Download or read book Labor Market Adjustment Reform and Productivity in Colombia written by Weltbank and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report carries out a detailed evaluation of the 2002 labor reform in Colombia, and in doing so, it also assesses the performance of the Colombian urban labor market and identifies the main policy challenges faced in this area. The report has three broad goals: First, to provide additional evidence to inform the intense debate taking place in the country around labor market issues, especially the reform. Second, to shed light on the key factors preventing a swift recuperation of the labor market. Third, to offer sensible policy alternatives that complement the step taken with the labor reform and address those key factors. The analyses are carried out for the key labor market outcomes: employment, unemployment, formality and wages, as well as productivity. Through the analysis of these variables the report tries to enhance the understanding of issues such as informality, labor market rigidities, job creation, protection against shocks and private sector performance. By and large, these determine whether people can find gainful employment, be adequately protected against shocks and whether firms are profitable so that, on the one hand, investment and technology adoption take place and, on the other, employment and wages grow, which are the truly important concerns for policy makers. The report illustrates key problems faced by Colombia: slow growth reflecting poor productivity performance, high and persistent unemployment and labor market rigidities that help in keeping unemployment high and productivity low. The 2002 labor reform shows positive results in some areas, while the impact on others was uncertain or moderate. Thus, the country today has three broad challenges. First, making the labor market as efficient as possible; second, increasing productivity growth as a precondition for stronger economic performance, and third, providing effective and inclusive services of social protection for the most vulnerable. These are the channels that will ultimately enable the increase of formal employment and favor wage growth.

Download or read book Labor Market Adjustment Reform and Productivity in Colombia written by Weltbank and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report carries out a detailed evaluation of the 2002 labor reform in Colombia, and in doing so, it also assesses the performance of the Colombian urban labor market and identifies the main policy challenges faced in this area. The report has three broad goals: First, to provide additional evidence to inform the intense debate taking place in the country around labor market issues, especially the reform. Second, to shed light on the key factors preventing a swift recuperation of the labor market. Third, to offer sensible policy alternatives that complement the step taken with the labor reform and address those key factors. The analyses are carried out for the key labor market outcomes: employment, unemployment, formality and wages, as well as productivity. Through the analysis of these variables the report tries to enhance the understanding of issues such as informality, labor market rigidities, job creation, protection against shocks and private sector performance. By and large, these determine whether people can find gainful employment, be adequately protected against shocks and whether firms are profitable so that, on the one hand, investment and technology adoption take place and, on the other, employment and wages grow, which are the truly important concerns for policy makers. The report illustrates key problems faced by Colombia: slow growth reflecting poor productivity performance, high and persistent unemployment and labor market rigidities that help in keeping unemployment high and productivity low. The 2002 labor reform shows positive results in some areas, while the impact on others was uncertain or moderate. Thus, the country today has three broad challenges. First, making the labor market as efficient as possible; second, increasing productivity growth as a precondition for stronger economic performance, and third, providing effective and inclusive services of social protection for the most vulnerable. These are the channels that will ultimately enable the increase of formal employment and favor wage growth.

Download or read book Colombia Labor Market Adjustment Reform and Productivity What are the Factors that Matter written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Labor Market Adjustment Reform and Productivity in Colombia written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Labor Market Adjustment Reform and Productivity in Colombia written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Labor Market and Economic Adjustment written by Pierre-Richard Agénor and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1995-11-01 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the role of the labor market in the transmission process of adjustment policies in developing countries. It begins by reviewing the recent evidence regarding the functioning of these markets. It then studies the implications of wage inertia, nominal contracts, labor market segmentation, and impediments to labor mobility for stabilization policies. The effect of labor market reforms on economic flexibility and the channels through which labor market imperfections alter the effects of structural adjustment measures are discussed next. The last part of the paper identifies a variety of issues that may require further investigation, such as the link between changes in relative wages and the distributional effects of adjustment policies.

Download or read book More Work to Do Taking Stock of Latin American Labor Markets written by Mr.Antonio David and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2019-03-08 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We analyze the performance of labor markets in Latin America since the late 1990s. Strong GDP growth during the commodity boom period led to important gains in employment and a fall in the unemployment rate as labor demand outpaced an increasing labor supply. We emphasize the role of informality in the dynamics of labor markets in Latin America. A re-examination of Okun’s law shows that informality dampens changes in unemployment accompanying output fluctuations. Moreover, we present some evidence that countries with higher redundancy costs and cumbersome dismissal regulations, exhibit “excess” informality over and above what would be expected based on their income and educational levels. Labor market reforms could thus contribute to reducing informality and increasing the responsiveness of labor markets to output growth. However, looking at selected case studies of reforms using the synthetic control method, we find mixed results in terms of labor market outcomes.

Download or read book Labor markets in an era of adjustment an overview written by Susan Horton and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1994 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Labor Markets in an Era of Adjustment Issues papers written by Susan Horton and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book COVID 19 and the Informality driven Recovery The Case of Colombia s Labor Market written by Jorge Alvarez and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-09-17 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper documents the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns on the Colombian labor market using household micro-data. About a quarter of employment was temporarily disrupted at the height of the first pandemic-induced lockdown in 2020. Women, the young, and the less educated were the most affected groups. Since then, a remarkable recovery, led by a rebound in informal employment, has taken place. By adjusting both employment levels and hours faster, the informal sector acted as an important margin of adjustment, particularly in those industries most affected by the first lockdown. The informal sector also appears to have played a role in decreasing the sensitivity of aggregate employment to more recent lockdowns in 2021, as the economy has learned to cope with pandemic restrictions, although the possibility of higher informality rates becoming embedded remains an substantial downside risk for long-term productivity.

Download or read book Labor Reforms Macroeconomic Imbalances and Unemployment in Colombia written by Santiago Montenegro and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Pending Issues in Protection Productivity Growth and Poverty Reduction written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper selectively synthesizes much of the research on Latin American and Caribbean labor markets in recent years. Several themes emerge that are particularly relevant to ongoing policy dialogues. First, labor legislation matters, but markets may be less segmented than previously thought. The impetus to voluntary informality, which appears to be a substantial fraction of the sector, implies that the design of social safety nets and labor legislation needs to take a more integrated view of the labor market, taking into account the cost-benefit analysis workers and firms make about whether to interact with formal institutions. Second, the impact of labor market institutions on productivity growth has probably been underemphasized. Draconian firing restrictions increase litigation and uncertainty surrounding worker separations, reduce turnover and job creation, and poorly protect workers. But theory and anecdotal evidence also suggest that they, and other related state or union induced rigidities, may have an even greater disincentive effect on technological adoption, which accounts for half of economic growth. Finally, institutions can affect poverty and equity, although the effects seem generally small and channels are not always clear. Overall, the present constellation of labor regulations serves workers and firms poorly and both could benefit from substantial reform.

Download or read book Labor Market Reform and Job Creation written by J. Luis Guasch and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the resumption of economic growth in most Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries since the late 1980s, improvements on the employment/unemployment front fave been sluggish at best, with a few notable exceptions. In many countries, renewed growth in LAC in the 1990s has so far failed to generate adequate new jobs in place of those lost during the adjustment , and to restore wages to precrisis levels. After a number of years of relatively high economic growth, the employment outlook in many countries remains worrisome. In those countries where unemployment rates appear to be low, often as a result of how they are measured, the concern is the low quality and renumeration levels of available jobs.

Download or read book Trade Protection and Wages written by Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting in 1985, Colombia experienced gradual trade liberalization that culminated in the drastic tariff reductions of 1990-91. This paper exploits these trade reforms to investigate the relationship between protection and wages. The focus of the analysis is on relative wages, defined as industry wage premiums relative to the economy-wide average wage. Using the June waves of the Colombian National Household Survey, we first compute wage premiums for the period 1984-98, adjusting for a series of worker characteristics, job and firm attributes, and informality. We find that industry wage premiums in Colombia exhibit remarkably less persistence over time than U.S. wage premiums. Similarly, measures of trade protection are less correlated over time than in the U.S. data, indicating that as a result of trade liberalization the structure of protection has changed. Regressions of wage premiums on tariffs, without industry fixed effects, produce a negative relationship between protection and wages; workers in protected sectors earn less than workers with similar observable characteristics in unprotected sectors. With fixed effects the results are reversed: Trade protection is found to increase relative wages. The effect is economically significant: Elimination of tariffs in an industry with an average level of protection in 1984 would lead to a 4% wage decline in this industry. For the most protected industries the effect increases to 7.3%. We also find that - in contrast to the U.S. - sectors with high import penetration in Colombia pay higher wages; nevertheless, regressions with industry fixed effects indicate that an increase of imports in a particular sector is associated with lower wages. The differences between the results with and without fixed effects are indicative of the importance of (time-invariant) political economy factors as determinants of protection. Further issues concerning the effects of trade liberalization, such as the relevance of time-variant political economy factors, the importance of employment guarantees, liberalization induced productivity changes, and the interplay of trade and labor reforms, will be investigated in a sequel paper.

Download or read book Factor Adjustments After Deregulation written by Marcela Eslava and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper, we analyze employment and capital adjustments using a panel of plants from Colombia. We allow for nonlinear adjustment of employment to reflect not only adjustment costs of labor but also adjustment costs of capital, and vice-versa. Using data from the Annual Manufacturing Survey, which include plant-level prices, we generate measures of plant-level productivity, demand shocks, and cost shocks, and use them to measure desired factor levels. We then estimate adjustment functions for capital and labor as a function of the gap between desired and actual factor levels. As in other countries, we find non-linear adjustments in employment and capital in response to market fundamentals. In addition, we find that employment and capital adjustments reinforce each other, in that capital shortages reduce hiring and labor shortages reduce investment. Moreover, we find that the market oriented reforms introduced in Colombia after 1990 increased employment adjustments, especially on the job destruction margin, while reducing capital adjustments. Finally, we find that while completely eliminating frictions from factor adjustments would yield a dramatic increase in aggregate productivity through improved allocative efficiency, the reforms introduced in Colombia generated only modest improvements.

Download or read book Factor Adjustments After Deregulation written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this paper, we analyze employment and capital adjustments using a panel of plants from Colombia. We allow for nonlinear adjustment of employment to reflect not only adjustment costs of labor but also adjustment costs of capital, and vice-versa. Using data from the Annual Manufacturing Survey, which include plant-level prices, we generate measures of plant-level productivity, demand shocks, and cost shocks, and use them to measure desired factor levels. We then estimate adjustment functions for capital and labor as a function of the gap between desired and actual factor levels. As in other countries, we find non-linear adjustments in employment and capital in response to market fundamentals. In addition, we find that employment and capital adjustments reinforce each other, in that capital shortages reduce hiring and labor shortages reduce investment. Moreover, we find that the market oriented reforms introduced in Colombia after 1990 increased employment adjustments, especially on the job destruction margin, while reducing capital adjustments. Finally, we find that while completely eliminating frictions from factor adjustments would yield a dramatic increase in aggregate productivity through improved allocative efficiency, the reforms introduced in Colombia generated only modest improvements"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

Download or read book Designing Labor Market Institutions in Emerging and Developing Economies written by Mr.Romain A Duval and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper discusses theoretical aspects and evidences related to designing labor market institutions in emerging market and developing economies. This note reviews the state of theory and evidence on the design of labor market institutions in a developing economy context and then reviews its consistency with actual labor market advice in a selected set of emerging and developing economies. The focus is mainly on three broad sets of institutions that matter for both workers’ protection and labor market efficiency: employment protection, unemployment insurance and social assistance, minimum wages and collective bargaining. Text mining techniques are used to identify IMF recommendations in these areas in Article IV Reports for 30 emerging and frontier economies over 2005–2016. This note has provided a critical review of the literature on the design of labor market institutions in emerging and developing market economies, and benchmarked the advice featured in IMF recommendations for 30 emerging market and frontier economies against the tentative conclusions from the literature.