Seminario CEDE - Danilo Aristizabal

There is a close relationship between poverty and social and labor exclusion. I evaluated two ALMPs that targeted people who have difficulties in finding a formal job in a developing country.

First, I analyze the effect of a training component of a labor intermediation policy (LIP) called Boost to Employment (BE) on the probability of finding a formal job for vulnerable job seekers in a developing country. I exploit the variation in the leniency among labor counselors as an instrument to approximate the probability that job seekers receive the training component. I also test which courses are the ones that helped job seekers to find formal jobs. I find that those workers who received the training component increased the probability of working in the formal sector by 21 percentage points one year after the implementation of the program compared to those workers who did not. The formal job benefits course seems to be driving my results.

Second, I study the effect on labor market outcomes of a payroll tax cut for new hires of young workers under the age of 28 in an economy with a high binding minimum wage. I use exposure to wage rigidities to identify the effect. I measure an individual's exposure to wage rigidities as the gap between the median salary, in the city in which the individual lives, and the minimum wage set at the national level. I use a difference-in-difference model. I find that the effect of a payroll tax cut is asymmetric for youth who face labor markets with a binding minimum wage and those who do not.