Person: Hoyos Suarez, Alejandro
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Welfare economics; labor economics
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Last updated: January 31, 2023
Biography
Alejandro Hoyos has worked as a consultant for the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. His research has focused on topics in labor economics and education, such as gender wage disparities, informality, and inequality of opportunities. Past works include various studies on gender wage gaps in Latin America, recently published in a book by the IDB, and a paper on the effects of social programs on informal labor markets in Colombia, among others. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Chicago.
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Publication Effects of Colombia's Social Protection System on Workers' Choice between Formal and Informal Employment(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2014-10-02) Camacho, Adriana; Conover, Emily; Hoyos, AlejandroWe examine whether the Colombian government's expansion of social programs in the early 1990s, particularly the publicly provided health insurance, discouraged formal employment. Using household survey data and variation across municipalities in the onset of interviews for the SISBEN, the instrument used to identify beneficiaries for public health insurance, we find robust and consistent estimates of an increase in informal employment of approximately 4 percentage points. We find similar results using an alternative dataset, consisting of a panel of individuals interviewed for the first and second SISBEN. Our findings suggest that marginal individuals optimized when deciding whether to participate in the formal sector.Publication Effects of Colombia's Social Protection System on Workers' Choice between Formal and Informal Employment(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-08) Camacho, Adriana; Conover, Emily; Hoyos, AlejandroThis paper examines whether the Colombian government's expansion of social programs in the early 1990s, particularly the publicly provided health insurance, discouraged formal employment. Using household survey data and variation across municipalities in the onset of interviews for the SISBEN, the instrument used to identify beneficiaries for public health insurance, it shows robust and consistent estimates of an increase in informal employment of approximately 4 percentage points. Similar results are obtained using an alternative dataset, consisting of a panel of individuals interviewed for the first and second SISBEN. The findings suggest that marginal individuals optimized when deciding whether to participate in the formal sector.Publication Inequality of Opportunities in the Labor Market : Evidence from Life in Transition Surveys in Europe and Central Asia(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-10) Abras, Ana; Hoyos, Alejandro; Narayan, Ambar; Tiwari, SaileshThis paper attempts to quantify the degree of inequality of opportunity in labor market outcomes for a selection of countries in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region. We adapt the Human Opportunity Index (HOI) methodology that has been widely used to study opportunities of children to measures of inequality in the labor market for working age adults, using data from the Life in Transition Surveys (LiTS) conducted in 2006. We decompose the observed inequalities into components that are attributable to circumstances an individual was born into (e.g., gender, parents’ education, minority status, etc) and other characteristics (education and age). We conduct additional exercises with this measure, which examine: (i) comparisons with an expenditure-based measure of inequality of opportunity; (ii) the extent to which the measures of inequality resonate with individual perceptions of life satisfaction and fairness; and (iii) how the results for ECA countries compare with similar measures in the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. Our findings show substantial inequality of opportunity (attributable to circumstances that an individual was born into) in employment status in the ECA region and a high degree of heterogeneity across countries in the circumstances that matter the most for inequality. The correlations between measures and perceptions of inequality among citizens across ECA countries suggest that inequality between groups, including measures of inequality of opportunity, matter more than overall measures of inequality for citizen perceptions of "fairness". The results are robust to different definitions of jobs as opportunities.Publication Inequality of Opportunities Among Children: How Much Does Gender Matter?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-06-27) Hoyos, Alejandro; Narayan, AmbarAuthors apply a decomposition method to a measure of inequality of opportunities among children (the human opportunity index) to examine the question of how much does gender of a child contribute to inequality in access to critical services that should be available as basic minimum opportunities to all children. Authors use a database of 47 countries for which Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data is available during 2003-2010, four indicators for opportunities and a limited set of circumstances or characteristics of the child. On the average and for most countries, the contribution of gender of the child to inequality of opportunity in two measures of school attendance and immunization tends to be low and much below the contribution of household factors such as economic status and urban/rural location. In a few countries, however, gender still plays a more substantial role in influencing a child's access to a particular service. Preliminary evidence also suggests that inequalities and contributions of gender to inequality across opportunities are correlated, particularly for opportunities in the same sector.Publication Equality of Opportunities and Fiscal Incidence in Cote d'Ivoire(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-04) Cuesta, Jose; Abras, Ana; Hoyos, Alejandro; Narayan, AmbarThis study analyzes opportunities for children in Cote d'Ivoire, where opportunities refer to access to basic services and goods that improve the likelihood of a child maximizing his or her human potential. The principle that guides this analysis is one of equality of opportunity, which is that a child's circumstances at birth should not determine his or her access to opportunities. The analysis computes the Human Opportunity Index, which measures the extent to which access to basic services is universal and evenly distributed among children of different circumstances. Opportunities are limited in Cote d'Ivoire, despite some improvements in access to electricity and timely access to primary education. Otherwise, trends on access remain stagnant. Scale effects (variations across the board) are behind these trends, with little improvement observed from equalizing interventions. Circumstances such as region and household head characteristics affect a child's access to opportunities, while household incomes and a child's gender and ethnicity play a relatively small role in access differentials. Public spending on education opportunities is shown to be regressive and pro-rich, especially when analyzed across the distribution of circumstances rather than acroos income level.The groups of children that are particularly behind in terms of educational opportunities are those whose household heads lack primary education and reside in rural areas. Closing the enrollment gap of these children should be a priority for targeted educational interventions. However, improving opportunities may require more than a single type of intervention: opportunities with low coverage may need to be scaled up, while those with large inequalities of access may require equalizing interventions.