This paper studies the effects of the introduction of unemployment compensation (UC) in countries characterized by pervasive informality. We provide a simple framework to analyze the impact of UC on the allocation of workers between formal and informal activities, as well as the allocation of...

Exploiting an unemployment insurance (UI) reform in Brazil, we study incentive effects of UI in the presence of informal labor markets. We find that eligibility for UI benefits increases formal layoffs by twelve percent. Most of the additional formal layoffs are related to workers transitioning...

Informal self-employment is a major source of employment in developing countries. Its cyclical behavior is important to our understanding of the functioning of LDC labor markets, but turns out to be surprisingly complex. We develop a flexible model with two sectors: a formal salaried (tradable)...

The informal sector is often seen as a coping mechanism for firms that choose to evade registration fees or pay low wages. In this paper, I investigate the role of the informal sector in the impact of trade liberalization on welfare, employment and wage inequality in a model of trade with...

The non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) is not directly observable and the presence of informal workers imposes an additional challenge in its estimation. Countries with large informal sectors, traditional measures might not depict labor slack properly, as it has the wage...