Imran Rasul (University College London, Institute for Fiscal Studies) 14.10.2026
It is our pleasure that Imran Rasul (University College London, Institute for Fiscal Studies) will present on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, at 16:15 in room RB101 about the topic “Labour markets in developing countries”.
Registration is not required and anyone who would like to attend is warmly invited.
It is also possible to participate online via MS Teams at this link. In case of any connection issues, please contact lubomir.cingl@vse.cz.
ABSTRACT: Labor is the key asset endowment of the world’s poor. Therefore how labor markets function is key to determining individual well-being, as well as the productivity of labor, the firm size distribution, inequality, and aggregate growth. Yet labor markets in developing countries have many imperfections, including labor market entrants lacking the skills demanded by employers, entrants lacking information on how to search for meaningful employment, and firms lacking resources to find, screen and train workers. Labor markets are also characterized by aggregate uncertainty – where workers cannot signal the skills they might have or their labor market histories, firms face uncertain demand, and the economy as a whole can be hit frequently by various forms of aggregate shocks. This lecture presents evidence from a long-term field study in Uganda to understand these issues. Combining estimates from field experiments and structural models, it describes evidence on the returns to different forms of training on worker and firm outcomes, the design of training, and how demand uncertainty can lead to the underutilization of factors of production. Throughout, the lecture sets out agenda for future work to understand key frictions and imperfections in labor markets in low-income settings.
BIO: Imran Rasul is Professor of Economics at University College London, Director of the Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and Co-Director of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Centre on Wealth Concentration, Inequality and the Economy. He serves as President of the Royal Economic Society in 2025/6, and President of the European Economic Association in 2026. His research interests include labor, development and public economics and his work has been published in leading journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Econometrica and the Review of Economic Studies. He is past managing editor of the Journal of the European Economic Association (2016-22), and co-editor and director of the Review of Economic Studies (2009-17). He was awarded the 2007 IZA Young Labour Economist Prize, the 2008 CESIfo Distinguished Affiliate Award, an ERC-starter grant in 2012, and a British Academy Mid-career Fellowship in 2018. In 2019 he was jointly awarded the Yrjö Jahnsson Award in Economics (with Oriana Bandiera). He is an elected Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Social Sciences, the Econometric Society, Royal Economic Society and an elected member of Academia Europaea. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire for Services to Social Sciences in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2020.
