Soares, Fabio Veras;
(2005)
The informal labour market in Brazil: Job queue, trade liberalisation and minimum wage.
Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
The main concern of this thesis is to investigate several aspects of the informal sector in Brazil. First, it aims to establish and analyze in depth some stylized facts such as the increase in the size of the informal sector during the 1980's and the 1990's and the fall in the wage gap between formal and informal workers in the mid-1990's. Second, it tests whether informal sector workers queue for formal jobs. Third, it analyses the effect of policy changes on the informal sector. In this regard, it investigates the impact of the trade liberalisation process of the early 1990's on the proportion of informal workers and on the wage gap between formal and informal workers, and the impact of minimum wage hikes on the transitions to and from both the formal and informal sectors. As for the main results we find that: 1) Informal sector workers queue for formal jobs and that non-white, female, less educated, ''new entrants" and former informal workers are the groups with the lower probability of being chosen from the queue for formal jobs; 2) the fall in the wage gap between registered and non-registered workers in the manufacturing sector was affected by trade-related variables, particularly, by the import penetration ratio. However, we do not find robust evidence that trade liberalization had a substantial impact on the fall in the proportion of registered Workers; 3) there were no disemployment effects of the minimum wage in the 1980's, but there were some disemployment effects in the 1990's for both formal and informal sector workers. However, we find no strong evidence that minimum wage hikes led to transitions from formal to informal sector or to self-employment either in the 1980's or in the 1990's.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Title: | The informal labour market in Brazil: Job queue, trade liberalisation and minimum wage |
| Identifier: | PQ ETD:602606 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Thesis digitised by ProQuest. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Economics |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1446681 |
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