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AbstractChapter 2 presents labour market trends by broadly defined regions. Headline indicators show an improvement in most regions, with a slight deterioration for 2024 and considerable downside risk. Employment is growing in all regions, although often driven by growth in the working‐age population. Employment‐to‐population ratios are also approaching pre‐pandemic (2019) levels in most regions. Unemployment rates are also recovering to pre‐pandemic levels, with similar subregional exceptions, including non‐GCC Arab States and East Asia, for which ratios remain above 2019 levels. Considerable heterogeneity remains across subregions and different labour market dimensions. Weaker job growth is expected in 2024 owing to various geopolitical tensions and tighter global monetary conditions.

Chapter 2 presents labour market trends by broadly defined region and predominantly shows how decent work deficits affect all regions to different degrees. For each region, key labour market indicators are analysed, alongside an assessment of the region's overall economic development. This is followed by a focus on different thematic areas per region, including the job creation potential from climate change adaptation in Africa, implications for jobs with the just transition in the Arab States and ongoing shortages of migrant workers in Southeast Asia from the COVID‐19 pandemic. The thematic areas were proposed by regional experts and reflect pressing problems related to decent work in the respective region.

Much of the cyber threat -- whether this is to critical infrastructure, the economy or the security of individuals -- takes the form of attacks on organizations outside government control. Systems controlling everything from utilities to healthcare, food distribution, financial services, public events and telecommunications in fact in almost any area of the economy could be vulnerable and thus pose a threat to some aspect of national security, stability or prosperity. The challenge for governments is how to ensure that private sector organisations up their game in cyber security, not just to protect themselves, but to ensure the wider economic and physical infrastructure is not affected. However, in trying to raise cyber security standards in the private sector, there is a danger that government intervention might have little effect or even make matters worse. Adapted from the source document.

Chapter 3 provides an overview of the context of temporary employment, including long‐term trends, before considering the experience of temporary work during the COVID‐19 crisis and what may be expected in the recovery phase. All of which have important implications for workers, enterprises and economies. The chapter demonstrates that temporary employment has served as a buffer against the shock caused by the pandemic, as it has done in previous crises. Employers have scaled back the use of temporary workers, causing significant gross job loss among this category of workers. At the same time, many permanent employees who lost their jobs have found new opportunities in temporary employment. The net effect is that the share of temporary workers among all employees has remained fairly constant in countries with available annual data, concealing the significant labour market churn.

Abstract

Research background: In March 2020, when the US financial markets were in the grip of the COVID-19 crisis, the Fed instituted various policies and programs to alleviate stress in financial markets. One such program involved the Fed purchase of securities and ETFs in certain market segments, including high yield bonds. This buying action inspired investors to join the Fed (or front-run the Fed) in the high yield bond market, resulting in the tightening of spreads in that market to historically tight levels.

Purpose: In this research we investigate whether investors could have seen any signs of higher liquidity risk in US high yield mutual funds since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic and avoid it. Theoretically, funds with heightened liquidity risk should have higher historical returns (adjusted for interest rate risk and credit risk) because borne risk requires return as compensation. But because of the unusual market conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic investors could look inside funds (to see what bonds the funds owned) and then avoid funds with holdings known to be less liquid.

Research methodology: The study is based on data on US mutual funds from the Morningstar Direct database. The authors made a serial correlation model with an AR(1) process and the lagged effects model vs CAPM model to measure two proxies for liquidity risk for each US high yield mutual fund in our fund universe, in order to identify those funds at particular risk for portfolio illiquidity since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results: it is found that the proposed measures may be an effective tool for selecting high yield funds against liquidity risk. Therefore, they should be considered by investors or analysts as a practical tool to identify funds that might be illiquid.

Novelty: The study focuses on the liquidity risk in US high yield bond mutual funds before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a crisis situation with implications for liquidity risk. The methods used and results achieved may be a basis for studies of other types of funds and markets outside the USA.

AbstractAgainst the backdrop of a rather disappointing economic performance in 2016 and the below‐trend outlook for 2017, Chapter 1 assesses the ability of the economy to (i) generate a sufficient number of jobs, (ii) improve the quality of employment for those with a job, and (iii) ensure that the gains of growth are shared in an inclusive manner. The chapter also discusses the policy efforts needed to overcome structural impediments to growth, including inequality.