Making globalisation work for workers

As jobs losses continue to haunt the headlines, people are left asking if long-term unemployment is to be one of the so-called benefits from globalisation. This column reports on a conference aimed at understanding how globalisation can be made to work for workers.

On 23-24 June 2011, the ILO hosted a conference co-sponsored by CESifo, EFIGE, ILO and the World Bank and organised by the three of us. The conference featured frontier research into globalisation and labour markets. Keynote presentations were given by Elhanan Helpman (Harvard University) and David Autor (MIT). The final afternoon of the event was dedicated to policy debate and featured a keynote speech by Margaret McMillan (Tufts University) as well as interventions from ILO, OECD, UNCTAD, WTO, and the World Bank.

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