Person:
Islam, Asif M.

Office of the Chief Economist, Middle East and North Africa
Profile Picture
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Degrees
ORCID
Departments
Office of the Chief Economist, Middle East and North Africa
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated: December 19, 2024
Biography
Asif Islam is a senior economist for the Middle East and North Africa Region of the World Bank Group. His research focuses on private sector development. He has published in peer-reviewed journals on several dimensions of the private sector including entrepreneurship, technology, crime, informality, and gender. He has also published on fiscal policy, environment, and agriculture. He co-authored several reports including the World Development Report (2019) - The Changing Nature of Work, What's Holding Back the Private Sector in MENA? Lessons from the Enterprise Survey, and Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability. He holds a PhD in Applied Economics from the University of Maryland-College Park, and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Computer Science from Macalester College.
Citations 65 Scopus

Filters

2015 - 20193
Browse document type tree
Reset filters

Settings

Statistics
Citations
Has files: true × Start date: 2014 × End date: 2019 × Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 1: No Poverty ×

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Decomposing the Labour Productivity Gap between Migrant-Owned and Native-Owned Firms in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (Taylor and Francis, 2018-09-18) Islam, Asif; Amin, Mohammad
    Migration studies have been primarily based on the movement of individuals from developing to developed economies, with a focus on the impact of migrants on host country wages. In this study we take a different angle by exploring the labor productivity of migrant-owned firms versus native-owned firms in 20 African economies using firm-level data. We find that labor productivity is 78 per cent higher in migrant-owned firms than native-owned firms. Using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method we find that structural effects account for 80 per cent of the labor productivity gap. Returns to manager education largely explain the productivity advantage of migrant-owned firms over native-owned firms. Interactions with the government, access to finance, informality, and power outages are also considerable contributors to the labor productivity gap.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Unequal before the Law: Measuring Legal Gender Disparities across the World
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-08) Iqbal, Sarah; Islam, Asif; Ramalho, Rita; Sakhonchik, Alena
    Several economies have laws that treat women differently from men. This study explores the degree of such legal gender disparities across 167 economies around the world. This is achieved by constructing a simple measure of legal gender disparities to evaluate how countries perform. The average number of overall legal gender disparities across 167 economies is 17, ranging from a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 44. The maximum possible legal gender disparities is 71. The measure is found to be correlated with other measures of gender inequality, implying the measure does capture gender inequality while also differing from preexisting measures of gender inequality. A high degree of legal gender disparities is found to be negatively associated with a wide range of outcomes, including years of education of women relative to men, labor force participation rates of women relative to men, proportion of women top managers, proportion of women in parliament, percentage of women that borrowed from a financial institution relative to men, and child mortality rates. Subcategories within the legal disparities measure help to uncover specific types of legal disparities across economies.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Does Mandating Nondiscrimination in Hiring Practices Influence Women's Employment? Evidence Using Firm-level Data
    (Taylor and Francis, 2015-02-26) Amin, Mohammad; Islam, Asif
    This study explores the relationship between mandating a nondiscrimination clause in hiring practices along gender lines and the employment of women versus men in fifty-eight developing countries. Using data from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys (2006–10), the study finds a strong positive relationship between the nondiscrimination clause and women's relative to men's employment. The relationship is robust to a large number of controls at the firm and country level. Results also show sharp heterogeneity in the relationship between the nondiscrimination clause and women's versus men's employment, with the relationship being much bigger in richer countries and in countries with more women in the population as well as among relatively smaller firms.