Person:
Hollweg, Claire H.
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
International trade,
Global value chains,
Services,
Labor markets,
Development economics
Degrees
Departments
Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment Global Practice
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
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.
Publication Search Results
1 - 3 of 3
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Publication
Seeking Shared Prosperity through Trade
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06)Increasing the trade integration of developing countries can make a vital contribution to boosting shared prosperity, but it also exposes producers and consumers to exogenous shocks that alter relative prices, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively. This paper discusses the short-run effects of trade-related shocks on households to capture the potential welfare impact on the poor. The discussion explores the channels through which trade shocks are transmitted to households in the bottom of the income distribution, namely through consumption, household production, and market-based labor activities. The degree to which price shocks are passed through from borders to point of sale is a key determinant of the gains from trade and the ultimate welfare impact. Trade changes in agriculture directly affect households through their consumption basket. Lower agricultural prices reduce the cost of consumables, but these welfare gains may be offset by lower earnings for households that produce these same goods. Poorer households tend to be net consumers of agricultural products, suggesting a net welfare gain, but agricultural wage workers could suffer from wage cuts. Because poorer households tend to consume relatively fewer nonagricultural products, that is nonessentials, any trade-related shocks to prices of nonagricultural product are likely to be transmitted via labor channels. Despite significant evidence that nonagricultural trade reform ultimately leads to job creation and enhanced productivity, the short-run effects can be mixed. The costs incurred by workers to transition to new jobs slow the adjustment of the economy to a new steady state. Labor mobility costs, which tend to be higher in developing countries and for unskilled workers, reduce the potential gains to trade by diverting labor market adjustment from its most efficient path. -
Publication
Exporting and Female Labor Market Outcomes in Georgia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-10)Using firm-level data for Georgia, the paper estimates the quasi-elasticity of employment and wages with respect to the share of exports in total sales, to explore whether changes in the structure of sales (exporting versus selling to the domestic market) matter for labor market outcomes. The methodology uses exogenous fluctuations in exchange rates combined with firms' initial exposure to various markets as instrumental variables to identify a causal effect. The results differentiate employment levels and average wages by gender and consider whether export destination or the competiveness of economies matters for the magnitude of this elasticity. The data are from the National Statistics Office of Georgia Statistics Survey of Enterprises merged with customs data for 2006-17. The instrumental variables regression results show that the act of exporting improves female employment but reduces overall average wages and female wages. Increasing exports to the European Union as well as high-income countries drives this positive result for female employment, whereas exporting to upper-middle-income countries is found to have a negative relationship with female employment. -
Publication
What is Behind Labor Mobility Costs? Evidence from Indonesia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-09)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.