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Hollweg, Claire H.

Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment Global Practice
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International trade, Global value chains, Services, Labor markets, Development economics
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Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment Global Practice
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Last updated: January 31, 2023
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Claire H. Hollweg is a senior economist with the Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment Global Practice of the World Bank. Before studying economics, she worked as a journalist. She has worked with the government of South Australia and the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council in Singapore. Her research interests include development economics, with a focus on the nexus between trade, labor markets, servicification of manufacturing, and upgrading in global value chains. She holds a PhD and an MA in economics from the University of Adelaide.

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2015 - 20193
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Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities × Item Type: Publication ×

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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Migrating to Opportunity: Overcoming Barriers to Labor Mobility in Southeast Asia
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017-10-08) Testaverde, Mauro; Moroz, Harry; Hollweg, Claire H.; Schmillen, Achim
    The movement of people in Southeast Asia is an issue of increasing importance. Countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are now the origin of 8 percent of the world's migrants. These countries host only 4 percent of the world's migrants but intra-regional migration has turned Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand into regional migration hubs that are home to 6.5 million ASEAN migrants. However, significant international and domestic labor mobility costs limit the ability of workers to change firms, sectors, and geographies in ASEAN. This report takes an innovative approach to estimate the costs for workers to migrate internationally. Singapore and Malaysia have the lowest international labor mobility costs in ASEAN while workers migrating to Myanmar and Vietnam have the highest costs. Singapore and Malaysia's more developed migration systems are a key reason for their lower labor mobility costs. How easily workers can move to take advantage of new opportunities is important in determining how they fare under the increased economic integration planned for ASEAN. To study this question, the report simulates how worker welfare is affected by enhanced trade integration under different scenarios of labor mobility costs. Region-wide, worker welfare would be 14 percent higher if barriers to mobility were reduced for skilled workers, and an additional 29 percent if barriers to mobility were lowered for all workers. Weaknesses in migration systems increase international labor mobility costs, but policy reforms can help. Destination countries should work toward systems that are responsive to economic needs and consistent with domestic policies. Sending countries should balance protections for migrant workers with the needs of economic development.
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    The Labor Content of Exports in South Africa and Botswana: A Preliminary Exploration
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-01) Calì, Massimiliano; Hollweg, Claire
    The LACEX dataset has been recently assembled to compute the (direct and indirect) value of the compensation of employees linked to exports for each sector/country/year. The data has been computed on the basis of a panel of global input-output data spanning intermittent years from 1995 to 2007 from the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP). This represents a form of social accounting data - a variation on the social accounting matrix (SAM) where incomes are shown in the rows of the SAM while expenditures are shown in the columns. The structure of the data provides a comprehensive and consistent record of national income accounting relationships between different sectors and regions, including intermediate and final demand linkages. This structure of the dataset allows one to obtain the value added content of final output and exports, including its compensation of employees’ component. That includes both the direct and indirect compensation, based on the backward linkages of each sector with the rest of the economy. In order to obtain these labor value added measures, two intermediate multiplier matrixes need to be calculated. The first is the Leontief inverse matrix, which measures the inputs contained in a unit of final output. This matrix contains both direct and indirect inputs. Next, one needs to calculate a matrix which has the compensation of employees’ shares of total output. Using these two matrixes as multipliers one can obtain the compensation of employees’ shares of exports and final outputs. These shares are also split between skilled and unskilled workers.
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    Publication
    What is Behind Labor Mobility Costs? Evidence from Indonesia
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-09) Cali, Massimiliano; Hidayat, Taufik; Hollweg, Claire H.
    The ability of workers to transition to a new job is crucial to determine the resilience of an economy to (positive or negative) shocks. This paper provides new evidence on the factors that affect labor mobility by using labor data on Indonesia, one of countries with the higher estimated labor mobility costs. To do so it investigates correlates of the probability of an individual finding a job after a negative labor market shock, as well as of the duration of job search. The results show that higher housing prices are associated with higher mobility costs, suggesting that housing benefits or policies that increase the supply of housing may help reduce mobility costs in Indonesia. More generally, public expenditure on infrastructure seems to reduce labor mobility costs, particularly in urban areas, consistently with a reduction in transaction costs – such as urban transport. The results also highlight that formal institutional mechanisms such as job advertisements do not appear to work effectively to help labor mobility in Indonesia, suggesting the need to re-think active labor market policies. On the other hand, minimum wage level – a key outcome of labor market policy - does not appear to affect labor mobility. Labor mobility costs seem higher in urban areas, which could indicate a lower opportunity cost of joblessness than in rural area, employment composition skewed towards sectors with higher mobility costs and/or large congestion costs that negatively affect labor mobility. On the other hand, the general female penalty in labor mobility is less accentuated in urban areas, which may be the result of sectoral composition and/or less discriminatory cultural norms than in rural areas.