An estimation of the wage curve for Uruguay

This paper analyzes the existence of a wage curve in Uruguay. We run several models using data for the period 1986-2005. We use two different proxies of the wage and we estimate both microdata and cell-mean regressions. Besides, we run the model for the whole sample and for groups of individuals disaggregated by level of education, gender, age and occupation. The results are consistent with the range of values found in similar studies for other countries. We find a negative relation between unemployment and wages. Specifically, we obtain an elasticity of -0.09. We find a higher elasticity for the youth, women and less educated workers. We also obtain difference results when disaggregating by occupation and formality. The results suggest that an increase of unemployment pushes up informality and self-employment which lead to a depression of earnings in these sectors. Thus, informality and self-employment would act as a buffer for unemployed formal wage earners.