Truman G. Packard's Books

Keeping the Promise of Social Security in Latin America

By: Indermit S. Gill,Truman G. Packard,Juan Yermo

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Keeping the Promise of Social Security in Latin America

By: Indermit S. Gill,Truman G. Packard,Juan Yermo

Empirical analysis of two decades of pioneering pension and social security reform in Latin America and the Caribbean shows that much has been achieved, but that critical challenges remain. In tackling this unfinished agenda, a great deal can be learned from the reform experience of countries in the region. 'Keeping the Promise,' produced by the chief economist's office for the Latin America and Caribbean region at the World Bank, evaluates policy reforms in 12 countries, points to successes and shortcomings, and proposes priorities and options for future reform.

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368

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World Bank Publications

Published Date

ISBN 10

0821383752

ISBN 13

9780821383759

El empleo en crisis

Un camino hacia mejores puestos de trabajo en la America Latina pos-COVID-19

By: Joana Silva,Liliana D. Sousa,Truman G. Packard,Raymond Robertson

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El empleo en crisis

Un camino hacia mejores puestos de trabajo en la America Latina pos-COVID-19

By: Joana Silva,Liliana D. Sousa,Truman G. Packard,Raymond Robertson

A region known for its volatility, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has suffered severe economic and social setbacks from crises—including the COVID-19 pandemic. These crises have taken their toll on careers, wage growth, and productivity. Employment in Crisis: The Path to Better Jobs in a Post-COVID-19 Latin America provides new evidence on the effects of crises on the region’s workers and firms and suggests several policy responses that can bolster long-term and inclusive economic growth. This report has three key findings. First, crises lead to persistent employment losses and accelerate structural changes away from the formal sector. This change occurs more through reductions in the creation of formal jobs than through job destruction. Second, some workers recover from crises, while others are permanently scarred by them. Low-skilled workers can suffer up to a decade of lower earnings caused by crises, while high-skilled workers rebound fast, exacerbating the LAC region’s high level of inequality. Formal workers suffer smaller employment and wage losses in localities with higher rates of informality. And the reduced job flows caused by crises decrease welfare, but workers in localities with more job opportunities, whether formal or informal, bounce back better. Third, crises’ cleansing effects can increase efficiency and productivity, but these effects are dampened by the LAC region’s less competitive market structure. Rather than becoming more agile and productive during economic downturns, protected sectors and firms gain market share and crowd out others, trapping valuable resources. This report proposes a three-pronged mix of policies to improve the LAC region’s responses to crises: • Create a more stable macroeconomic environment to smooth the impacts of crises, including automatic stabilizers such as unemployment insurance and short-term compensation programs; • Increase the capacity of social protection and labor programs to respond to crises and coalesce these programs into systems that complement income support with reemployment assistance and reskilling opportunities; and • Tackle structural issues, including the lack of product market competition and the spatial dimension behind poor labor market adjustment—a “good jobs and good firms†? agenda.

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Page Count

385

Publisher

World Bank Publications

Published Date

ISBN 10

1464817227

ISBN 13

9781464817229

Skills and Jobs in Brazil

An Agenda for Youth

By: Rita K. Almeida,Truman G. Packard

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Skills and Jobs in Brazil

An Agenda for Youth

By: Rita K. Almeida,Truman G. Packard

Skills and Jobs in Brazil: An Agenda for Youth is a new report focusing on the challenge of economic engagement among the Brazilian youth. In the context of a fast aging population, Brazil’s greatest economic opportunity is to increase its labor productivity, especially that of youth. This report documents important new facts about the extent of the youth economic disengagement, while at school and at work. Today, close to half of the Brazilian youth aged 15-29 years old is not fully economically engaged, because they are neither working nor studying, are studying in schools of poor quality, or are working in informal and precarious jobs. The report shows how the youth prospects in the labor market are dimmed by policies favoring existing workers over new entrants; in addition, it shows how youth are often ill equipped to meet an increasingly challenging labor market. The report suggests new education, skills, and jobs policy changes that Brazil could prioritize moving forward, so that it can take advantage of the last wave of its demographic transition. The report discusses in particular depth policies aiming to increase learning and reduce school dropouts in upper secondary education, and labor market policies that aim to support more effective and faster youth transitions from school to work.

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213

Publisher

World Bank Publications

Published Date

ISBN 10

1464812934

ISBN 13

9781464812934

Beyond Survival

Protecting Households from Health Shocks in Latin America

By: Truman G. Packard,Cristian C. Baeza

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Beyond Survival

Protecting Households from Health Shocks in Latin America

By: Truman G. Packard,Cristian C. Baeza

Beyond Survival' breaks new ground in the ongoing debate about health finance and financial protection from the costs of health care. The evidence and discussion support the need to consider financial protection, in addition to health status, as a policy objective when setting priorities for health systems. This book reviews the Latin American experience with health reform in the last 20 years and the fundamentals of health system financing, using new evidence to show the magnitude and mechanisms that determine the impoverishing effects of health events (diseases, accidents, and those of the life cycle). It provides options for policy makers on how to protect, and help household to protect themselves,against this impoverishment. The authors use empirical evidence from six case studies commissioned for this report, on Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Mexico. This book provides policy makers with a solid conceptual basis for decisions on the contents of mandatory health insurance benefit packages, choices of financing mechanisms, and the roles of public policy in this field. 'Beyond Survival' provides an in-depth analysis of, and organizational alternatives for, risk pooling and health insurance for financial protection. It analyzes the urgent need to extend risk pooling to the informal sector, the challenges for current social insurance arrangements, and options for policy makers to effectively extend risk pooling to the informal sector.

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Page Count

196

Publisher

World Bank Publications

Published Date

ISBN 10

082136572X

ISBN 13

9780821365724

East Asia Pacific at Work

Employment, Enterprise, and Well-being

By: Truman G. Packard,Trang Van Nguyen

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East Asia Pacific at Work

Employment, Enterprise, and Well-being

By: Truman G. Packard,Trang Van Nguyen

The unprecedented progress of East Asia Pacific is a triumph of working people. Countries that were low-income a generation ago successfully integrated into the global value chain, exploiting their labor-cost advantage. In 1990, the region held about a third of the world’s labor force. Leveraging this comparative advantage, the share of global GDP of emerging economies in East Asia Pacific grew from 7 percent in 1992 to 17 percent in 2011. Yet, the region now finds itself at a critical juncture. Work and its contribution to growth and well-being can no longer be taken for granted. The challenges range from high youth inactivity and rising inequality to binding skills shortages. A key underlying issue is economic informality, which constrains innovation and productivity, limits the tax base, and increases household vulnerability to shocks. Informality is both a consequence of stringent labor regulations and limited enforcement capacity. In several countries, de jure employment regulations are more stringent than in many parts of Europe. Even labor regulations set at reasonable levels but poorly implemented can aggravate the market failures they were designed to overcome. This report argues that the appropriate policy responses are to ensure macroeconomic stability, and in particular, a regulatory framework that encourages small- and medium-sized enterprises where most people in the region work. Mainly agrarian countries should focus on raising agricultural productivity. In urbanizing countries, good urban planning becomes critical. Pacific island countries will need to provide youth with human capital needed to succeed abroad as migrant workers. And, across the region, it is critical to ‘formalize’ more work, to increase the coverage of essential social protection, and to sustain productivity. To this end, policies should encourage mobility of labor and human capital, and not favor some forms of employment - for instance, full-time wage employment in manufacturing - over others, either implicitly or explicitly. Policies to increase growth and well-being from employment should instead reflect and support the dynamism and diversity of work forms across the region.

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299

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World Bank Publications

Published Date

ISBN 10

1464800049

ISBN 13

9781464800047

The Jobs of Tomorrow

Technology, Productivity, and Prosperity in Latin America and the Caribbean

By: Mark A. Dutz,Rita K. Almeida,Truman G. Packard

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The Jobs of Tomorrow

Technology, Productivity, and Prosperity in Latin America and the Caribbean

By: Mark A. Dutz,Rita K. Almeida,Truman G. Packard

While adoption of new technologies is understood to enhance long-term growth and average per-capita incomes, its impact on lower-skilled workers is more complex and merits clarification. Concerns abound that advanced technologies developed in high-income countries would inexorably lead to job losses of lower-skilled, less well-off workers and exacerbate inequality. Conversely, there are countervailing concerns that policies intended to protect jobs from technology advancement would themselves stultify progress and depress productivity. This book squarely addresses both sets of concerns with new research showing that adoption of digital technologies offers a pathway to more inclusive growth by increasing adopting firms’ outputs, with the jobs-enhancing impact of technology adoption assisted by growth-enhancing policies that foster sizable output expansion. The research reported here demonstrates with economic theory and data from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico that lower-skilled workers can benefit from adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies biased towards skilled workers, and often do. The inclusive jobs outcomes arise when the effects of increased productivity and expanding output overcome the substitution of workers for technology. While the substitution effect replaces some lower-skilled workers with new technology and more highly-skilled labor, the output effect can lead to an increase in the total number of jobs for less-skilled workers. Critically, output can increase sufficiently to increase jobs across all tasks and skill types within adopting firms, including jobs for lower-skilled workers, as long as lower-skilled task content remains complementary to new technologies and related occupations are not completely automated and replaced by machines. It is this channel for inclusive growth that underlies the power of pro-competitive enabling policies and institutions—such as regulations encouraging firms to compete and policies supporting the development of skills that technology augments rather than replaces—to ensure that the positive impact of technology adoption on productivity and lower-skilled workers is realized.

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Page Count

154

Publisher

World Bank Publications

Published Date

ISBN 10

1464812233

ISBN 13

9781464812231

In from the Shadow

Integrating Europe's Informal Labor

By: Truman G. Packard,Johannes Koettl,Claudio Montenegro

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In from the Shadow

Integrating Europe's Informal Labor

By: Truman G. Packard,Johannes Koettl,Claudio Montenegro

This book is about people in Europe who earn a living working in untaxed markets for goods, services, and labor. As governments face a rapid population ageing, the circumstances that lead people to work and trade in the shadow economy have grown in importance.

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Page Count

196

Publisher

World Bank Publications

Published Date

ISBN 10

0821395505

ISBN 13

9780821395509

Book's by Truman G. Packard

Keeping the Promise of Social Security in Latin America

Keeping the Promise of Social Security in Latin America

El empleo en crisis

El empleo en crisis

Skills and Jobs in Brazil

Skills and Jobs in Brazil

Beyond Survival

Beyond Survival

East Asia Pacific at Work

East Asia Pacific at Work

The Jobs of Tomorrow

The Jobs of Tomorrow

In from the Shadow

In from the Shadow

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