This paper investigates if changes in the minimum wage have influenced changes on the formality and informality rates, and the level of wages in Ecuador. A 12-year panel was built. It allows to overcome the short time span of household data and so to characterize changes over time. Results...

We show that a minimum wage introduced in the presence of asymmetric information about worker productivities will lead to lower unemployment levels than predicted by the standard labour market model with heterogeneous labour and symmetric information. -- minimum wages ; unemployment ; asymmetric...

We propose a dynamic model that explains why individuals may be reluctant to pick up work although the wage is above their reservation wage. Accepting low paid work will put them in an adverse position in future wage bargaining, as employers could infer the individual's low reservation wage from...

Individual labour productivities are often unobservable for firms when hiring new workers. Job protection may prevent firms ex post from using information about labour productivities. We show that a binding minimum wage introduced in the presence of job protection will lead to lower unemployment...

We show that a minimum wage introduced in the presence of asymmetric information about worker productivities will lead to lower unemployment levels than predicted by the standard labour market model with heterogeneous labour and symmetric information