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Modeling Informality Formally: Households and Firms

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  • Sebastian Galiani

    () (Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS) - FCE - UNLP; Washington University in St. Louis)

  • Federico Weinschelbaum

    (fweinsch@udesa.edu.ar.)

Abstract

Informality is widespread in most developing countries. In Latin America, 50 percent of salaried employees work informally. Three stylized facts characterize informality: 1) small firms tend to operate informally while large firms tend to operate formally; 2) unskilled workers tend to be informal while skilled ones have formal jobs; 3) Ceteris paribus, secondary workers are less likely to operate formally than primary workers. We develop a model that account for all these facts. In our model both heterogeneous firms and workers have preferences over the sector they operate and choose optimally whether to function formally or informally. There are two labor markets, one formal and the other informal, and both firms and workers act unconstrained in them. By contrast, a prominent feature of the pre-existing literature is the idea that worker’s decisions play no role in determining the equilibrium of the economy. Using our model, we show that an increase in the participation of secondary workers would tend to raise the level of informality in the economy. This effect partially accounts for the increases in informality seen in Latin America over the past two decades.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata in its series CEDLAS, Working Papers with number 0047.

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Length: 43 pages
Date of creation: Mar 2007
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:dls:wpaper:0047

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Carpio, Miguel Angel, 2011. "Do pension wealth, pension cost and the nature of pension system affect coverage? Evidence from a country where pay-as-you-go and funded systems coexist," MPRA Paper 34926, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Ximena Quintanilla, 2011. "Moving from a Pay as You Go to a Defined Contributions Pension Scheme: Does it Boost Participation in the Formal Labour," Working Papers 48, Superintendencia de Pensiones, revised Sep 2011.
  3. Raymundo M. Campos-Vázquez & Melissa A. Knox, 2010. "Social protection programs and employment: The case of Mexico’s “Seguro Popular” program," Serie documentos de trabajo del Centro de Estudios Económicos 2010-14, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos.
  4. Almeida, Rita K. & Carneiro, Pedro, 2007. "Inequality and Employment in a Dual Economy: Enforcement of Labor Regulation in Brazil," IZA Discussion Papers 3094, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  5. Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez & Melissa A. Knox, . "Social Protection Programs and Employment: The Case of Mexico's Seguro Popular Program," Working Papers UWEC-2011-10, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
  6. Schröter, Lars, 2008. "Die Rolle des informellen Sektors in der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung Argentiniens
    [The role of the informal sector in the economic development of Argentina]    ," MPRA Paper 11661, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 14 Nov 2008.
  7. Calderón-Mejía, Valentina & Marinescu, Ioana E., 2012. "The Impact of Colombia's Pension and Health Insurance Systems on Informality," IZA Discussion Papers 6439, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  8. Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Klapper, Leora F. & Panos, Georgios A., 2009. "Entrepreneurship in post-conflict transition : the role of informality and access to finance," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4935, The World Bank.
  9. Khamis, Melanie, 2009. "A Note on Informality in the Labor Market," IZA Discussion Papers 4676, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  10. Erol Taymaz, 2009. "Informality and Productivity: Productivity Differentials between Formal and Informal Firms in Turkey," ERC Working Papers 0901, ERC - Economic Research Center, Middle East Technical University, revised Mar 2009.
  11. John Bennett & Matthew Rablen, 2012. "Self-Employment, Wage Employment and Informality in a Developing Economy," CEDI Discussion Paper Series 12-02, Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University.
  12. Erik Jonasson, 2011. "Informal Employment and the Role of Regional Governance," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 429-441, 08.
  13. Gerardo Esquivel Hernández & Juan Luis Ordaz-Díaz, 2008. "¿Es la política social una causa de la informalidad en México?," Ensayos Revista de Economia, Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Facultad de Economia, vol. 0(1), pages 1-32, May.
  14. Ricardo Bebczuk, 2009. "SME Access to Credit in Guatemala and Nicaragua: Challenging Conventional Wisdom with New Evidence," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0080, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
  15. Ricardo Bebczuk & Francisco Haimovich, 2007. "MDGs and Microcredit: An Empirical Evaluation for Latin American Countries," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0048, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
  16. Goktuna, Bilge Ozturk & Dayangac, Renginar, 2011. "Rethinking the informal labour from an evolutionary point of view," The Journal of Socio-Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 609-615.

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