Person:
Nomura, Shinsaku
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Economics of education
Degrees
Departments
Education Global Practice
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Shinsaku Nomura is a Senior Economist at the Education Global Practice in the World Bank. He has worked in countries in Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia regions. In South Asia, he has managed projects of basic and secondary education, early childhood education, and skills development in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. He has also led analytical projects such as big data labor market analytics, learning assessments, impact evaluations, and economic and financial analyses. He received a PhD in Economics from the Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, Kobe University, Japan.
Publication Search Results
1 - 3 of 3
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Publication
Impacts of COVID-19 on Labor Markets and Household Well-Being in Pakistan: Evidence From an Online Job Platform
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-02)This brief uses the administrative database of Pakistan’s largest online job platform and an online COVID-19 survey to examine the gender impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on labor markets and other well-being indicators. The analysis shows that the pandemic led to an unprecedented level of economic insecurity, resulting in widespread job loss, business closures, slowdown in business activity, and reduced working hours. The sectors where women are more likely to be employed, such as education and health, were more severely affected, yet the post-pandemic recovery was faster for males. The pandemic has also led to a disproportionate increase in women’s unpaid care work, as well as increasing their reported rates of stress, anxiety and exposure to violence. These findings suggest that impacts resulting from COVID-19 might lead to further declines in women’s participation in the economy in Pakistan, where women’s labor force participation is already among the world’s lowest. -
Publication
Fast, Easy and Cheap Job Matching: Social Networks in Bangladesh
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-06)This paper uncovers the reason why social networks are used in a job market. The data are novel: a nationally representative matched employer-employee data set in Bangladesh with detailed information, including direct measures of the use of social networks. The empirical analysis shows that compared with those who used open channels to find jobs, the employees who used social networks found jobs more easily, have lower observable abilities, and achieved lower employment outcomes conditional on observable and unobservable abilities. These results are robust whether firm-occupation fixed effects are controlled for or not. By comparing these findings with theoretical predictions, the paper concludes that social networks play the role as fast and easy but narrow-spectrum matching. That is, social networks allow job seekers to find jobs quickly and easily and thereby reduce search costs, but the types of jobs available from social networks are narrower than those from open channels. As a consequence, those who choose to use social networks are more likely to end up having mismatched jobs, that is jobs in which they cannot take advantage of their specialties. In the context of developing countries, a considerable number of poor job seekers may use social networks out of necessity even if the returns to finding good-match jobs through open channels are sufficiently high. -
Publication
Labor Market Analysis Using Big Data: The Case of a Pakistani Online Job Portal
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-11)Facing a youth bulge—a large influx of a young labor force—the Pakistani economy needs to create more jobs by taking advantage of this relatively well-educated young labor force. Yet, the educated young labor force suffers a higher unemployment rate, and there is a concern that the current education and training system in the country does not respond to skill demands in the private sector. This paper provides new descriptives about labor markets, particularly skill demand and supply, by using online job portal data. The paper finds that although there is an excess supply of highly educated workers, certain industries, such as information and communications technology, lack workers who have specialized skills and experience. The analysis also finds that the exact match of qualifications and skills is important for employers. Job applicants who are underqualified or overqualified for job posts are less likely to be shortlisted than those whose qualifications exactly match job requirements.