Economists have examined the impact of labor market regulations on the level of employment. But there are many reasons to suspect that the impact of regulations differs across types of workers. In this paper the authors take advantage of the unusually large variance in labor policy in Chile to...

América Latina e Caribe (ALC) reduziram sua desigualdade e sua pobreza e enfrentarão as próximas décadas com maior otimismo do que no passado. Conforme a região cresce, aparecem novos problemas que os responsáveis pela condução da política econômica devem enfrentar. Como oferecer...

This paper summarizes the main lessons learned from Law and Employment: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean, a forthcoming NBER book. It places Latin American economies and economic policies in a world context. The paper quantifies the cost of regulation in Latin America and OECD Europe...

Total factor productivity (TFP) in Latin America has not increased since the mid- 1970s, and in many countries it has declined. Moreover, resource misallocation can lower aggregate TFP. This paper presents evidence based on firm-level data from 10 Latin American countries to quantify the...

Seguro Popular was introduced in 2002 to provide health insurance to the 50 million Mexicans without Social Security. This paper tests whether the program has had unintended consequences, distorting workers'incentives to operate in the informal sector. The analysis examines the impact of Seguro...

Using firm level data on 70,000 enterprises in 107 countries, this paper finds important effects of access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and to a lesser extent, infrastructure bottlenecks in explaining patterns of job creation at the firm level. The paper focuses on how the...

This paper assesses labor market segmentation across formal and informal salaried jobs and self-employment in three Latin American and three transition countries. It looks separately at the markets for skilled and unskilled labor, inquiring if segmentation is an exclusive feature of the latter....