The informal sector plays an important role in the functioning of labor markets in emerging economies. To characterize better this highly heterogeneous sector, we conduct a distributional analysis of the earnings gap between informal and formal employment in Brazil, Mexico and South Africa,...

This paper defines informal sector employment and decomposes the difference in earnings distributions between formal and informal sector employees in Tajikistan for 2007. Using the quantile regression decomposition technique proposed by Machado and Mata (2005), we find a significant informal...

In this paper we contrast the impact of the income gap between formal and informal sector on Mexico's income inequality to alternative explanations. Unlike previous studies we take a time series approach to analyze the determinants of income inequality for the period 1987-1999. We find that an...

We analyze wage differentials mobility between the formal and informal sector in urban Mexico, using panel data on five quarters drawn from Mexico's Urban Employment Survey. We develop a dynamic random effects panel data model. It consists of two separate wage equations for the two sectors and a...

We analyze wage differentials mobility between the formal and informal sector in urban Mexico, using panel data on five quarters drawn from Mexico's Urban Employment Survey. We develop a dynamic random effects panel data model. It consists of two separate wage equations for the two sectors and a...