This paper analyzes the reaction of teachers' and doctors' unions to a series of social sector reforms in the region, including administrative decentralization, provider payment mechanisms, and the introduction of performance evaluation and private provision. It combines the literature of...

This paper considers the effects of trade unions on the education sector in Argentina. We have provided a substantial amount of new information and we have found useful preliminary results on some of the channels of union influence on the performance of this crucial sector. We find that those...

This paper analyzes the evolution and current profile of teacher unionization and estimate the impact of unionization on the quality of public education in Peru. The research uses data from a 1999 household survey (ENAHO) and from a recent evaluation of a public program oriented to improve the...

The general perception of unions in the Guatemalan business community has been that they have a negative effect on firms. Although this is a strong statement, there are very few studies of unionization in Guatemala, and most of them are only descriptive. This paper provides an econometric...

Using a pooled sample, this paper indicates that unions seem to affect the economic performance of Brazilian establishments, especially in terms of profitability, employment and productivity. Unions tend to reduce profitability, whereas the relationship between union density and productivity,...

The paper documents the sharp reduction in union density in Peru between 1986 and 1998, in a context of large macroeconomic fluctuations, structural reforms and changes in the Collective Bargaining Law in 1993. Using a pseudo panel of household surveys we find which worker and firm...

This study examines the impact of unions on wages and employment using data from Uruguay in a period when unions were banned (1973-1984), then legalized with tripartite bargaining (1984-1991) followed by industry-wide or firm-specific bargaining (1992-1997). The relationship between wages and...

The main contribution of this paper with respect to previous work is the use of data on subjective perceptions to identify the Latin American middle classes. This paper provides a set of comparisons between objective and subjective definitions of middle-class using data from the 2007 World...

Latin American countries have long exhibited low levels of saving rates when compared to other countries in relatively similar stages of economic development (e.g., Asian economies). Motivated by this fact, this paper examines the time path of the saving rates between 1970 and 2010 in three...

Earnings inequality declined rapidly in Argentina, Brazil and Chile during the 2000s. A reduction in the experience premium is a fundamental driver of declines in upper-tail (90/50) inequality, while a decline in the education premium is the primary determinant of the evolution of lower-tail...