• Most of the urban poor in developing countries spend their lives in insecure, poorly paid jobs • They participate in economic growth, and adjust to economic change, through urban labour markets • Pro-poor urbanisation requires labour intensive growth, supported by labour protection, flexible land use regulation and investments in basic services U rbanisation is taking place on a massive scale...

Labour market reforms face very often opposition from the employed workers, because it normally reduces their wages. Also product market regulations are regularly biased towards too much benefitting the firms. As a result there remain many frictions in both the labour and product markets that hinder an optimal functioning of the economy. These issues have recently received a lot of attention in...