From Roads to Jobs: How the Belt and Road Initiative Shapes Employment in OECD Countries

Abstract

While the Belt and Road Initiative’s (BRI) effects on trade, investment, and growth are well documented, its labor market implications for advanced economies remain underexplored. This study examines whether and under what conditions BRI participation influences employment in OECD economies. Using an unbalanced panel from 2000 to 2024 (World Development Indicators) and a difference-in-differences framework with country and year fixed effects (2014 as the intervention), we find that BRI engagement significantly improves employment-to-population ratios. Dynamic estimates reveal accumulating and persistent effects. Robustness checks, including placebo tests, lagged specifications, winsorization, entropy balancing, and heterogeneity analyses, confirm the results’ stability. Moderation analyses further show that governance quality, income levels, and domestic capital formation strengthen the employment impact of BRI participation. This study contributes to BRI literature by documenting macro-level employment gains in advanced economies and highlighting the role of domestic conditions in shaping labor market responses to international infrastructure cooperation.