Hartmut Lehmann () (DARRT, University of Bologna, CERT, Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, DIW Berlin and IZA) Norberto Pignatti () (DARRT, University of Bologna and IZA)
Additional information is available for the following
registered author(s):
Research on informal employment in transition countries has been very limited because of a lack of appropriate data. A new rich panel data set from Ukraine, the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS), enables us to provide some empirical evidence on informal employment in Ukraine and the validity of the three schools of thought in the literature on the role of informality in the development process. Apart from providing additional evidence with richer data than usually available in developing countries, the paper investigates to what extent the informal sector plays a role in labor market adjustment in a transition economy. The evidence points to some labor market segmentation since the majority of informal salaried employees are involuntarily employed and workers seem to queue for formal salaried jobs. We also show that the dependent informal sector is segmented into a voluntary "upper tier" and an involuntary lower part where the majority of informal jobs are located. Our contention that informal self-employment is voluntary is confirmed by the substantial earnings premia associated with movements into this state.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number
3269.
Find related papers by JEL classification: J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials J40 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - General P23 - Economic Systems - - Socialist Systems and Transition Economies - - - Factor and Product Markets; Industry Studies; Population
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: