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Elizabeth Ruppert Bulmer

World Bank, USA

IZA World of Labor is a really useful tool for development practitioners to keep up with both recent and older seminal economic research on issues relating to employment and labor markets. Its concise format provides an accessible entry point to dig deeper into the economic literature and academic debates on a wide spectrum of topics linked to labor outcomes and policies. I hope more and more researchers and policymakers can benefit from what IZA World of Labor has to offer

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Lead Economist, Jobs Group, World Bank Group, USA

Research interest

Labor economics, productivity, trade, worker welfare

Website

https://blogs.worldbank.org/team/elizabeth-ruppert-bulmer

Positions/functions as a policy advisor

Lead Economist at the World Bank

Qualifications

PhD Economics, University of Maryland, 1999

Selected publications

  • Reducing the Costs and Enhancing the Benefits of Formality: From the Firm's Perspective. World Bank Jobs Working Paper Series No. 8, 2017 (with A. Kuddo and M. Weber).

  • Expanding Social Insurance Coverage to Informal Workers. World Bank Jobs Working Paper Series No. 6, 2017 (with H. Winkler and H. Mote).

  • Sticky Feet: How Labor Market Frictions Shape the Impact of International Trade on Jobs and Wages, Directions in Development: Trade. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014 (with C. Hollweg, D. Lederman, and D. Rojas).

  • "The impact of Israeli border policy on the Palestinian labor market." Economic Development and Cultural Change 51:3 (2003).

  • "The Algerian retrenchment system: A financial and economic evaluation." World Bank Economic Review 13:1 (1999).

article(s)

  • Defining informality vs mitigating its negative effects

    More important than defining and measuring informality is focusing on reducing its detrimental consequences

    Elizabeth Ruppert Bulmer, August 2018
    There are more informal workers than formal workers across the globe, and yet there remains confusion as to what makes workers or firms informal and how to measure the extent of it. Informal work and informal economic activities imply large efficiency and welfare losses, in terms of low productivity, low earnings, sub-standard working conditions, and lack of social insurance coverage. Rather than quibbling over definitions and measures of informality, it is crucial for policymakers to address these correlates of informality in order to mitigate the negative efficiency and welfare effects.
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