Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • Publication
    Productivity, Non-Compliance and the Minimum Wage
    (University College Dublin. School of Economics, 2021-11) ;
    Many informal firms in developing countries would not be viable if they were to comply with the minimum wage law. This means the authorities have an incentive to turn a blind eye to non-enforcement in a substantial share of firms. We also survey enforcement mechanisms for the minimum wage across developing countries and find that worker complaints are an important element in determining whether firms will be inspected for non-compliance or not. We develop a theoretical monopsony model which rationalises the stylised facts we observe. For a given minimum wage, the government can choose a level of enforcement and penalties for non-compliance such that employment will not fall for any optimising firm, irrespective of their productivity. Low productivity firm’s optimal choice of employment and wage will be unaffected by the introduction of the minimum wage. High productivity firms comply so that wage and employment effects are non-negative for these firms.
      302
  • Publication
    The Formal Sector Wage Premium and Firm Size for Self-employed Workers
    (University College Dublin. School of Economics, 2013-10) ; ; ; ;
    We develop a model where workers may enter self-employment or search for jobs as employees and where there is heterogeneity across workers’ managerial ability. Workers with higher skills will manage larger firms while workers with low managerial ability will run smaller firms and will be in self-employment only when they cannot find a salaried job. For these workers self-employment is a secondary/informal form of employment. The Burdett and Mortensen (1998) equilibrium search model is used for illustration as a special case of our more general framework. Empirical evidence from Mexico is provided and demonstrates that firm size wage effects for employees and selfemployed workers are broadly consistent with the model.
      298
  • 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
  • Publication
    The formal sector wage premium and firm size for self-employed workers
    (University College Dublin. School of Economics, 2012-03) ; ; ; ;
    We develop a model where workers may enter self-employment or search for jobs as employees and where there is heterogeneity across workers’ managerial ability. Workers with higher skills will manage larger firms while workers with low managerial ability will run smaller firms and will be in self-employment only when they cannot find a salaried job. For these workers self-employment is a secondary/informal form of employment. The Burdett and Mortensen (1998) equilibrium search model is used for illustration as a special case of our more general framework. Empirical evidence from Mexico is provided and demonstrates that firm size wage effects for employees and self-employed workers are broadly consistent with the model.
      180