Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    Is there an informal employment wage penalty? Evidence from South Africa
    (University of Chicago Press, 2008-04) ; ;
    We estimate the wage penalty associated with working in the South African informal sector. To this end we use a rich data set on non-self employed males that allows one to accurately distinguish workers employed in the informal sector from those employed in the formal sector and link individuals over time. Implementing various econometric approaches we find that there is a gross wage penalty of a little over 18 per cent for working in the informal sector. However, once we reduce our sample to a group for which we can reasonably calculate earnings net of taxes and control for time invariant unobservables the wage penalty disappears.
    Scopus© Citations 39  1015
  • Publication
    The formal sector wage premium and firm size
    We show theoretically that when larger firms pay higher wages and are more likely to be caught defaulting on labor taxes, then large-high wage firms will be in the formal and small-low wage firms will be in the informal sector. The formal sector wage premium is thus just a firm size wage differential. Using data from Ecuador we illustrate that firm size is indeed the key variable determining whether a formal sector premium exists.
      545Scopus© Citations 21