February 2021
07Feb

Transition from the informal to the formal economy: Theory of Change

By ILO For enterprises, formalization means bringing them under the regulation with the advantages and obligations that this entails. It includes the extension of the scope of fiscal, labour and social security regulation to all enterprises without exception regarding the size, sector or other criteria, the legal recognition and registration of enterprises and compliance with legal requirements. For independent workers, the fact that their enterprises belong to the formal economy or not determines if they are also in the informal economy...

February 7, 2021
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05Feb

Transition from the informal to the formal economy: Theory of Change

By ILO This umbrella theory of change provides the main pathways for the transition to formality of workers and enterprises. It is a general framework that can inform the development of theories of change focused on a specific sector, occupational groups, forms of informality or policy areas. For enterprises, formalization means bringing them under the regulation with the advantages and obligations that this entails. It includes the extension of the scope of fiscal, labour and social security regulation to...

February 5, 2021
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January 2021

29Jan

The Early Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries Evidence from High-Frequency Phone Surveys

By Melanie Khamis, Daniel Prinz, David Newhouse, Amparo Palacios-Lopez, Utz Pape, Michael Weber The economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has sharply reduced mobility and economic activity, disrupting the lives of people around the globe. This paper presents estimates on the early impact of the crisis on labor markets in 39 countries based on high-frequency phone survey data collected between April and July 2020. Workers in these countries experienced severe labor market disruptions following the COVID-19 outbreak. Based...

January 29, 2021
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29Jan

Robots and Labor in the Service Sector: Evidence from Nursing Homes

By Karen Eggleston, Yong Suk Lee, Toshiaki Iizuka In one of the first studies of service sector robotics using establishment-level data, we study the impact of robots on staffing in Japanese nursing homes, using geographic variation in robot subsidies as an instrumental variable. We find that robot adoption increases employment by augmenting the number of care workers and nurses on flexible employment contracts, and decreases difficulty in staff retention. Robot adoption also reduces the monthly wages of regular nurses,...

January 29, 2021
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21Jan

Executive Compensation: The Trend Toward One Size Fits All

By Felipe Cabezon This paper reports the prevalence of a “one-size-fits-all” trend in the structure of executive compensation plans. The way firms distribute total compensation across different components of pay –salary, bonus, stock awards, option awards, non-equity incentives, pensions, and perquisites– is becoming more similar since 2006. In particular, 25% of the variation across firms disappeared in the last ten years. Using close votes surrounding Say-on-Pay’s implementation, I find that shareholders’ influence on management decisions causes part of this...

January 21, 2021
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08Jan

Technology, Labour Market Institutions and Early Retirement: Evidence from Finland

By Naomitsu Yashiro, Tomi Kyyrä, Hyunjeong Hwang, Juha Tuomala There are two major barriers to increasing employment of older workers. First, older workers engaged in codifiable, routine tasks are particularly prone to the risk of being displaced by computers and robots. Second, several countries have in place various labour market institutions that encourage early retirement, such as exceptional entitlements or looser criteria for unemployment and disability benefits applied to older individuals. We present evidence that these two factors reinforce...

January 8, 2021
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
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December 2020

23Dec

Financial Incentives and Heterogeneity in Retirement Behavior An Empirical Analysis Based on SHARE-RV Data

By Nicolas Goll, Felizia Hanemann Over the past few decades, different reforms have come into force, which aim at keeping older workers in the labor market longer. Broad literature to date has investigated reform effects for the average worker. Evidence on the heterogeneous reform effects on different groups is to date however relatively sparse. We therefore evaluate the 1992 pension reform in Germany, which gradually introduced actuarial deductions for early retirement between 1997 and 2004. We investigate whether individuals...

December 23, 2020
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07Dec

COVID-19 has worsened the woes of South Asia’s informal sector

By Maurizio Bussolo, Siddarth Sharma, Hans Timmer Informal employment, which includes temporary workers, day laborers, service, or domestic workers, has long been associated with underdevelopment. Following the same logic, informality is expected to disappear gradually as countries further develop and prosper. Yet, despite decades of sustained high growth, South Asia's informal sector shows little sign of abating—even increasing in some cases. More than 80 percent of all South Asia's workers engage in informal activities, and more than 90 percent of the...

December 7, 2020
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November 2020

27Nov

Striving for Better Jobs: The Challenge of Informality in the Middle East and North Africa

By Roberta Gatti, Diego F Angel-Urdinola, Joana Silva, András Bodor While economic growth has been sustained for a number of years in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, this has not resulted in the creation of an adequate number of jobs and has succeeded, at best, in generating low-quality, informal jobs. While there is a great deal of heterogeneity across countries, informality in MENA is widespread, and some countries in the region are...

November 27, 2020
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05Nov

The Future of Work in Latin America and the Caribbean: How Can Technology Facilitate Job Recovery after COVID-19?

By Azuara Herrera, Oliver; Fazio, Maria Victoria; Hand, Anne; Keller, Lukas; Rodríguez Tapia, Catalina; Silva Porto, María Teresa COVID-19 has been a catalyst for three technologies that had had slow adoption rates until just a few months ago: teleworking, on-demand digital platforms, and online training. This is evidenced by the increase in downloads of mobile applications related to these activities. In this interactive note, the sixth in the series The Future of Work in Latin America and the Caribbean,...

November 5, 2020
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