Minimum Wages in Kenya

This paper examines the performance of minimum wage legislation in Kenya, both in terms of its coverage and enforcement as well as in terms of their implications for wages and employment. Our findings based on the 1998/99 labor force data – the last labor force survey available – indicate that minimum wages, which, in principle, apply to all salaried employees, were better enforced and had stronger effects in the non-agricultural industry than in the agricultural one. More specifically, our results suggest that (i) compliance rates were higher in occupations other than agriculture, (ii) minimum wages were positively associated with wages of low-educated workers and women in non-agricultural activities, while no such relationship is found for workers in agriculture, and (iii) higher minimum wages were associated with a lower share of workers in formal activities in a given occupation and location. Our estimates indicate that a 10 percent point increase in the minimum to median wage ratio could be associated with a decline in the share of formal employment of between 1.2-5.6 percentage points and an increase of between 2.7-5.9 points in the share of self-employment.Kenya, employment, minimum wages, wage

The Economic Effects of Employment Protection: Evidence from International Industry-Level Data

This paper examines the economic effects of employment protection legislation in a sample of developed and developing countries. Implementing a difference-in-differences test lessens the potentially severe endogeneity and omitted variable problems associated with cross-country regressions. This test is based on the hypothesis that employment protection regulations are more binding in sectors of activity exposed to higher volatility in demand or supply shocks. The analysis indicates that more stringent legislation slows down job turnover by a significant amount, and that this effect is more pronounced in sectors that are intrinsically more volatile. The paper also finds that employment and value added decline in the most affected sectors, and employment and output effects are driven by a decline in the net entry of firms. In contrast, average employment per plant is not significantly affected.

Human Capital Policies: What they Can and Cannot Do for Productivity and Poverty Reduction in Latin America

Raising labor productivity is recognized as a critical factor for increasing economic growth and reducing poverty levels in Latin America. Low levels of education continue to be singled out as the main obstacle to higher productivity in the region. We examine the scope for education to lift labor incomes above poverty levels in Latin America and find that in many countries education, by itself, has a positive, but limited, potential to increase wages above a minimum level. In general, the prospects are dim because progress in raising average schooling levels has been slow even under the best historical scenarios. We also examine whether the apparent failure of education can be explained by low wage returns to schooling, and poor underlying conditions. We find that investments in education continue to have important payoffs but poor underlying conditions explain the modest prospect for the role of education in the short run. This leads us to consider what additional policies should be pursued in order to ensure higher productivity for workers in the region.

Protección del empleo y flujo bruto de puestos de trabajo: un enfoque de diferencias en diferencias

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) En este trabajo se analiza el efecto de la normativa de protección del empleo sobre los flujos brutos de puestos de trabajo, en una muestra de países desarrollados y en desarrollo. Al aplicar una prueba de diferencias en diferencias, reducimos la magnitud de la pronunciada característica endógena, potencialmente grave, y omitimos problemas de variables relacionados con las regresiones de un país a otro. Esta prueba se basa en la hipótesis de que la normativa de estabilidad laboral es de naturaleza más obligatoria en algunos sectores de actividad económica que en otros, dependiendo de las características de cada sector, tales como la variación de la demanda o las sacudidas tecnológicas. A diferencia del grueso de la obra publicada, nuestro análisis indica que una normativa de estabilidad laboral más estricta desacelera los flujos brutos de puestos de trabajo, y esta tendencia es más pronunciada en sectores que requieren de una mayor flexibilidad laboral. Estos efectos ocurren dentro de la muestra de países desarrollados y en desarrollo, y son de una magnitud muy grande. Además, estos efectos son valederos independientemente de las variaciones de las medidas normativas, la cuantificación de los requisitos de flexibilidad de cada sector, las variables de control y las muestras.

Is there a bank lending channel of monetary policy in Spain?

This paper uses panel data on banks, for the period 1991-98, to test the existence of a bank-lending channel in the Spanish economy. In order to distinguish between loan demand and supply movements, several exercises are performed. First, we analyse the differential responses, to monetary policy changes, of bank lending by banks with different size, liquidity and capitalisation. Second, we analyse the response to an exogenous deposit-reducing shock a tax-induced shift from deposits to mutual fund shares). As this involves a pure loan supply shock, it best solves the above-mentioned identification problem. Our results are mostly against the existence of a bank-lending channel in the period under analysis. This result appears to be related to the important role of many small banks as collectors of savings, meaning they have a large volume of resources available for lending JEL Classification: C23, E44, E52, G21bank funding, bank lending, monetary transmission mechanism

Ties That Bind: Employment Protection and Labor Market Outcomes in Latin America

This paper reviews the regulations governing hiring, firing, overtime work, social security contributions, minimum wages, and collective bargaining in the region, examining their impact on labor market outcomes.

Patrones de victimización por el hampa en América Latina

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) En este trabajo se hace un perfil de las víctimas del hampa en América Latina. Se demuestra que al menos en el caso de los delitos contra la propiedad, las víctimas típicas del hampa en América Latina provienen de hogares adinerados y de clase media y que tienden a ser habitantes de las ciudades más grandes. También se demuestra que las familias que viven en ciudades que experimentan un crecimiento demográfico rápido tienen una mayor probabilidad de ser víctimas del hampa que las que viven en ciudades con una población estable. Se postulan varias explicaciones de estos hechos y aunque es prematuro presentar respuestas claras a algunas de las preguntas que se suscitan en este trabajo, al menos es posible rechazar algunas hipótesis plausibles. En general, los resultados indican que el hampa en las ciudades latinoamericanas es, en gran medida, producto de la incapacidad de muchas ciudades de la región de atender la creciente demanda de seguridad pública que generan los procesos apresurados y desorganizados de urbanización.

Seamless, Static Multi-Texturing of 3D Meshes

In the context of 3D reconstruction, we present a static multi-texturing system yielding a seamless texture atlas calculated by combining the colour information from several photos from the same subject covering most of its surface. These pictures can be provided by shooting just one camera several times when reconstructing a static object, or a set of synchronized cameras, when dealing with a human or any other moving object. We suppress the colour seams due to image misalignments and irregular lighting conditions that multi-texturing approaches typically suffer from, while minimizing the blurring effect introduced by colour blending techniques. Our system is robust enough to compensate for the almost inevitable inaccuracies of 3D meshes obtained with visual hull–based techniques: errors in silhouette segmentation, inherently bad handling of concavities, etc