Using firm level data on 70,000 enterprises in 107 countries, this paper finds important effects of access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and to a lesser extent, infrastructure bottlenecks in explaining patterns of job creation at the firm level. The paper focuses on how the...

The formality status of a job is the most widely used indicator of job quality in developing countries. However, a number of studies argue that, at least for some workers, the informality status may be driven by choice rather than exclusion. This paper uses job satisfaction data from three...

This paper investigates the relationship between part-time work and job satisfaction using a recent household survey from Honduras. In contrast to previous work for developed countries, this paper does not find a preference for part-time work among women. Instead, both women and men tend to...

This paper examines the economic effects of employment protection legislation in a sample of developed and developing countries. Implementing a difference-indifferences test lessens the potentially severe endogeneity and omitted variable problems associated with cross-country regressions. This...

This paper assesses labor market segmentation across formal and informal salaried jobs and self-employment in three Latin American and three transition countries. It looks separately at the markets for skilled and unskilled labor, inquiring if segmentation is an exclusive feature of the latter....

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...

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...

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...

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.

En la última década la orientación de las políticas microeconómicas dio un giro extraordinario en América Latina, pero la legislación laboral prácticamente no cambió. El propósito central de este trabajo es mostrar la magnitud de este atraso y señalar que en la mayoría de países se...