Social transition, economic development and gender-based wage disparity in a developing economy.

A four-sector competitive general equilibrium model has been developed with both male and female labour in presence of capital market distortion to analyse the effect of social transition on female labour force participation and gender-based wage inequality. The analysis finds that although gender wage inequality worsens in the existing structure, the consequence on female participation in the workforce depends on the stage of social transition. While it falls in the early stages, it begins to rise once a certain critical level of transition is crossed.

COVID-19 lockdown, family migration and unemployment in a gendered society.

COVID-19 has posed severe challenges not only to researchers in the field of medicines and natural sciences but also to policymakers. Almost all nations of the world lockdown have been chosen as an immediate response to this pandemic crisis. The labour market in developing economies continues to be gendered with gender-based wage differentials besides occupational segregation, women who are the marginalized section in the society, bear the brunt of the unprecedented COVID-19 lockdown.

COVID-19 disaster and employment generation program in a developing economy.

We develop a three-sector Harris-Todaro (HT)-type model for a developing economy to analyse the failure of the employment generation program in the rural sector as a policy response to counter Covid-19-induced reverse migration of labour. First, we distinguish between two alternative modes of implementation of the program and show how they produce diverse outcomes on both unemployment and welfare. Welfare is measured in terms of Sen's (Sen, J Public Econ 4:387-403, 1974) index which is inequality (distributional) sensitive.