Publication: Informality and Productivity in the Labor Market in Peru
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Date
2008
ISSN
17487870
Published
2008
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This article analyzes the evolution of informal employment in Peru from 1986 to 2001. Contrary to what one would expect, the informality rates increased steadily during the 1990s despite the introduction of flexible contracting mechanisms, a healthy macroeconomic recovery, and tighter tax codes and regulation. We explore different factors that may explain this upward trend including the role of labor legislation and labor allocation between/within sectors of economic activity. Finally, we illustrate the negative correlation between productivity and informality by evaluating the impacts of the Youth Training PROJOVEN Program that offers vocational training to disadvantaged young individuals. We find significant training impacts on the probability of formal employment for both males and females.
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Publication Occupational Training to Reduce Gender Segregation: The Impacts of ProJoven(2008)This paper illustrates the process of program evaluation for ProJoven, the Peruvian youth labor training program. The program provides beneficiaries with basic three-month training in low-skill occupations and with internship opportunities. ProJoven's design promotes gender equality by encouraging female participation in training for traditionally male-dominated occupations and by providing subsidies so mothers with children can participate. Complementing detailed fieldwork in search of the appropriate control group, the econometric work implements a two-stage matching procedure that includes propensity scores (on the first stage), and gender and labor income (on the second one). The matching on gender allows identification of differentiated program impacts on men and women. The matching on income attacks the problem of Ashenfelter's Dips. 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This paper first develops an account of treaty compliance that incorporates the intrinsic benefits to the state of compliance, regime costs associated with certain rights, the political costs that NGOs, judges, and others are able to impose for non-compliance, and the fiscal and economic costs of compliance. The paper argues that for child survival rights, fiscal and economic costs are likely to be dispositive, and that as a result richer countries are more likely to comply. The paper then uses an instrumental variable approach to investigate whether ratification of the Convention of the Rights of the Child was associated with stronger effort at the country level on child survival rights. It finds that ratification of the CRC was correlated with a subsequent increase in immunization rates, but only in upper middle and high income countries.Publication Informality and Protection from Health Shocks : Lessons from Yemen(2011-08-01)The informal sector is generally believed to be more vulnerable to various risks due to limited access to social insurance, but little empirical evidence exists to support this statement. This paper examines the relationship between informality and protection from health risks in Yemen. The formal sector, when defined based on pension coverage, largely overlaps with public employment where the better educated, more experienced, and better informed tend to work. The results indicate that, even after accounting for socio-economic status, water supply and quality conditions, risky behavior patterns, and unobserved heterogeneity, formal sector households have better accessibility and affordability to health service. 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