Prof. Jacques Charmes

Jacques Charmes (Prof)―Member GIDE Board of Directors & Chair, Policy Research Committee; He is an economist and statistician. Currently emeritus research director at the French Scientific Research Institute for Development (IRD, formerly ORSTOM), he was until recently director of the Department of Social and Health Sciences at this institute, and professor of economics at the University of Versailles and at the Institute for Political Science (Sciences Po) in Paris. Jacques has been involved in the design and analysis of many labour force, living standards, informal sector and time-use surveys in Africa, North and South of Sahara. He has written several articles, reports and manuals on the measurement of informal sector in the labour force and National Accounts, with special emphasis on women. He has participated in many UN, ILO and World Bank programmes and activities on these topics, especially: the new international definition of the informal sector adopted in 1993 (15th International Conference of Labour Statisticians, ICLS), the definition of informal employment (17th ICLS, 2003), the handbook on the household sector accounts for the implementation of the new System of National Accounts (UNSD), the handbook on measurement of the non-observed economy (OECD, 2002), the UN World's Women statistics compilations, and the recent 2012 ILO manual on “Measuring Informality: a statistical manual for the measurement of informal sector and informal employment” as well as national human development reports in various regions. He has been compiling data on size, contribution and characteristics of informal sector and informal employment across developing regions and over decades for the OECD (“The informal sector revisited”, 1990, “Is informal normal?” 2009) and the ILO/WIEGO “Women and men in the informal economy”, for the International Labour Conference in 2002 and 2012. The most recent update has been published in Margin—The Journal of Applied Economic Research, 6:2 (2012): 103–132: ‘The informal economy worldwide: trends and characteristics’. Recently he has been involved in two large programs with the UN Economic Commission for Africa (African Centre for Gender and Social Development): the African Gender and Development Index (AGDI) applied in more than 30 countries and the “Guidebook for mainstreaming gender perspectives and household production into national statistics, budgets and policies in Africa”. Jacques is one of the founding members of the international network WIEGO (Women in the Informal Economy : Globalizing and Organizing). [FRANCE]

Sample Publications

Charmes J. The measurement of informal sector and informal employment in Africa and its use in national accounts. Report for the African Centre of Statistics, (UNECA, Addis Ababa, 47p. 2014)

Charmes J. (forthcoming), ‘Informality after 40 years of debates: origins, development and ambiguities of a successful concept’, (World Development 2014).

Charmes, J. co-author Measuring Informality : A statistical manual on the informal sector and informal employment, (Geneva, 323p, 2013).

Charmes J. Compendium of gender statistics in Africa, Report for the African Centre of Statistics, (UNECA, Addis Ababa, 60p. 2013)

Charmes J. ‘The informal economy worldwide: trends and characteristics’ in Margin (The Journal of Applied Economic Research, 6 : 2 (2012): 103–132, 2012).

Charmes J.  Informal Economy and Labour Market Policies and Institutions in Selected Mediterranean Countries: Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Algeria and Morocco‟, ILO, Geneva, 23p (2010)

Charmes J. “Statistics on Informal Employment in the Arab Region”, Chapter 3 of “Gender Equality and Workers’ Rights in the Informal Economies of Arab States”, ILO Tunis, 116p. (pp.54-72) (2008).

Charmes J., Gender and time poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa, A review of empirical evidence, in Blackden M. and Woddon Q. (eds), Gender, time-Use and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank Working Paper n° 73, Washington, 152p. (pp. 39-72, 2005). 

Charmes, J et al., Handbook for Measurement of the  Non Observed Economy, OECD, IMF, ILO, 240p, 2004

Charmes J. and Saskia E. Wieringa, ‘Measuring Women’s Empowerment: an Assessment of the Gender Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure’, (Journal of Human Development, Vol. 4, N° 3, London, New York, UNDP, pp. 419-435, 2003).

Charmes J., Contribution of Women Working in the Informal Sector in Africa: a Case Study. Paper prepared for the United Nations Statistics Division. "Umbrella Gender Statistics Programme" (presented at the Delhi Group Meeting on Informal Sector Statistics. Ankara. 28-30th April 1998).

Charmes J., Informal Sector, Poverty and Gender; A Review of Empirical Evidence, Background Paper for the World Development Report 2001, (World Bank, 44p. 1998)

Charmes J., Progress in measurement of the informal sector: employment and share of GDP, in Handbook of National Accounting, Household Accounting: Experiences in the Use of Concepts and Their Compilation, (United Nations, Statistics Division, studies in methods, series F, n° 75  1997)

Charmes J., Recent developments in some European data collection systems pertaining the informal sector, in B. Herman and W. Stoffers (eds.): Unveiling the Informal Sector. More than counting heads, (Avebury, England, 251 p. 1996)