine short-term employment creation with increased opportunities for future trade. They also argue that policies targeted towards specific sectors may not always meet policy-makers’ expectations in reducing the economic slowdown and may even be in conflict with multilateral trade rules. By contrast, cross-sectoral social or labour market policies tend not to be trade-distorting and have significant potential to cushion the slowdown in growth by stabilizing domestic demand. The authors highlight that in countries where policy instruments were in place before the crisis, these acted as an automatic buffer and could be relatively easily scaled up.

List of tables, figures and boxes Preface 1. Introduction 2. Trade flows and labour markets during the crisis: What global data tells us 3. The impact of the crisis at the country level and trade as a transmission channel 4. Policy responses 5. Conclusions Annexes Bibliography