Los sindicatos y rendimiento económico en los países en desarrollo: Estudios de Casos de América Latina

This paper analyzes the economic impact of unions on productivity in the manufacturing sector across six Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, and Panama. Using an augmented Cobb-Douglas production function, the paper finds that unions have positive, but mostly small, effects on productivity, with the exception of Argentina, with a large negative effect, and Bolivia, with no effect. An analysis on profitability shows that, in most cases, the positive productivity effects barely offset higher union compensation, and that unions are negatively related to investment in capital and R & D. Different explanations for these effects are discussed.Este artículo analiza el impacto económico de los sindicatos sobre la productividad en el sector manufacturero en seis países de América Latina: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, México, Uruguay y Panamá. Utilizando una función de producción aumentada de Cobb-Douglas, el documento encuentra que los sindicatos tienen efectos positivos, pero sobre todo pequeños, sobre la productividad, con la excepción de Argentina, con un gran efecto negativo, y Bolivia, sin efecto. Un análisis de la rentabilidad muestra que, en la mayoría de los casos, los efectos positivos de la productividad apenas compensan una indemnización sindical más alta, y que los sindicatos están relacionados negativamente con la inversión en capital y en I + D. En el artículo se discuten diferentes explicaciones de estos efectos

Domestic Violence and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from a Mixed-Race Developing Country

This study investigates the heterogeneous effects of domestic violence over labor markets in an ethnically fragmented country such as Bolivia. Among developing countries, Bolivia “excels” in having one of the highest levels of domestic violence in the region. Anecdotal evidence and empirical evidence suggest that response to domestic violence is not homogeneous across different ethnic groups. Using information from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) for Bolivia, we examine the heterogeneous impacts of domestic violence over one of the key labor market outcomes such as employment. We employ a probabilistic decision model and treatment regression techniques to examine this effect. We claim that the impact of domestic violence on labor markets is limited among indigenous people, given that violence is, to some extent, socially recognized and accepted. We find that for most of the cases, indigenous women are less responsive to domestic violence than non-indigenous ones, except for groups with a high income level. Our results are robust for alternative methodologies to address possible endogeneity problems.labor markets, domestic violence, Bolivia, indigenous

Unemployed, Now What? The Effect of Immigration on Unemployment Transitions of Native-born Workers in the United States

Although one would expect the unemployed to be the population most likely affected by immigration, most of the studies have concentrated on investigating the effects immigration has on the employed population. Little is known of the effects of immigration on labor market transitions out of unemployment. Using the basic monthly Current Population Survey from 2001 and 2013 we match data for individuals who were interviewed in two consecutive months and identify workers who transition out of unemployment. We employ a multinomial model to examine the effects of immigration on the transition out of unemployment, using state-level immigration statistics. The results suggest that immigration does not affect the probabilities of native-born workers finding a job. Instead, we find that immigration is associated with smaller probabilities of remaining unemployed, but it is also associated with higher probabilities of workers leaving the labor force. This effect impacts mostly young and less educated people

Standard Error Correction in Two-Stage Optimization Models: A Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimation Approach

Following Wooldridge (2014), we discuss and implement in Stata an efficient maximum likelihood approach to the estimation of corrected standard errors of two-stage optimization models. Specifically, we compare the robustness and efficiency of this estimate using different non-linear routines already implemented in Stata such as ivprobit, ivtobit, ivpoisson, heckman, and ivregress

Unions, Wage Gaps, and Wage Dispersion: New Evidence from the Americas

Using a common methodology, the effects of unions on wage levels and wage dispersion are estimated for two neighboring countries, Bolivia and Chile, and for the U.S. The analysis shows that unions have broadly similar effects on the wage distribution within these three economies. The findings suggest that the political economy of unions, coupled with market constraints on labor costs, produce commonality in union wage effects that transcend other economic and institutional differences

Finite mixture models for linked survey and administrative data: estimation and post-estimation

esearchers use finite mixture models (FMMs) to analyze linked survey and administrative data on labor earnings taking account of various types of measurement error in each data source. Different combinations of error-ridden and/or error-free observations characterize latent classes. Latent class probabilities depend on the probabilities of the different types of error. We introduce a suite of Stata commands to fit FMMs to linked survey-administrative data: there is a general model and seven simpler variants. We also provide post-estimation commands for assessment of reliability, marginal effects, data simulation, and prediction of hybrid variables that combine information from both data sources about the outcome of interest. Our software can also be used to study measurement errors in other variables besides labor earnings

Modelling errors in survey and administrative data on employment earnings: sensitivity to the fraction assumed to have error-free earnings

Kapteyn and Ypma (Journal of Labour Economics 2007) is an influential study of errors in survey and administrative data on employment earnings. To fit their mixture models, Kapteyn and Ypma assume a specific fraction of their sample have error-free earnings. Using a new UK dataset, we assess the sensitivity of model estimates and post-estimation statistics to variations in this fraction and find some lack of robustness

Intellectual property rights, foreign direct investment and the shadow economy

The relationship between intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and foreign direct investment (FDI) continues to pose a challenging puzzle. While several studies have found that these two variables are positively correlated, others have not been able to find conclusive results or have found that the relationship is actually negative. We contend that a partial explanation of these contradictory results resides on institutional differences among host countries. We find that increases in IPR protection encourage FDI in countries in which the shadow (informal) economy represents a relatively small percentage of the country’s economy but it does not produce the same result in countries in which that percentage is relatively large. The size of the shadow economy is determined, in turn, by the quality of institutional variables such as the degree of bureaucracy, the level of corruption, and the extent of confiscatory taxation and political instability. We present empirical evidence supporting the results of our theoretical framework using threshold regression techniques on a sample of 94 countries and data for the 2000 - 2005 period