La théorie du sous-emploi urbain dans les pays en voie de développement

Dipak Mazumdar ()

L'Actualité Economique, 1977, vol. 53, issue 2, 214-238

Abstract: The article investigates the working of a model of an urban labor market in LDG's which has two sectors—one sector (the U-sector) being characterized by ease of entry, variable hours of work and flexible earnings, the other (the O-sector), by rigid wages maintained at a relatively high level. Migrants from the rural areas respond to the expected earnings in both sectors, and can search for O-sector jobs while participating in the U-sector. Labor supply determined by such a migration function, together with the relative rates of growth of income in the two urban sub-sectors (on plausible assumptions) lead to the possibility that average earnings in the U-sector decline over time relative not only to O-sector wage, but also to the alternative income in the rural sector. In the last section a distinction made between two types of job seekers found in the U-sector—those with and those without an interest in the O-sector—gives the result that average earnings in the U-sector may sometimes be independent of conditions in the O-sector. It is also seen that, under certain conditions, even with ease of entry and variable hours of work, the U-sector may not serve as a channel for migrants seeking to enter the O-sector. The analysis provides a classification of labor market types which may be of help in organizing empirical information from different parts of the world.

Date: 1977
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/800724ar

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:actuec:v:53:y:1977:i:2:p:214-238

Access Statistics for this article

L'Actualité Economique is currently edited by Benoit Dostie

More articles in L'Actualité Economique from Société Canadienne de Science Economique Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Dostie ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).