Three essays in empirical development economics

2023

129 pages

illustrations

HEITH 1482

PhD Theses

2023-11-10

301880

This dissertation consists of three empirical essays in Development Economics. I conjugate the development approach with innovation economics to document new evidence on how changes in the local structure of economic activity impact labor market outcomes. As regions develop economically, they undergo a spatial reorganization from dispersed rural communities primarily engaged in agrarian activities to more concentrated urban areas with diverse and complex activities. The change in the local economic structure is central to this transformation, resulting in more complex networks of companies, increased knowledge, and more knowledge-intense economic activity. These structural changes in the local economy have a significant impact on the local labor markets, which in turn affect the patterns of inequality. The three chapters of this dissertation use data from the Annual Social Information Report – Relação Annual de Informações Sociais (RAIS). RAIS is a linked employer-employee dataset covering Brazil's entire formal employment from 2003 to 2018. The data consists of more than 900 million individual-level observations. The Ministry of Labor collects this data annually by surveying all public and private employers. RAIS includes a unique time-invariant identifying code for each company and individual, allowing for tracking workers across time and different locations. The data includes information on monthly wages, December wages, weekly working hours, job interruptions, gender, age, education, ethnicity, job location, firm and establishment size, nature of work contracts, occupation, and industry. The first chapter of this dissertation explores the impact of shifts in local economies towards knowledge-intensive industries on gender wage gaps. The entire dataset is used for this analysis. The study shows that gender wage gaps are smaller for workers in high-skilled occupations and industries. The effect of knowledge intensity is more significant when there is a high demand for skilled labor and a low supply of skilled labor. The study also presents empirical evidence that the gender wage gap among skilled workers decreases as knowledge-intensive industries expand. These findings indicate that competition for skilled labor in knowledge-intensive industries helps to reduce gender wage gaps. The second chapter identifies the types of urban agglomerations that can promote upward mobility. The study follows young males who joined the formal labor market in 2006 with wages below 1.5 times the minimum wage, representing the lowest 10 percent of the wage distribution. The study examines changes in their wages over time and in different locations. The results show that the benefits of urbanization rely on the cooperation between skilled and unskilled workers. Workplace integration is more common in southern Brazil, whereas there is less interaction between the wealthy and the poor in the northern cities. This segregation, which may decrease as industrialization advances, seems to impede the ability of cities in northern Brazil to offer more opportunities for poverty alleviation. The final chapter examines gender differences in the effects of economic agglomerations on job search. The study investigates gender inequalities in wages, employment, and career progression among young professionals in Brazil's financial sector. The analysis examines the career paths of individuals who face unemployment due to company closures, commonly referred to as job displacement. A triple difference model is used to investigate the impact of displacement on job search behavior among workers in the financial sector. The study relies on a panel dataset spanning thirteen years and including data on more than 12,028 individuals. Displacement is considered an external event in the context of a job search. The findings show that displacement negatively affects labor market outcomes for both genders, with women experiencing a 25 percent greater negative impact. In locations where co-workers can learn from each other through interactions between workers with different skill levels or where knowledge can be shared across industries, there are no gender disparities in wages and unemployment after displacement. These findings offer valuable insights into how urban areas can promote gender equality in labor market outcomes.

Directeur de thèse: Professeur Ugo Panizza

Master's Dissertations and PhD Theses > PhD Theses (1928-) > PhD in Development Economics (2014-)