The main objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of the 1988 changes in labor market regulations on the level of employment and on the time required by firms to adjust their employment level to economic fluctuations. From the many aspects of labor market regulations, this study will...

We offer a decomposition for the variance of the current unemployment rate that not only measures the contributions of labor market flows but also of the approximation error embedded in other decompositions that use surrogates for the current rate. Using data for the United States and Brazil,...

The Pareto distribution has been used to describe firm sizes in many theoretical models for its convenience and empirical validity. We provide estimates of the Pareto parameters across industries and investigate the determinants of the shape of the firm size distribution in Brazil. The Pareto...

Over the past seventeen years the Brazilian macroeconomic performance has been considerably weaker than in previous decades. Inflation reached unprecedented levels and economic growth declined considerably. Despite the overall perception that macroeconomic performance is closely related to...

The objective of the paper is to estimate the impact of an increase of dismissal penalties, implemented by the 1988 Brazilian constitution, on the duration of employment spells. After a simple comparison of estimates of this variable in periods pre and post 1988 we made use of two alternative...

This paper investigates if the responsibility of the poverty level registered in Brazil is the poor operation of the labor market, in terms of underremuneration and underutilization of the labor factor. By means of a microsimulation based decomposition of distributional changes we assess the...

One of the main concerns with youths is the nem-nems, which correspond to the group of youths that are not investing in their productive skills through the activities of either studying or working. This study analyzes data from National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de...

Recent changes in public employment in Brazil generate costs to workers that leave this sector. In this study we investigate the wage loss that leaving public employees may experience if they were absorbed by the private sector. Using microdata from the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de...

This paper aims at contributing to the debate regarding the role of the minimum wage in Brazil. This is carried out by assessing its potential effects on the labor market outcomes, as well in terms of poverty alleviation and fiscal impact. First, a succinct description of the institutional...

Using an empirical age-period-cohort model we analyze the effects of different Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) public pension systems on financial imbalance, on inequality in permanent income, and on the rate of return of social security assets of heterogeneous agents in terms of gender and education....