Person: Kasoolu, Semiray
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Kasoolu
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Kasoolu, Semiray
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Publication Growth Perspective on Western Australia(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2021-04) Hausmann, Ricardo; Barrios, Douglas; Grisanti, Ana; Kasoolu, Semiray; O'Brien, Timothy; Protzer, Eric; Sanghvi, Rushabh; Taniparti, Nikita; Tapia Rodriguez, Jorge AndresThe Government of Western Australia (WA), acting through its Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD), invited the Growth Lab of the Center for International Development at Harvard University to partner with the state to better understand and address constraints to economic diversification through a collaborative applied research project. The project seeks to apply growth diagnostic and economic complexity methodologies to inform policy design in order to accelerate productive transformation, economic diversification, and more inclusive and resilient job creation across Western Australia. As its name implies, this Growth Perspective Report aims to provide a set of perspectives on the process of economic growth in WA that provide insights for policymakers toward improving growth outcomes. This Growth Perspective Report describes both the economic growth process of Western Australia — with a focus on the past two decades — and identifies several problematic issues with the way that growth has been structured. In particular, this report traces important ways in which policies applied during the boom and subsequent slowdown in growth over the last twenty years have exacerbated a number of self-reinforcing negative externalities of undiversified growth. The report analyzes three key channels through which negative externalities have manifested: labor market imbalances, pro-cyclicality of fiscal policy, and a misalignment of public goods. The report includes sections on each of these channels, which provide perspectives on the ways in which they have hampered the quality of growth and explore the reasons why problematic externalities have become self-reinforcing. In some cases, new issues have emerged in the most recent iteration of WA’s boom-slowdown cycle, but many issues have roots in the long-term growth history of WA.Publication Western Australia – Research Findings and Policy Recommendations(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2021-04) Hausmann, Ricardo; Barrios, Douglas; Grisanti, Ana; Kasoolu, Semiray; O'Brien, Timothy; Protzer, Eric; Sanghvi, Rushabh; Taniparti, Nikita; Tapia Rodriguez, Jorge AndresThe Government of Western Australia (WA), acting through its Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD), invited the Growth Lab of the Center for International Development at Harvard University to partner with the state to better understand and address constraints to economic diversification through a collaborative applied research project. The project seeks to apply growth diagnostic and economic complexity methodologies to inform policy design in order to accelerate productive transformation, economic diversification, and more inclusive and resilient job creation across Western Australia. This report is organized in six sections, including this brief introduction. Section 2 is an Executive Summary. Section 3 explains the methodologies of Growth Diagnostics and Economic Complexity, including its theoretical foundations and main concepts. Section 4 describes the main findings of the Economic Complexity Report, including a characterization of Western Australia’s complexity profile. This is done at the state, regional, and city levels. Additionally, this section identifies diversification opportunities with high potential and organizes them into groupings to capture important patterns among the opportunities. This section also contextualizes the opportunities further by identifying relevant viability and attractiveness factors that complement the complexity metrics and consider local conditions. Section 5 highlights the main findings of the Growth Perspective Report. This section describes the economic growth process of Western Australia — with a focus on the past two decades — and identifies several issues with the way that growth has occurred. This section highlights three key channels through which negative externalities have manifested: labor market imbalances, pro-cyclicality of fiscal policy, and a misalignment of public goods. The section provides perspectives on the ways in which each of these channels have hampered the quality of growth and explores the deep-rooted factors that underpin these adverse dynamics. Section 6 introduces a policy framework that can be leveraged by WA to capitalize on revealed diversification opportunities and address the factors that impact the quality of the growth process of the state.Publication Jordan: The Elements of a Growth Strategy(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2019-04) Hausmann, Ricardo; O'Brien, Tim; Santos, Miguel Angel; Grisanti, Ana; Kasoolu, Semiray; Taniparti, Nikita; Tapia Rodriguez, Jorge Andres; Villasmil, RicardoIn the decade 1999-2009, Jordan experienced an impressive growth acceleration, tripling its exports and increasing income per capita by 38%. Since then, a number of external shocks that include the Global Financial Crisis (2008-2009), the Arab Spring (2011), the Syrian Civil War (2011), and the emergence of the Islamic State (2014) have affected Jordan in significant ways and thrown its economy out of balance. Jordan’s debt-to-GDP ratio has ballooned from 55% (2009) to 94% (2018). The economy has continued to grow amidst massive fiscal adjustment and balance of payments constraints, but the large increase in population – by 50% between 2008 and 2017 – driven by massive waves of refugees has resulted in a 12% cumulative loss in income per capita (2010-2017). Moving forward, debt sustainability will require not only continued fiscal consolidation but also faster growth and international support to keep interest payments on the debt contained. We have developed an innovative framework to align Jordan’s growth strategy with its changing factor endowments. The framework incorporates service industries into an Economic Complexity analysis, utilizing the Dun and Bradstreet database, together with an evaluation of the evolution of Jordan’s comparative advantages over time. Combining several tools to identify critical constraints faced by sectors with the greatest potential, we have produced a roadmap with key elements of a strategy for Jordan to return to faster, more sustainable and more inclusive growth that is consistent with its emerging comparative advantages.Publication Labor Market Nationalization Policies and Firm Outcomes: Evidence from Saudi Arabia(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2020-07) Cortes, Patricia; Kasoolu, Semiray; Pan, CarolinaSaudi Arabia is home to the world’s third largest migrant population. Under mounting pressure to increase the private sector employment of Saudis during the last decade, a series of nationalization policies on the labor force have been imposed since late 2011. In this paper, we study how the first nationalization policy, Nitaqat, affected the overall labor market and non-oil firms in the private sector, especially exporting firms. Our rich and novel data allow us to assess the effect of the policy on a wide set of outcomes: employment decisions by composition and size, the output and productivity of exporting firms, labor costs, and exit from the market. Using a difference-in-difference analysis, we compare the 2011 to 2012 change in outcomes between firms above and firms below the threshold required for the minimum share of Saudi workers in a firm. Our results suggest that the policy succeeded in encouraging firms to increase the share of Saudis in private firms. It also increased the share of Saudi women in the workforce, suggesting that the policy had a positive effect on increasing female labor force participation. However, these gains came at a very high cost to firms: our findings suggest that the policy led to a reduced firm size, reduced productivity and output of exporting firms, increased wage bill, increased share of low-skilled Saudi workers, and higher firm exit rates.Publication Female Labor in Jordan: A Systematic Approach to the Exclusion Puzzle(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2019-10) Kasoolu, Semiray; Hausmann, Ricardo; O'Brien, Tim; Santos, Miguel AngelWomen in Jordan are excluded from labor market opportunities at among the highest rates in the world. Previous efforts to explain this outcome have focused on specific, isolated aspects of the problem and have not exploited available datasets to test across causal explanations. We develop a comprehensive framework to analyze the drivers of low female employment rates in Jordan and systematically test their validity, using micro-level data from Employment and Unemployment Surveys (2008-2018) and the Jordanian Labor Market Panel Survey (2010-2016). We find that the nature of low female inclusion in Jordan’s labor market varies significantly with educational attainment, and identify evidence for different factors affecting different educational groups. Among women with high school education or less, we observe extremely low participation levels and find the strongest evidence for this phenomenon tracing to traditional social norms and poor public transportation. On the higher end of the education spectrum – university graduates and above – we find that the problem is not one of participation, but rather of unemployment, which we attribute to a small and undiversified private sector that is unable to accommodate women’s needs for work and work-family balance.