The authors undertake an empirical examination of rates of return to human capital for men in Brazil, through the period of macroeconomic stabilization and trade liberalization, using data from the 1988, 1992, and 1998 Brazilian household surveys (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domic?os,...

This paper estimates changes in the rates of return to human capital across the earnings distribution using data from over a 10-year period for Brazil. It uses these estimates to simulate the separate impacts of changes in returns to skills and changes in the supply of skills on earnings...

A range of alternative empirical definitions of informal activity have been employed in the literature. Choice of definition is often dictated by data availability. Different definitions may imply very different conceptual understandings of informality. In this paper the authors investigate the...

A range of alternative empirical definitions of informal activity have been employed in the literature. Choice of definition is often dictated by data availability. Different definitions may imply very different conceptual understandings of informality. This paper investigates the degree of...

Summary Recent debate on the reasons for the informal sector has led to renewed focus on how to operationalize the measurement of informal employment. This paper investigates congruence between three empirical measures of the rate of informality using Brazilian household survey data for the...

This paper uses a computable general equilibrium model to simulate different trade liberalization policy scenarios and counterfactual microsimulations to assess the impacts of greater trade openness on household income distribution and poverty ratios. Our conclusion is that trade liberalization...

Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) is an example of successful diversification within the oil and gas sector and the country is now a global player in the energy industry. Diversifying its asset base so that the nonresource sector can continue to grow and generate jobs once the country’s oil reserves...