Work, study, both or neither? time allocation of Brazilian teenagers

Labor force participation among youth is extremely high in Brazil when compared to countries with a similar economic background. In Argentina and Chile labor force participation, among those with 10 to 14 years old, is around 1% while in Brazil this rate is as high as 17 %. For the those between 15 and 19 years old these figures are around 10% in Chile, 15% in Argentina and 53% in Brazil. On the other hand the data on school attendance give a more optimistic picture. The percentage of children, between 10 and 14 years old, enrolled in school increased steadily from 79% to 95% from 1981 to 1998 and with age between 15 and 19, from 46% to 66% in the same period. These figures are close to the ones presented by Chile and Argentina. around 99% among the youngest group and around 70% for the 15 to 19 years old group. The objective of the paper is to understand the determinants of the time allocation decision of the Brazilian youth during the last twenty years. Using a multinomial logit regression we investigate the conditional effect of various micro and macro variables on the time allocation decision for the 1991 to 1998 period. Our main findings are: working and studying became the most likely allocation among the youngest in the poor rural areas and, in general, to study, whether working or not, became less dependent on family background for the youngest group but not for the older.

Agências reguladoras independentes?: especialização e captura nas trajetórias de carreira dos reguladores federais brasileiros

Este trabalho analisa o perfil e as trajetórias de carreira dos diretores e conselheiros das se-guintes agências federais: ANEEL, ANATEL, ANP, ANVISA, ANS, ANA, ANCINE, AN-TAQ, ANTT e ANAC. São observadas algumas dimensões que se relacionam com condicio-nantes que, em tese, permitiriam uma maior autonomia decisória do regulador brasileiro federal: 1) o nível de expertise e conhecimento especializado do regulador, observando sua área de formação, nível de escolaridade e sua experiência prévia no setor regulado; 2) a existência ou não de filiação partidária antes de sua indicação para o cargo na agência; 3) a existência ou não de casos de recondução de reguladores, além dos mandados governamentais de diferentes presidentes; e 4) a origem e o destino profissional do regulador após sua atuação na agência reguladora. Paralelamente, observa-se como foi elaborado o desenho institucional destas agências brasileiras e como algumas características de sua estrutura e processo podem interferir com o resultado do processo regulatório, especialmente no que se refere à forma como os reguladores são indicados. Entre os principais resultados do trabalho, destacam-se a forte co-nexão entre a área de formação dos reguladores e o campo de atuação das agências reguladores; a valorização de cursos de pós-graduação na qualificação de um candidato para uma agência reguladora federal; e a comprovação de experiência profissional prévia no setor regulado, indicando que os reguladores brasileiros apresentam indicadores relevantes de especialização e expertise no setor. Também ocorreram casos de reguladores indicados e reconduzidos por presidentes diferentes, reforçando a hipótese de valorização da especialização. Com relação a captura política, se destaca que pouco menos de um terço dos indicados possuía filiação partidária anterior à nomeação. A maioria dos reguladores é selecionada dentro do serviço público, mas boa parte deles vai trabalhar na esfera privada do setor, reforçando os indícios de que pode ter havido captura durante os mandatos na agência. Percebe-se, ainda, uma forte tendência de fortalecimento da burocracia das agências a partir do final do primeiro mandato do presidente Lula, movimento acentuado no primeiro mandato da presidente Dilma Rousseff.

O novo federalismo social e o Rio: desenho de programas complementares de transferência de renda condicionada

Brazilian public policy entered in the so-called new social federalism through its conditional cash transfers. States and municipalities can operate together through the nationwide platform of the Bolsa Familia Program (BFP), complementing federal actions with local innovations. The state and the city of Rio de Janeiro have created programs named, respectively, Renda Melhor (RM) and Família Carioca (FC). These programs make use of the operational structure of the BFP, which facilitates locating beneficiaries, issuing cards, synchronizing payment dates and access passwords and introducing new conditionalities. The payment system of the two programs complements the estimated permanent household income up to the poverty line established, giving more to those who have less. Similar income complementation system was subsequently adopted in the BFP and the Chilean Ingreso Ético Familiar, which also follow the principle of estimation of income used in the FC and in the RM. Instead of using the declared income, the value of the Rio cash transfers are set using the extensive collection of information obtained from the Single Registry of Social Programs (Cadastro Único): physical configuration of housing, access to public services, education and work conditions for all family members, presence of vulnerable groups, disabilities, pregnant or lactating women, children and benefits from other official transfers such as the BFP. With this multitude of assets and limitations, the permanent income of each individual is estimated. The basic benefit is defined by the poverty gap and priority is given to the poorest. These subnational programs use international benchmarks as a neutral ground between different government levels and mandates. Their poverty line is the highest of the first millennium goal of the United Nations (UN): US$ 2 per person per day adjusted for the cost of living. The other poverty line of the UN, US$ 1.25, was implicitly adopted as the national extreme poverty line in 2011. The exchange of methodologies between federal entities has happened both ways. The FC began with the 575,000 individuals living in the city of Rio de Janeiro who were on the payroll of the BFP. Its system of impact evaluation benefited from bi-monthly standardized examinations. In the educational conditionalities, the two programs reward students' progress, a potential advantage for those who most need to advance. The municipal program requires greater school attendance than that of the BFP and the presence of students’ parents at the bimonthly meetings held on Saturdays. Students must achieve a grade of 8 or improve at least 20% in each exam to receive a bi-monthly premium of R$50. In early childhood, priority is given to the poor children in the program Single Administrative Register (CadÚnico) to enroll in kindergarten, preschools and complementary activities. The state program reaches more than one million people with a payment system similar to the municipal one. Moreover, it innovates in that it transfers awards given to high school students to savings accounts. The prize increases and is paid to the student, who can withdraw up to 30% annually. The total can reach R$3,800 per low-income student. The State and the city rewarded already education professionals according to student performance, now completing the chain of demand incentives on poor students and their parents. Increased performance is higher among beneficiaries and the presence of their guardians at meetings is twice compared to non beneficiaries; The Houston program, also focuses on aligning the incentives to teachers, parents and students. In general, the plan is to explore strategic complementarities, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The objective is to stimulate, through targets and incentives, synergies between social actors (teachers, parents, students), between areas (education, assistance, work) and different levels of government. The cited programs sum their efforts and divide labor so as to multiply interactions and make a difference in the lives of the poor.

Technical change and factor shares

The implications of technical change that directly alters factor shares are examined. Such change can lower the income of some factors of production even when it raises total output, thus offering a possible explanation for episodes of social conflict such as the Luddite uprisings in 19th century England and the recent divergence in the U. S. between wages for skilled and unskilled labor. An explanation also why underdeveloped countries do not adopt the latest technology but continue to use outmoded production methods. Total factor productivity is shown to be a misleading measure of technical progress. Share-altering technical change brings into question the plausibility of a wide class of endogenous growth models.

Labor rights, formality and spillovers: evidence from Brazil

Nós analisamos o efeito da emenda constitucional 72/13 no Brasil, que igualou direitos trabalhistas de empregadas domésticas a aqueles de outros empregados. Mostramos que, após a legislação, uma considerável cobertura midiática e um interesse público intensificado aumentou o conhecimento geral de direitos trabalhistas de empregadas domésticas. Como consequência, o não-seguimento de legislações trabalhistas no setor de serviços domésticos ficou mais difícil. Ao mesmo tempo, a necessidade de regulamentar adicionalmente a emenda fez com que custos trabalhistas ficassem praticamente inalterados. Usando uma abordagem de diferença-em-diferenças que compara ocupações selecionadas ao longo do tempo, mostramos que a emenda -- e a discussão que ela causou -- levou a um aumento na formalização e nos salários de empregados domésticos. Então, usando a heterogeneidade do impacto da emenda em grupos demográficos, nossos resultados mostram que emprego doméstico foi reduzido e que mulheres pouco qualificadas saíram força de trabalho e foram para empregos de menor qualidade. Testes de placebo e análises de robustez indicam que nossos resultados não são explicados por diversas interpretações alternativas.

Informality in labor market and welfare

The neoclassical growth model with two sectors in production is employed in this paper in order to investigate how a change in the tax structure affects informality and welfare. We calibrate and simulate the model and find that welfare always increases when we reduce the tax rate on the demand for labor and adjust the tax rate on the value added so that the government revenue remains constant.

A search-theoretic explanation for the negative correlation between labor income and impatience

Lawrance (1991) has shown, through the estimation of consumption Euler equations, that subjective rates of impatience (time preference) in the U.S. are three to Öve percentage points higher for households with lower average labor incomes than for those with higher labor income. From a theoretical perspective, the sign of this correlation in a job-search model seems at Örst to be undetermined, since more impatient workers tend to accept wage o§ers that less impatient workers would not, thereby remaining less time unemployed. The main result of this paper is showing that, regardless of the existence of e§ects of opposite sign, and independently of the particular speciÖcations of the givens of the model, less impatient workers always end up, in the long run, with a higher average income. The result is based on the (unique) invariant Markov distribution of wages associated with the dynamic optimization problem solved by the consumers. An example is provided to illustrate the method.

Microeconomic instability and children's human capital accumulation: the effects of idiosyncratic shocks to father's income on child labor, school drop-outs and repetition rates in Brazil

This paper evaluates the long-run effects of economic instability. In particular, we study the impact of idiosyncratic shocks to father’s income on children’s human capital accumulation variables such as school drop-outs, repetition rates and domestic and non-domestic labor. Although, the problem of child labor in Brazil has declined greatly during the last decade, the number of children working is still substantial. The low levels of educational attainment in Brazil are also a main cause for concern. The large rotating panel data set used allows for the estimation of the impacts of changes in occupational and income status of fathers on changes in his child’s time allocation circumstances. The empirical analysis is restricted to families with fathers, mothers and at least one child between 10 and 15 years of age in the main Brazilian metropolitan areas during the 1982-1999 period. We perform logistic regressions controlling for child characteristics (gender, age, if he/she is behind in school for age), parents characteristics (grade attainment and income) and time and location variables. The main variables analyzed are dynamic proxies of impulses and responses, namely: shocks to household head’s income and unemployment status, on the one hand and child’s probability of dropping out of school, of repeating a grade and of start working, on the other. The findings suggest that father’s income has a significant positive correlation with child’s dropping out of school and of repeating a grade. The findings do not suggest a significant relationship between a father’s becoming unemployed and a child entering the non-domestic labor market. However, the results demonstrate a significant positive relationship between a father becoming unemployed and a child beginning to work in domestic labor. There was also a positive correlation between father becoming unemployed and a child dropping out and repeating a grade. Both gender and age were highly significant with boys and older children being more likely to work, drop-out and repeat grades.

Child labor and learning

This paper investigates the impact of working while in school on learning outcomes through the use of a unique micro panel dataset of Brazilian students. The potential endogeneity is addressed through the use of di erence-in-di erence and instrumental variable estimators. A negative e ect of working on learning outcomes in both math and Portuguese is found. The e ects of child work range from 3% to 8% of a standard deviation decline in test score which represents a loss of about a quarter to a half of a year of learning on average. We also explore the minimum legal age to entry in the labor market to induce an exogenous variation in child labor status. The results reinforce the detrimental e ects of child labor on learning. Additionally, it is found that this e ect is likely due to the interference of work with the time kids can devote to school and school work.

Elasticity of substitution between capital and labor: a panel data approach

This paper estimates the elasticity of substitution of an aggregate production function. The estimating equation is derived from the steady state of a neoclassical growth model. The data comes from the PWT in which different countries face different relative prices of the investment good and exhibit different investment-output ratios. Then, using this variation we estimate the elasticity of substitution. The novelty of our approach is that we use dynamic panel data techniques, which allow us to distinguish between the short and the long run elasticity and handle a host of econometric and substantive issues. In particular we accommodate the possibility that different countries have different total factor productivities and other country specific effects and that such effects are correlated with the regressors. We also accommodate the possibility that the regressors are correlated with the error terms and that shocks to regressors are manifested in future periods. Taking all this into account our estimation resuIts suggest that the Iong run eIasticity of substitution is 0.7, which is Iower than the eIasticity that had been used in previous macro-deveIopment exercises. We show that this lower eIasticity reinforces the power of the neoclassical mo deI to expIain income differences across countries as coming from differential distortions.

Labor supply, risk aversion and economic refrom in China

Economic reform in China has created a small, but fast-growing private sector that has spurred rapid productivity growth. Growth of the private sector is predicated upon continued labor movements away from state-run industries and into private firms. This paper presents a theory of labor market sectoral choice demonstrating that three factors determine private sector labor supply-the difference in wages between the state and private sectors, private sector wage risk and risk aversion. Estimation of the model using survey data provides strong support for the theory. We find that the riskiness of private sector earnings has a greater effect in discouraging workers from taking jobs in private firms than the wage premi um has in attracting workers.