Very little is known about the effectiveness of SME policies, and a careful look at the structure, mechanisms and incentives provided by these policies suggest caution in their implementation and, most importantly, the need to carefully and closely monitor their results. This paper relies on the...

The unemployment and labor force participation gender gaps narrowed in Mexico after the 2008 global economic crisis, when female labor force participation increased. This paper aims to understand female labor force participation growth and identify its main determinants. For that purpose, the...

This paper complements the findings of Atal, Ñopo and Winder (2010) on gender and ethnic wage gaps for 18 Latin American countries circa 2005 by analyzing gender wage gaps for the same countries between circa 1992 and circa 2007. During this span the overall gender earnings gaps dropped about 7...

This paper surveys gender and ethnic wage gaps in 18 Latin American countries, decomposing differences using matching comparisons as a non-parametric alternative to the Blinder-Oaxaca (BO) decomposition. It is found that men earn 9-27 percent more than women, with high cross-country...

This paper surveys gender earnings gaps in Colombia from 1994 to 2006, using matching comparisons to examine the extent to which individuals with similar human capital characteristics earn different wages. Three sub-periods are considered: 1994-1998; 2000-2001; and 2002- 2006, corresponding to the...

COVID-19 is likely to have a large impact on the welfare of Tunisian households. First, some individuals might be more vulnerable to contracting the disease because their living conditions or jobs make them more susceptible to meeting others or practicing social distancing. Lack of adequate...

This paper analyzes the evolution of the gender wage gap in Chile during the period 1992 to 2003 using the decomposition approach developed in Ñopo (2004). This approach, which decomposes the wage gap into four additive elements, stresses the need for comparisons inside the common support for...

A striking feature of labour supply in South Africa is the phenomenal expansion in the labourforce participation of women from 38 percent in 1995 to 46 percent in 2004. Even so, theirparticipation has been persistently lower than that of men whose participation rates were 58percent and 62...

The UK´s Equal Opportunities Commission has recently drawn attention to the hidden braindrain when women working part-time are employed in occupations below those for whichthey are qualified. These inferences were based on self-reporting...

Two particular features of the position of women in the British labour market are theextensive role of part-time work and the large part-time pay penalty. Part-time work featuresmost prominently when women are in their 30s, the peak childcare years and, particularly formore educated women, a...