The Impact of Regulations on Brazilian Labor Market Performance

The objective of this paper is to identify whether the prevailing Brazilian labor market regulations, largely the result of the 1988 constitutional change, have any impact on labor market performance. To reach this objective the authors explore alternative methodologies, sources of information and measures of labor market performance. The paper briefly describes the 1988 constitutional change, with special emphasis on topics related to labor costs; two alternative measures of labor market performance, the first of which is based on parameters estimated from a labor demand model, and the second based on turnover rates. Later, the authors describe the implementation of the regression analysis through which they estimate the parameters of labor demand. Finally, it discusses the results achieved when we use turnover rates to measure labor market performance.