Institutions, Informality, and Wage Flexibility: Evidence from Brazil
27 Pages Posted: 10 May 2012
Date Written: March 2012
Abstract
Even though institutions are created to protect workers, they may interfere with labor market functioning, raise unemployment, and end up being circumvented by informal contracts. This paper uses Brazilian microeconomic data to show that the institutional changes introduced by the 1988 Constitution lowered the sensitivity of real wages to changes in labor market slack and could have contributed to the ensuing higher rates of unemployment in the country. Moreover, the paper shows that states that faced higher increases in informality (i.e., illegal work contracts) following the introduction of the new Constitution tended to have smaller drops in wage responsiveness to macroeconomic conditions, thus suggesting that informality serves as a escape valve to an over-regulated environment.
Keywords: Wage Flexibility, Informal Work, Regulations, Economic Models, Labor Markets, Unemployment
JEL Classification: E26, J30, J50
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation