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...

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...

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 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...

Since the late 1980s, macroeconomic and trade reform in Brazil appears to have been accompanied by a substantial improvement in the position of women compared with men in the labor market, despite only modest changes to labor market institutions. The authors examine movements in the gender wage...

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 article examines wage determination in Brazilian manufacturing during the 1980s and early 1990s. It presents evidence to show that the reduction in state regulation of collective bargaining has led to the development of a system of wage determination which is increasingly characterised by...

The effect of new technology on relative demands for workers has been the subject of much research in economics. <link rid="b23">Krueger (1993)</link> and others have studied the impact of computers on earnings in the US and elsewhere. Such studies have been criticised for ignoring the possibility of bias due to...