Employment and Labor Regulation: Evidence from Manufacturing Firms in Bolivia, 1988-2007

Beatriz Muriel Hernández and Carlos Machicado Salas

No 07/2012, Development Research Working Paper Series from Institute for Advanced Development Studies

Abstract: This paper analyzes employment in Bolivian registered manufacturing firms during 1988 to 2007, establishing its relationship with labor regulation. Estimating job flows, we find that firms with high temporary worker rates (less labor regulation costs) are those with both higher job reallocation rates and higher net employment growth, and only they contributed to employment growth during the country economic downturn, 1998-1999. In addition, estimating demand functions, we find the following effects of recent changes in labor norms: i) the compulsory basic salary rise in 2006-2009 entailed costs in terms of job losses, 5.6 percent for production workers and 4.8 percent for non-production workers; iii) the major labor costs derived from the new pension law, enacted in 2010, decreased employment demand around 1 percent; and, iv) labor protection policies decreased production workers demand.

Keywords: job flows; labor demand; labor regulation; translog function; unbalanced panel (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 J01 J23 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2012-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-lam and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inesad.edu.bo/pdf/wp2012/wp07_2012.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Employment and Labor Regulation: Evidence from Manufacturing Firms in Bolivia, 1988-2007 (2014)
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:adv:wpaper:201207

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Development Research Working Paper Series from Institute for Advanced Development Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lykke Andersen ().