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Is the current recovery policy for the financial and economic crises in the Eurozone a genuine answer for the complexity and diversity of the problems that all member states face? Not really. The responses are too one-sided and mainly export and a...

The argument that pits the lazy Greek or Spaniard against the hard-working Dutchman or Fin is clearly too simplistic. It is not a clash of nations, but of economic classes.

The introduction of a single European currency was for many member states of the European Union a logical next step in a single market. With assumed improvements for trade, employment and wealth distribution, the euro was expected to bring all the...

Labour market policy has been one of the few levers available to different Eurozone countries to improve external competitiveness.

Productively employing Africa’s ‘youth bulge’ is an urgent urban development problem. Sub-Saharan Africa has the youngest population in the world. Currently over 200 million Africans are aged between 15 and 24 and the median person is 18 years old...

The Malian government should consider local government their main ally in creating youth employment.

Disarmament, Demobilization and Reinsertion of rebel groups back into society is crucial for peace, but faces challenges.

While inequality is the flipside of the ‘squeezed-out middle’, the trends affecting the middle class and inequality are inextricably bound up with changes in the labour market in Europe.

‘The squeezed-out middle’ - a concept that mainly appears in American debates but which, as The Broker’s dossier shows, applies increasingly to Europe - is in fact the flipside of inequality.

Europe’s economic progress and political stability after the Second World War would not have been possible without the rise of the European middle class. This dossier shows that further progress and stability is seriously under threat, partly due...

Import competition, offshoring and automation are threatening the middle classes in Europe. New jobs have been created mainly for the lower and the upper segments of the labour market. But not for the middle. And because most of those jobs are in...

Occupational change in itself cannot explain the decline of the European middle class. But it could be a threat to its sociopolitical foundations

The much-debated squeeze of the middle class in Europe is real, but very different from country to country. The squeeze is felt most in the countries most affected by the financial crisis, like Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece, where austerity me...

The middle classes in Europe are struggling to improve their living standards. As this dossier shows, the European middle classes are moving apart and cannot be helped by seeing them as a homogenous group. Some are still moving upwards, but many a...

Robots have long been part of the world around us, but soon there really will be no avoiding them – when they no longer only work for us, but also with us. How are we going to do that together?  

Technology is likely to substantially reshape labour markets in the future, dramatically altering the kinds of skills that middle-class workers will need. As such, policymakers must act now.

Addressing youth unemployment has become increasingly urgent in the face of a deteriorating security situation where criminal and radical groups have penetrated many parts of Mali.

Another Perspective is The Broker’s new blog. The title reflects The Broker’s ambition to look at globalization issues in different ways. Through this blog, we also keep our followers up to date on matters that concern us.

Although 90% of businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa’s markets are small and medium enterprises (SMEs), they do not play a significant role in current GDP growth. However, SMEs can lead a much-needed economic diversification, explore new sectors and b...

You can read it in the newspapers every day: national economies are not creating enough jobs and fewer quality jobs in the productive sectors. Globalization, automation and financialization of the economy have been identified as the drivers of cur...

Female participation in entrepreneurial activities is higher in Sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region. But is this a success story for the integration of women in the labour market?

When it comes to enterprise support, there is a discrepancy between the frameworks offered by NGOs and how people in the communities want to operate. 

There is limited knowledge about what does and what does not work to boost SME growth and create jobs. We need to keep searching for better answers.

SME assistance must be tailored to meeting the specific needs of entrepreneurs.

Breaking the ‘paradox of education’ is a precondition for improving the growth of African small enterprises.

Young people represent more than 60% of Africa's population. Entrepreneurship, if supported through the right policies, can provide an effective solution to persistent youth unemployment.

What makes a strong formative stage for SMEs? Public sector intervention, argues Hilary Nwokeabia.

Rural wages are rising in Asia, and the strongest drivers are demographic changes and the growth of manufacturing.

Integrated approaches to empower young African women and men to take their place in a modernized agricultural sector are needed throughout the continent.

Innovative early stage ventures that potentially have a high social and environmental impact, but require less than €1 million in capital are the most difficult segment of the SME pipeline to reach. Yet their potential for growth is immense.

Skill gaps and effective pairing of education with labour market needs remain one of the most pressing obstacles for SME development in Africa.

Can Africa’s rural economy create enough jobs for predominantly young job-seekers?

To give local and international businesses a new role in assuring inclusive growth in Africa, the African Studies Centre and the Netherlands African Business Council organized the two-day Africa Works! 2014 conference. They invited 740 representat...

When the Dutch private sector is involved in development in Africa, a dilemma may arise. The Dutch government claims that businesses could have a positive impact on local economic development on the continent in the longer term. But do their activ...

Assistance to small and medium enterprises only makes sense if it addresses the key constraints for SMEs and allows them to grow into larger and more productive enterprises.

Four main characteristics of the private equity model are crucial to drive SME development in developing countries.

How informal micro and small enterprises can (if they should at all) make the transition into formal enterprises and how this would affect their growth and employment structure

Of 48,000 African migrants in Israel, the majority are asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea. If it is done right, entrepreneurship can play a vital role in integrating these refugees into Israeli society and responding to market niches.

The shift from wages to profits has led to an increase in inequality over the last three decades.

Entrepreneurship is ubiquitous in rural Africa. But why do rural households operate non-farm enterprises? How productive are they? And why do they exit the market?

The stagnation in labour demand in the US is linked to the rise of finance. Strategies to encourage long-term employment growth must be found in that direction too.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a new learning phenomenon in the world of higher education and digital technology. Especially for developing countries, they are portrayed as a great opportunity for free education, boosting the employabilit...

While the roles of trade unions and informal workers’ organizations are little understood, these networks can play a significant role in stimulating SME growth on a micro, meso and macro level.

Egypt has invested in its female labour force since the 1960s. Yet women-led businesses remain rare. Alia El Mahdi provides insight into the underlying challenges and gives policy recommendations for the effective promotion of female entrepreneurs.

Migrants and remigrants are especially likely to start their own businesses. But do they have the skills and knowledge that will allow them to access market niches and contribute to local economies?

Business training programs are a popular tool used by policy-makers to promote SME growth. However, recent evidence suggests that these programs rarely lead to firm growth or job creation. What do we know about how to effectively support SME devel...

After microfinance, the ‘missing middle’ is the new buzzword for SME development experts. Klaas Molenaar recommends to take a look into the history of microfinance to question the hype.

Trade unions in Africa have struggled to effectively include informal workers. In their stead, informal worker's associations have taken over.

Upgrading a micro enterprise to a small or medium-sized business requires more than a good business environment.

In conflict-affected societies, entrepreneurship promotion plays a crucial role in harvesting young people's innovative potential and in stirring economic growth on a national level.But what do those entrepreneurs really need?

International trade can contribute to the creation of more and better jobs but not always, not for everyone, and not everywhere. Thirty years after the beginning of a global push for liberalization we are finally starting to understand the real co...

While the long-term benefits of freer trade for the domestic labour market seem indisputable, it is politically contestable over the short- and medium-run.

There is no limit to human capacity for innovation – the bedrock of entrepreneurship. Only three basic pillars can lay the foundation for sustainable business growth.

The TTIP will lead to at least a million job losses and threaten labour standards in US and EU.

The impact of the TTIP on employment in Europe and the US would be minimal, or even negative.

US citizens have found themselves on the short end of the stick too many times to believe that the TTIP will create more jobs.

The bilateral setting of the TTIP makes its outcome subject to two specific opposing forces.

The implications of TTIP for employment are uncertain for the EU and US, but also for developing countries.

EPAs can be a good launchpad to foster more productive employment in Africa, but should not be an end in itself.

SMEs can and need to play an important role in securing and creating new jobs, if development programmes revert their focus to job creation with the help of effective trainings and restructured access to finance.

The inability of African firms to implement management practices that conform to basic international standards is a barrier to enter global markets, depressing their productivity and employment creation potential.  An agenda to raise manageme...

Communications-based digital industries have a special model for surviving the familiar SME-killing challenges. Embracing technologies such as the cloud, virtualization, and instant cloning of service platforms, could digital enterprises become th...

Despite being the world’s second fastest-growing region, Africa’s challenge is translating this growth into broad-based improvements in well-being. SMEs development is key to change this.

How can SMEs become more productive and viable engines of inclusive growth in developing countries? Academics and practitioners provide answers.

Specific policy is needed to respond to the loss of social control over employment.

Volatile capital flows have maintained, if not exacerbated, the vulnerability of developing and emerging countries and affected domestic productivity and employment.

By their excessive use of debt, private equity companies in the US increase the risk of bankruptcy of real economy companies they acquire.

International trade is a force of structural change and productive transformation and can therefore promote employment.

Although Sub-Saharan Africa is increasingly attractive to investors, structural transformation and formal job growth remain slow. Industrial surveys in many countries show that some highly productive firms co-exist with many low-productivity busin...

Changes in the global economy and in technology influence employment in the manufacturing sector, especially by requiring new skills.

In an increasingly globalized world which places downward pressure on nominal wages, monetary policy should permit the rewards of productivity growth to be passed on to workers in the form of falling prices. Targeting nominal income growth to equa...

Evidence shows that technological change and productivity growth do not only destroy jobs in Europe and the US, but also create them.

Diversification of employment opportunities into non-farm, non-mining activities will be critical to safeguarding Ecuador’s rainforest. However, this is easier said than done.

Developing a stable and decent labour market is a matter of willingness and making choices.

The bright picture of Africa’s economy is that it is growing and that inequality is declining. However, as Stefano Prato of the Society for International Development (SID) said at the beginning of a panel session at the EADI conference, not all Af...

During the EADI conference, The Broker had an exclusive interview with Branko Milanovic, Professor at the City University New York and economist for the World Bank specialized in inequality.

Apart from being a media partner at the EADI conference The Broker also took part, presenting a panel on inequality and the post-2015 agenda. During a session of almost two hours the panel provided an update on global inequality trends, based on t...

Follow The Broker at the EADI general conference “Responsible Development in a Polycentric World: Inequality, Citizenship and the Middle Classes”.

The adverse effects of increased economic integration on job quality can be mitigated by flexicurity policies.

Piketty largely ignores what the concentration of wealth means for decision-making on economic development. We should focus on distributing wealth, for example by making employees shareholders of their own companies.

Inequality and declining job quality have been driven mainly by government policies, so reforming policy is now needed.

Europe has to start investing in people instead of destroying its growth potential if it wants to create more and better jobs.

Making people producers of goods is strategic for growth and development.

What are the challenges, what are the options regarding youth unemployment in Africa?

The African Studies Centre (ASC), the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS/EUR) and globalization think tank The Broker are excited to announce that they will be hosting the Secretariat fo...

The private sector is the primary generator of sustainable employment, so governments need to work to ensure that the environment for growth is promoted and maintained.

With a demographic shift ahead, Europe has to increase productivity and employment rates and structurally reform the labour market.

The central theme of The Broker Day 2014 on 14 April was employment and inequality, and the structural macroeconomic problems underlying them. The main speaker was Minister of Social Affairs and Employment and deputy prime minister Lodewijk Assche...

More green investment can stimulate growth and employment in a crisis-ridden Europe, and reverse recent negative trends in the climate change mitigation progress.

The following proposal is aimed at employment creation in the light of the alarming indices of labour market exclusion from which different parts of the world suffer.

The key to avoiding the risk of a jobless recovery in Southern Europe lies in the combination of wage flexibility and human capital accumulation.

Although governments and development agencies see farming as an important engine for job creation, rural non-farm businesses do not seem to generate enough work.

Recognizing employment as a fundamental human right is the most important policy to promote full employment.

The activities of labouring classes show that establishing a system that puts their interests before corporate profits is possible.

It is time for development economists to look beyond the stylized facts to the dire realities of Africa’s frustrated youth and burgeoning informal economies.

New mindsets are needed that recognize the deep importance of work and therefore the true depth of the jobs crisis.

Impact sourcing is a promising means to enhance employment and training opportunities for the poor and underprivileged.

Employment is a critical path to women’s economic empowerment, but it is by no means a simple relationship.