This paper reviews the regulations governing hiring, firing, overtime work, social security contributions, minimum wages, and collective bargaining in the region, examining their impact on labor market outcomes.

This paper examines the impact of the recent wave of trade liberalization and economic reform on employment. Four alternative measures of openness and four measures of the real exchange rate are used to measure the impact of trade reforms on manufacturing and economy-wide employment. Across a...

Financial turmoil is becoming a fact of life in Latin America. The 1990s have been characterized by enormous volatility in the magnitude and cost of capital flows. The correlation of capital swings across disparate countries suggests that the quality of emerging market policies in addition to...

In recent years, and especially in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, a number of emerging market economies have been reforming their regulatory frameworks to adopt recommendations of the macroprudential approach. This paper discusses the potential usefulness of implementing this...

This paper complements previous studies by arguing that the low private savings ratio in Latin America can be associated with the limited confidence of households and businesses in domestic financial institutions. Previous studies have established a relationship between private savings and...

Economists have examined the impact of labor market regulations on the level of employment. However, there are many reasons to suspect that the impact of regulations differs across types of workers. In this paper we take advantage of the unusually large variance in labor policy in Chile to...

This paper develops a simple model to analyze the impact of tenure-based severance payments on firms' hiring and firing decisions. The findings are that under certain conditions, this feature leads to a Last-in First-out firing policy. Also, reforms that increase the slope of the...

This paper analyzes the recent performance of Latin American labor markets. We find that unemployment rates are on the rise in most countries and sub-regions of Latin America. The rise in unemployment over the 1990s is not driven by a higher proportion of women, adults or urban workers in the...

Raising labor productivity is recognized as a critical factor for increasing economic growth and reducing poverty levels in Latin America. Low levels of education continue to be singled out as the main obstacle to higher productivity in the region. We examine the scope for education to lift...

Este estudio examina la situación laboral en el Perú y encuentra evidencia de una profunda transformación en el mercado de trabajo durante los noventa. En primer lugar, la creación de empleos en el sector privado se aceleró enormemente a partir de 1992. Sin embargo, el fuerte y simultaneo...