Indicators for quality of schooling are not only relatively new in the world but also unavailable for a sizable share of the world's population. In their absence, some proxy measures have been devised. One simple but powerful idea has been to use the schooling premium for migrant workers in the...

We construct a simple model incorporating various urban labour market phenomena obtaining in developing economies. Our initial formulation assumes an integrated labour market and allows for entrepreneurship, self-employment and wage employment. We then introduce labour market segmentation. In...

This paper develops a model in which the interaction of entrepreneurial investments and power of the owners of land or other natural resources determines structural change and economic development. A more equal distribution of natural resources promotes structural change and growth through two...

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...

This article explores the variation in the wage distributions of two Latin American countries, Bolivia and Colombia, which have had different political and economic strategies in recent years. Using data from household surveys, a decomposition of the wage distribution in each country using...

Exogenous shocks often impact a local labor market more than at the national level. This study improves upon the standard Difference in Difference (DD) approach by examining exogenous shocks using a Generalized Difference in Difference (GDD) econometric approach that identifies the effects of...

We develop a new general equilibrium model of trade with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticities and endogenously determined wages. Trade integration favors wage convergence, intensifies competition, and forces the least efficient firms to leave the market, thereby affecting aggregate...

The traditional model of taste discrimination in labor markets presumes perfect substitution, making it unsuitable for the measurement of discrimination across job assignments. We extend the model to explain cross-assignment discrimination and test it on data from Major League Baseball. A...

This paper compares the poverty reduction impact of income sources, taxes and transfers across five OECD countries. Since the estimation of that impact can depend on the order in which the various income sources are introduced into the analysis, it is done by using the Shapley value. Estimates...

In this paper, we investigate whether business cycles can imply sizable effects on average unemployment. First, using a reduced-form model of the labor market, we show that job finding rate fluctuations generate intrinsically a non-linear effect on unemployment: positive shocks reduce...