Search Results
Journal Article
A mixed blessing: oil and Latin American economies
Working Paper
Undocumented worker employment and firm survivability
Do firms employing undocumented workers have a competitive advantage? Using administrative data from the state of Georgia, this paper investigates the incidence of undocumented worker employment across firms and how it affects firm survival. Firms are found to engage in herding behavior, being more likely to employ undocumented workers if competitors do. Rivals' undocumented employment harms firms' ability to survive while firms' own undocumented employment strongly enhances their survival prospects. This finding suggests that firms enjoy cost savings from employing lower-paid undocumented at ...
Journal Article
Official dollarization and the banking system in Ecuador and El Salvador
In January 2000 Ecuador adopted the U.S. dollar as legal tender, and El Salvador followed suit in 2001. The two countries officially dollarized under quite different circumstances: Ecuador was suffering an economic and banking crisis, while El Salvador enjoyed economic stability and low inflation rates. This article studies the evolution of the banking system in these two countries before and after official, or full, dollarization. ; In Ecuador the reforms that ensued from full dollarization have improved transparency and banking performance and competitiveness, but the implementation and ...
Journal Article
Reform fatigue: symptoms, reasons, and implications
Following a period of ambitious promarket reforms, Latin American policymakers and the public at large have entered a period of ?reform fatigue.? Initial enthusiasm for policies such as liberalized markets and a level field for investors has given way more recently to the view that ambitious promarket reforms are to blame for the region?s economic crises. The process of reform has stalled in some countries, and a few have suffered serious setbacks. ; To help explore the future of reform, this article aims to document and explain the symptoms of fatigue among the public, policymakers, and ...
Working Paper
Employer monopsony power in the labor market for undocumented workers
Using matched employer-employee data from the state of Georgia, this paper investigates the potential for employer monopsony power in the labor market for undocumented workers. We find that the labor supply elasticity of undocumented workers is about 13 percent lower than that estimated for documented workers, suggesting that at least some of the observed wage gap between documented and undocumented workers can be explained by firms' exploiting their monopsony power. There is also evidence of some displacement, with the hiring of undocumented workers being associated with a small amount of ...
Working Paper
Does employing undocumented workers give firms a competitive advantage?
Using administrative data from the state of Georgia, this paper finds that on average, among all firms, employing undocumented workers reduces a firm's hazard of exit by 19 percent. However, the impact varies greatly across sectors. In addition, a firm is at a distinct disadvantage if it does not employ undocumented workers but its rivals do. The advantage to employing undocumented workers increases as more firms in the industry do so. In addition, the advantage to a firm from employing undocumented workers decreases with the skill level of the firm's workers, increases with the breadth of a ...
Journal Article
Argentina: the end of convertibility
Working Paper
Can capital-skill complementarity explain the rising skill premium in developing countries? evidence from Peru
The factors behind the increase in the relative wages of skilled workers in developing countries are still not well understood. The authors use data from Peru to analyze the determinants of within-industry share of skilled workers. They use a translog cost function for gross output and are therefore able to incorporate the effects of materials, both domestic and imported, in addition to capital. The authors find that capital accumulation can explain a large fraction of the increase in the wage bill share and relative wages of skilled labor. This finding is contrary to the commonly held view ...
Journal Article
Monetary policy alternatives for Latin America
During the 1990s, many Latin American countries began to address their problems with recession, inflation, and unemployment through dramatic economic reforms and monetary policy strategies that included exchange rate pegs, monetary aggregate targeting, or inflation targeting. Inflation targeting, in particular, had begun to lower inflation rates and to stabilize or increase real economic growth in countries such as New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom. But has inflation targeting proved as successful for Latin American economies? ; This article describes the recent history of monetary ...
Working Paper
Trade and the skill premium in developing countries: the role of intermediate goods and some evidence from Peru
The rise in income inequality in developing countries after trade liberalization has been a puzzle for trade theory, which predicts the opposite effect. The authors present a model with imported intermediate goods in which the relative wages of skilled labor can rise due to higher imports of inputs or due to skill-biased technological change. The evidence from Peru in the post-liberalization phase in the early 1990s supports the skilled-biased technological change hypothesis. The authors find that most of the decrease in the blue-collar wage share in the manufacturing industries can be ...