LIBERALIZAÇÃO COMERCIAL E DEMANDA POR TRABALHO QUALIFICADO NO BRASIL

This paper aims to understand the dynamic of the relative demand for skilled labor in Brazilian industry, during the last decade. Thus, presenting evidences that relative demand for skill increased overall in the period, it seeks to explain this movement, at least in part. For this, we test the hypothesis of skill biased technological changes in an environment of economic opening. The results indicate that a greater share of imported intermediate goods in factories, signaled by the reduction in the tariffs charged on these goods, explains the shift in relative demand for skilled labor, throughout an increasing in the relative productivity between skilled and unskilled workers. This points out to the fact that the hypothesis of skill biased technological changes explains, at least in part, the shift in the relative demand for skilled labor.

FAMÍLIAS TRABALHADORAS E FAMÍLIAS SEM TRABALHO: EVIDÊNCIAS DE POLARIZAÇÃO PARA O BRASIL

This article analyzes the work polarization in Brazil. We can define polarization as the difference between the observed ratio of workless households and the ratio that would prevailed if the work was randomly assigned to people. For example, imagine a simplified world with only two households with two members each, and that there is two people working in the economy. The well-being is very different if just one member of each family is working, or if the two workers belong to the same family. Gregg and Wadsworth (2002) propose some polarization measures, which we calculate for Brazil, using the data from Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD) for 1981 and 2003. The results show that polarization is negative in Brazil. In other words there is fewer workless households than would occur from a random distribution of work among adults. On the other hand, the polarization has increased in the period, as result of the increase in the fraction of two adult workless households. Moreover, the workless households are poorer, have more child labor and are more dependent of governmental policies than the others.

OS DETERMINANTES EMPÍRICOS DA FELICIDADE NO BRASIL

This paper investigates the role that economic variables play in the determination of happiness, using reported happiness as a proxy to individual well-being. We use microdata extracted from the World Values Survey for five countries, emphasizing the Brazilian case. Our findings suggest that there is a positive and significant correlation between happiness and income. Unemployment seems to have an even higher impact, arising as a large source of unhappiness. Other variables, such as age, gender, education and marital status are controlled for. In most cases, happiness appears to be positively correlated to being married. Moreover, happiness is apparently U-shaped in age (minimizing at 50's).

OS DETERMINANTES DAS TRANSIÇÕES OCUPACIONAIS NO MERCADO DE TRABALHO BRASILEIRO

In this paper, we examine the determinants of workers' mobility across the formal and informal sector of the Brazilian economy, end from these to the states of unemployment, self-employment and inactivity in the 1980s and 1990s, using longitudinal data from Monthly household surveys for 6 metropolitan regions in Brazil and multinomial logit regression models. We examine the role of demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, education na region of residence, and the time that the worker was in the specific state. Moreover, we compare the transition processes in 1984 and in 2001, to examine the determinants of the big rise in informality that took place in the 1990s. The results point to a higher exit probability from the formal sector for the men, younger and less skilled workers, with the exception of the most skilled, which have a higher probability of transiting to the informal sector. Moreover, workers that are in the formal sector for a shorter period of time have a higher probability of transiting out of it. In the beginning of the new century, the transition process to informality and unemployment generalized, mainly with respect to education and age categories.