Labour force participation is comparable to the OECD area for prime-age males. It is somewhat lower for females and is trending down for youths as a result of rising school enrolment. The labour market is placing an increasing premium on skills, making it particularly difficult for the less...

It is often argued that informal labour markets in developing countries are the engine of growth because their existence allows firms to operate in an environment where wage and regulatory costs are lower. On the other hand informality means that the amount of social protection offered to...

How much employment can be generated by decreasing payroll taxes? We examine this question by exploring the staggered rollout of a large payroll tax reform in Brazil. Using administrative matched employer-employee data, we find an increase of 5 percent on employment due to both firm growth and...

This paper studies the role of labor courts in determining labor market outcomes in the Brazilian economy. First, by exploring the fact that judges are assigned randomly to cases and using the universe of labor lawsuits filed in the country's largest labor courthouse from 2008 to 2013, we show...

Recently, many researches have tried to gain a better understanding of the Brazilian labor market, using microdata from PNAD, PME and other sources. In the present paper, we examine the evolution of women labor force participation in the labor market between 1982 and 1997. The results point to a...