Evidence of the Impacts of Minimum Wage on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Bolivia

Marcelo Nicolas Claure Ramirez, Alejandra Leyton, Christian Valencia, Karenth Vanessa Sanchez Bohrquez and Jorge Davalos

Working Papers PMMA from PEP-PMMA

Abstract: Economic theory suggests that minimum wages may lead to unemployment; nevertheless, empirical evidence in developed economies stays ambiguous. Evidence from developing countries is even more heterogenous due to the low law enforcement and weaker labor market institutions. Thus, our aim is to assess the impact of minimum wage increases on labor market outcomes in Bolivia, a country characterized by weak law compliance and high informality. Our identification strategy exploits differences in exposure to minimum wage increases across subsets of population for the period 2006-2013. Our results show positive and significant effects over real wages for men with no effects on employment, informalization or hours worked. Furthermore, we find evidence of gender discrimination since women are prone to suffer unemployment and informalization while not benefiting from higher real wages as men do.

Keywords: Minimum wage; unemployment; informal employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J3 J4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-iue and nep-law
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lvl:pmmacr:2017-10

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