While several studies have documented the expansion of the informal sector and its detrimental impact on development, few have noted that informality and wage inequality tend to move together. Using Mexico as a case study, I show that between 1987 and 2002 wage inequality within informal workers...

Few studies in the field of labor economics have analyzed the earnings differential between formal and informal employees in urban China. Due to data limitations, previous studies on this subject have not yielded accurate and widely acceptable results. This study seeks to obtain more accurate...

This paper defines informal sector employment and decomposes the difference in earnings between formal and informal sector employees in Tajikistan for 2007. Using quantile regression decomposition technique proposed by JAE, 20:445-465, 2005 and considering self-selection of individuals into...

During the first decade of the twentieth century, the Uruguayan labor market showed a significant decline in wage inequality and in the incidence of labor informality, while similar changes also took place in other Latin American countries. These trends were observed in a period of strong...

This paper examines the earnings penalties and premiums associated with different types of employment in 73 countries. Workers are divided into four categories: non-professional own-account workers, employers and own-account professionals, informal wage employees, and formal wage employees....

Using rich administrative and household survey data spanning 34 years from 1985 to 2018, we document a series of new facts on earnings inequality and dynamics in a developing country with a large informal sector: Brazil. Since the mid‐1990s, both inequality and volatility of earnings have...

We develop a theoretical framework that considers the role played by moral hazard and the diversity of networks and cultures in the choice of hiring channel. In favoritism contexts social networks, and particularly strong ties, are adopted as hiring channels for unskilled jobs and result in wage...

Levy (2008) has suggested that the expansion of non-targeted social programs could be inducing an increase in economic informality in countries like Mexico. This hypothesis, however, assumes the existence of integrated and competitive labor markets in the economy. In this work we test this...

According to the existing literature, informality rates for Russia vary in a wide range from slightly more than 5 to nearly 30%. The question arises: what are the causes and consequences of such a huge variation? Using RMLS data for 2009 the author investigates the degree of congruence between...

The main objective of this paper is to highlight the determinants of informal sector activity with a special focus on informal self-employment opposed to informal wage employment. For this purpose we build a theoretical framework to show the important role of education in occupational choice. To...