People and their jobs: What could be more basic to a person's well being? Where people work determines how they live, how their families live, and how economies perform. The quantity and quality of jobs available has implications for individuals and countries alike. That is why the problems with...

Latin America in the 1990s remains the most unequal region in the world in terms of income distribution. Yet because of its changing demographics -declining fertility rates and large number of young people entering the workforce- the region now has a unique window of opportunity to reduce the...

Recent studies of Latin American labor markets have focused on analysis of the determinants, evolution, and implications of increasing informal arrangements between workers and employers. This book adds to that tradition with a refreshed dynamic and causal perspective that exploits novel panel...

The objective of this paper is to identify whether the prevailing Brazilian labor market regulations, largely the result of the 1988 constitutional change, have any impact on labor market performance. To reach this objective the authors explore alternative methodologies, sources of information...

There are few Latin American countries that produced such a remarkable turnaround in policies and outcomes as Argentina did in the 1990s. The large number of reforms yielded surprisingly strong growth and the near-disappearance of inflation. Perhaps the most striking change took place in the...

This paper considers the main institutional features of the Uruguayan labor market and its recent evolution, with a focus on unemployment. The main policies aimed at protecting workers against unemployment are analyzed. Using administrative data from social security records, the paper studies...

This paper evaluates Programa Joven, a training program conducted by Argentina's Ministerio del Trabajo. The paper adapts and applies a non-experimental evaluation methodology to answer the following questions: (1) Did Programa Joven increase the labor income of the trainees? (2) Did Programa...

Providing unemployment insurance is particularly problematic in countries with high informality because workers can claim unemployment benefits and work in the informal sector at the same time. This paper proposes a method to evaluate alternative schemes to provide insurance for unemployed...

Stolper-Samuelson (SS) and Specific-Factors (SF) versions make opposite predictions about the correlation between prices and wages of certain types of workers (specific factors in industries) when they are not used intensively. The analysis in this paper provides evidence that may allow one to...

This paper analyzes the effects of several aspects of labor legislation that were modified through successive waves of reform since 1991. Firing costs diminished sharply through the progressive elimination of job security regulations, the introduction of temporary contracts and changes in the...