This chapter reviews what economists have learned about the impact of labor market institutions, defined broadly as government regulations and union activity on labor outcomes in developing countries. It finds that: (1) Labor institutions vary greatly among developing countries but less than...

Between 2000 and 2009, the Gini coefficient declined in 13 of 17 Latin American countries for which comparable data exist. The decline was statistically significant and robust to changes in the time interval, inequality measures and data sources. In depth country studies for Argentina, Brazil,...

Spain's structural reforms, implemented around 2012, have arguably contributed to a faster and stronger economic recovery. In particular, there is strong evidence that the 2012 labor market reforms increased wage flexibility, which helped the Spanish economy to regain competitiveness and create...

This paper explores potential gendered effects of employment protection on earnings mobility, differentiating between upward and downward movements. We conduct a micro-macro mobility analysis for 23 European countries over the economic downturn period 2008–2014. The results confirm that,...

The minimum wage has been regarded as an important element of public policy for reducing poverty and inequality. Increasing the minimum wage is supposed to raise earnings for millions of low-wage workers and therefore lower earnings inequality. However, there is no consensus in the existing...

Minimum wage (MW) policies are widespread in the developing world and yet their effects are still unclear. In this paper we explore the effect of national MW policies in Latin America’s six largest economies by exploiting the heterogeneity in the bite of the national minimum wage across local...

The process of structural transformation forms the very basis of economic growth and development. This paper analyses the implications of alternate patterns of structural change for changes in the overall distribution of income within an economy. An empirical analysis is carried out based on...

Participation in the informal economy has skyrocketed in China, coinciding with emerging labour markets that are segmented along lines of ethnicity, gender and migrant status. While a large body of literature examines migrant and female outcomes in the labour market, minority outcomes are much...

This study aims to bridge the gap in the existing literature by examining the impact of prevailing traditional slavery institutions and democratization processes on human capital development. In our pursuit, we conducted a residential survey in Sumba Island, Indonesia. Notably, despite...