Moving Jobs to the Center Stage

In 2011, the Berlin Workshop brought together representatives from academic, inter-governmental, and think-tank institutions

Abstract

Once a year in the fall, the World Bank, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and the BMZ's convening authority, the Development Policy Forum of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), hold an international policy workshop in Berlin. This longestablished flagship event, known as the “Berlin Workshop,” brings diverse perspectives and expertise from outside the World Bank, providing an excellent forum in which to exchange ideas and debate in the course of preparing the World Development Report (WDR). The objective always was, and still is, to widen the scope of inputs into the WDR by integrating the views of leading experts from across the international research community.

In 2011, the two-day Berlin Workshop on “Moving Jobs to the Center Stage” brought together representatives or development practitioners from academic, inter-governmental, and think-tank institutions in Europe, the United States, Egypt, Turkey, Bangladesh and the Philippines, as well as from the World Bank and the German development organizations. Participants at the Workshop gathered to discuss the connection between jobs and important dimensions of economic and social development, and to explore policy options to cope with the challenges of massive demographic shifts, global migration of jobs and deep changes in the very nature of work. They exchanged views on the first outline of the WDR to provide the authors of the WDR with ample food for thought.

The topical issues addressed by the Workshop were: conceptualizing “good jobs” and social cohesion; the link between jobs, technology and growth; jobs and labor market institutions; the youth employment challenge; jobs in the informal economy; and jobs, migration and social inclusion. These proceedings include discussion papers on topical issues and the workshop program. Most of the discussion papers were drafted by the editor based on the workshop presentations, and reviewed by the respective participants; some papers were written by participants themselves. Participants’ institutional affiliations identified in this publication are as of the time of the conference, November, 11, 2011.

Citation

GIZ; The World Bank; (Editors). Moving Jobs to the Center Stage. Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Berlin, Germany (2011) 66 pp.

Moving Jobs to the Center Stage (PDF, 7.4MB)

Published 1 January 2011