Between 2000 and 2010, the Gini
coefficient declined in 13 of 17 Latin American countries.
The decline was statistically significant and robust to
changes in the time... Show More +
interval, inequality measures, and data
sources. In-depth country studies for Argentina, Brazil,
and Mexico suggest two main phenomena underlie this trend: a
fall in the premium to skilled labor and more progressive
government transfers. The fall in the premium to skills
resulted from a combination of supply, demand, and
institutional factors. Their relative importance depends on
the country. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS6248
Date: October 1, 2012
Author:
Lustig, Nora ;
Lopez-Calva, Luis F. ;
Ortiz-Juarez, Eduardo
This note highlights differences between
informal businesses in two regions of Argentina Buenos Aires
and Chaco. Labor productivity is much higher in Buenos Aires
than... Show More +
Chaco. This difference is partly due to higher sales
and partly due to lower employment in firms in Buenos Aires.
Relative to Buenos Aires, firms in the Chaco region are more
likely to use machinery and vehicles in the production
process and they also face larger seasonal fluctuations in
sales. Firms are more likely to report various benefits from
registering including better access to finance, markets and
government subsidies, less bribes to pay and being able to
issue receipts in Chaco than in Buenos Aires. Important
firm-characteristics, such as the level of education of the
owner of the firm, and the perception of corruption and
crime as obstacles to business, also differ sharply across
the two regions. These findings suggest a greater need to
design policies towards the informal sector at the local
level rather than at the national level. Show Less -
Type: Brief
Report#: 65118
Date: January 1, 2011
Author:
Amin, Mohammad
First tested in Mexico in 2003, and most
recently applied in 2009 in Argentina, the World Bank has
developed a model to incorporate gender equity into private
sector... Show More +
organizations while simultaneously enhancing their
business. Under the model, participating organizations
conduct a self-diagnosis to identify gender biases and gaps
in the operations. This baseline is then used to create and
subsequently implement an action plan to address these
gender inequalities in their organization. Successful
application of this gender equity model is certified by an
independent auditing agency and the firm is awarded a seal
they can publicly use and display, enhancing their
reputation. Since the first experience in Mexico, the model
has been adapted to fit other countries' realities, and
each experience has improved the tools and process of the
model. This paper summarizes the World Bank's
experiences with the gender equity certification model and
explores the primary features and factors of success through
careful examination of the most recent application in
Argentina. The successful experiences and ease of
adaptability of the model point towards the feasibility of
applying this model as standard World Bank "brand"
certifiable international Gender Equity Model, or "GEM". Show Less -
Type: Country Gender Assessment (CGA)
Report#: AAA46
Date: May 10, 2010
The authors propose alternative methods
to project pension rights and implement them in Chile and
Uruguay and partially in Argentina. The authors use
incomplete work... Show More +
histories databases from the social security
administrations to project entire lifetime work histories.
The authors first fit linear probability and duration models
of the contribution status and dynamic linear models of the
income level. The authors then run Monte Carlo simulations
to project work histories and compute pension rights.
According to results, significant swathes of the population
would not access to fundamental pension benefits at age 65,
if the current eligibility rules were strictly enforced. Show Less -
Type: Working Paper (Numbered Series)
Report#: 52446
Date: December 1, 2009
Author:
Forteza, Alvaro; Apella, Ignacio;
Fajnzylber, Eduardo; Grushka, Carlos; Rossi, Ianina;
Sanroman, Graciela;
Argentina approaches its bicentennial as
an independent republic; it has a window of opportunity in
social protection policy. Following the most serious
economic crisis... Show More +
in its history during 2001-02, the country
mobilized an unprecedented effort to provide income support
to the population in need. Now, as growth has returned and
social indicators have recovered to pre-crisis levels, there
is an opening to move from emergency income support programs
to a more comprehensive, long-term, and sustainable strategy
for social protection. The emergency response was effective,
as it helped the country to overcome the worst of the
crisis. The centerpiece of the strategy, plan Jefes y Jefas,
provided benefits to nearly two million households during a
period when poverty affected more than half the population
and unemployment reached record levels. The number of
beneficiaries slowly declined beginning in 2003, and was at
nearly one-third of its maximum value by early 2008. This
reduction was achieved by the reentry of beneficiaries into
the formal labor market, the loss of eligibility, and the
shift of beneficiaries to familias and seguro de
capacitacion y empleo (Seguro), the successor programs to
Jefes. Now that the crisis has passed, the policy debate has
shifted toward the future of social protection over the
longer term. The improvement in overall economic conditions
since 2003 has resulted in a decline in unemployment,
poverty, and inequality, and a recovery of formal employment
and real salaries to pre-crisis levels. These positive
trends have generated opportunities to consider longer-term
and structural issues, including a debate over the future of
whether this new type of noncontributory social policies,
based on income transfers to households and individuals,
should continue. Show Less -
Type: Social Analysis
Report#: 50357
Date: August 21, 2009
Author:
Rofman, Rafael ;
Ringold, Dena
Type: Summing Up
Report#: 48876
Date: June 9, 2009
Using the most recent estimates of
agricultural price distortions, this chapter studies the
economic, poverty, and income inequality impacts of both
global and domestic... Show More +
trade reform in Argentina, with a
special focus on export taxes. Argentina offers an
interesting case study as the only large agricultural
exporter that has, at many points in its history, applied
export taxes to several of its agricultural products. The
chapter combines results from a global economy-wide model
(World Bank's linkage model), a national computable
general equilibrium (CGE) model, and micro-simulations. The
results suggest that liberalization of world trade
(including subsidies and import taxes, but not export
taxes), both for agricultural and non-agricultural goods,
reduces poverty and inequality in Argentina. However, if
only agricultural goods are included, indicators for poverty
and inequality do not improve and even deteriorate somewhat.
This is particularly the case if export taxes are
eliminated. The chapter discusses the possible reasons for
those results, offers some caveats, and suggests some lines
for further research. Show Less -
Type: Working Paper (Numbered Series)
Report#: 55944
Date: June 1, 2009
Author:
Cicowiez, Martin ;
Diaz-Bonilla, Carolina ;
Diaz-Bonilla, Eugenio
There are several possible explanations
for the observed changes in inequality, the returns to
education, and the gap between the wages of informal and
formal salaried... Show More +
workers in Argentina over the period
1980-2002. Largely due to the lack of evidence for competing
explanations, skill-biased technical change is the most
likely explanation for the increases in the returns to
education that occurred in the 1990s. Using a
semi-parametric re-weighting variance decomposition
technique and data from the Permanent Household Survey, the
authors show that during the same period there was an
increase in the returns to unobserved skill. This finding
lends support to the hypothesis that skill-biased technical
change has been a main driver of increases in inequality in
Argentina. The pattern of changes suggests that the growth
in returns to unobserved skill may have been partly
responsible for the relative deterioration of informal
salaried wages during the 1990s. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS4624
Date: May 1, 2008
Author:
Demombynes, Gabriel ;
Metzler, Johannes
This report presents the final results
and conclusions of a two-year program developed by a World
Bank team in Argentina, to analyze the determinants of
informality... Show More +
and its impact on poverty and equity.
Informality in the labor market has become a central concern
for policy makers and the society at large in Argentina. The
long upward trend in informal employment until recent year
has been viewed as a deterioration in working conditions
that is behind the sustained rise in poverty and inequality
in the last quarter of the twentieth century. While some of
the possible causes for the rise in informality have been
studied, their relative importance remains unclear and its
links with poverty and inequality have not been examined in
detail. A primary objective of the program is to deepen the
shared work with the Argentine government and civil society
on socio-economic development and equity issues. The aim has
been to analyze and propose policy options for the labor
market that respond to the Government's priorities, are
technically sound, and provide an open menu for discussion.
The study of informality in the labor market is not an empty
field in Argentina. Many local analysts have studied its
causes and consequences, and this report built on this work.
A key aspect of the program was to draw on the extensive
local analytical studies on the issues and sustain an active
interaction with government counterparts and civil society
through technical workshops, meetings and other outreach
efforts. This report focused on discussing the evolution,
determinants, and policy options to reduce labor informality
in Argentina and its impacts. By developing a common base of
diagnoses with the government, the program set a path for
further discussions and collaborations. Following this
process, the Ministry of Labor has already asked the Bank to
collaborate on a new program that will focus on labor
markets, social protection, and income distribution, looking
for policies that would result in better and more effective
policies to increase equity in Argentina. Show Less -
Type: Other Poverty Study
Report#: 36092
Date: March 27, 2008
This paper estimates the impacts of
world agricultural trade liberalization on wages, employment
and unemployment in Argentina, a country with positive net
agricultural... Show More +
exports and high unemployment rates. In the
estimation of these wage and unemployment responses, the
empirical model allows for individual labor supply responses
and for adjustment costs in labor demand. The findings show
that a 10 percent increase in the price of agricultural
exports would cause an increase in the Argentine employment
probability of 1.36 percentage points, matched by a decline
in the unemployment probability of 0.75 percentage points
and an increase in labor market participation of 0.61
percentage points. Further, the unemployment rate would
decline by 1.23 percentage points (by almost 10 percent).
Expected wages would increase by 10.3 percent, an effect
that is mostly driven by higher employment probabilities.
This indicates that the bulk of the impacts of trade reforms
originates in household responses in the presence of
adjustment costs, and that failure to account for them may
lead to significant biases in the welfare evaluation of
trade policy. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS4489
Date: January 1, 2008
Author:
Porto, Guido
This paper discusses a set of statistics
for examining and comparing labor market dynamics based on
the estimation of continuous time Markov transition
processes. It... Show More +
then uses these to establish stylized facts
about dynamic patterns of movement using panel data from
Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. The estimates suggest broad
commonalities among the three countries, and establish
numerous common patterns of worker mobility among sectors of
work and inactivity. As such, we offer some of the first
comparative work on labor dynamics. The paper then
particularly focuses on the role of the informal sector,
both for its intrinsic interest, and as a case study
illustrating the strengths and limits of the tools. The
results suggest that a substantial part of the informal
sector, particularly the self-employed, corresponds to
voluntary entry although informal salaried work may
correspond more closely to the standard queuing view,
especially for younger workers. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS4429
Date: December 1, 2007
Author:
Bosch, Mariano ;
Maloney, William
One important concern of governments in
developing countries is how to phase out large safety net
programs. The authors evaluate the short-run effects of one
possible... Show More +
exit strategy-programs that promote
self-employment-in Argentina. They provide evidence that a
small fraction of beneficiaries were attracted by this
program. Overall, potential participants to self-employment
are more likely to be female household heads and more
educated beneficiaries relative to the average Jefes
beneficiaries. Using nonexperimental methods, the authors
show that participation in the program does affect the labor
supply of participants, by reducing the probability of
having an outside job, especially for males, and increasing
the total number of hours worked. But the intervention fails
to produce on average income gains to participating
individuals and households in the short run. The fact that a
small subset of former welfare beneficiaries are attracted
to the program, coupled with the fact that only a subset of
participants (younger and more educated beneficiaries, and
with previous self-employment experience) benefited from
participation has important implications for this
intervention to represent a viable exit strategy from welfare. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS4270
Date: June 1, 2007
Author:
Almeida, Rita ;
Galasso, Emanuela
For many in Latin America, the
increasing participation of China and India in international
markets is seen as a looming shadow of two "mighty
giants" on the region's... Show More +
manufacturing sector. Are
they really mighty giants when it comes to their impact on
manufacturing employment? The authors attempt to answer this
question by estimating the effects of trade with China and
India on Argentina's industrial employment. They use a
dynamic econometric model and industry level data to
estimate the effects of trade with China and India on the
level of employment in Argentina's manufacturing
sector. Results suggest that trade with China and India only
had a small negative effect on industrial employment, even
during the swift trade liberalization of the 1990s. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS4153
Date: March 1, 2007
Author:
Castro, Lucio ;
Olarreaga, Marcelo ;
Saslavsky, Daniel
This report, Argentina facing the
challenge of ageing and social security, is structured in
five parts that follow the introduction and summary of main
findings. Part... Show More +
I presents a conceptual framework for
decision makers charged with crafting policies for old age
income security, and describes the evolution and structure
of Argentina's pension institutions. Part II presents
the findings of the household empirical analysis using
existing surveys and the new data from the ETEEP, including
the importance of pensions to household income and poverty,
the micro-determinants of coverage, and the viability of
other income security strategies for the most vulnerable.
Part III focuses solely on policies and programs designed to
ensure minimum income and cover poverty in old age,
presenting estimates of the fiscal cost of proposals made by
the principal actors and stake-holders in the pension reform
debate. Part IV examines the main pension policy issues in
this debate and places these issues in international
context. Part V presents some options for the Government and
stakeholders to consider as Argentina enters a more detailed
and deliberate phase of defining pension reform. Show Less -
Type: Social Analysis
Report#: 34154
Date: January 15, 2007
This report traces the development of
Argentina's pension system from the early 1900s to the
present, and evaluates, in particular, the impact that the
World Bank's... Show More +
involvement has had on the pension reform
since the 1990s. Several lessons can be learned from the
Bank's experience in Argentina with regard to the
pension policy strategy: 1) Technical assistance projects
should be limited in scope to ensure adequate preparation
and supervision. This should be evaluated when addressing
structural issues. Furthermore, during the project design,
local procurement and contracting limitations should be
considered to avoid delays in the implementation phase; 2)
Borrower commitment is crucial to meaningful implementation,
so the Bank should try to maintain a flexible strategy to
ensure the full involvement of the governments in the
processes, through adjusting the instruments´ designs, in
order to promote compliance with the conditions; 3) A solid
project management and coordination team during
implementation is vital for success of the programs; 4) The
Bank should try to keep a very low profile, supporting
reforms but not publicly pushing for them, especially when
they imply unpopular measures; 5) The Bank should be more
careful when assessing the political context in which
proposed policies are to be implemented; 6) The Bank should
offer technical assistance in terms of improving the
governments´ ability to simulate future scenarios in the
phase of policy definitions, by means of actuarial tools
such as PROST (Pension Reform Options Simulation Tool-kit);
and 7) The Bank should have a more flexible approach toward
the pension policy problem, avoiding the application of
standardized solutions to problems that are rarely standard. Show Less -
Type: Working Paper
Report#: 39150
Date: January 1, 2007
Author:
San Martino, Jorge
This paper addresses three areas of the
rural labor market-employment, labor wages, and agriculture
producer incomes. Findings show that the poor allocate a
lower share... Show More +
of their labor to farm sectors than the nonpoor
do, but still around 70 percent work in agriculture, and the
vast majority of rural workers are engaged in the informal
sector. When examining nonfarm employment in rural
Argentina, findings suggest that key determinants of access
to employment and productivity in nonfarm activities are
education, skills, land access, location, and gender.
Employment analyses show that women have higher probability
than men to participate in rural nonfarm activities and they
are not confined to low-return employment. Moreover, workers
living in poorer regions with land access are less likely to
be employed in the nonfarm sector. There is strong evidence
that educated people have better prospects in both the farm
and nonfarm sectors, and that education is an important
determinant of employment in the better-paid nonfarm
activities. Labor wage analyses reveal that labor markets
pay lower returns to poorer than to richer women and returns
to education are increasing with increased level of
completed education and income level. And nonfarm income and
employment are highly correlated with gender, skills,
household size, and education. This analysis also shows a
rather heterogeneous impact pattern of individual
characteristics across the income distribution, but
education is important for all levels of income.
Agricultural producer income analyses reveal that
producers' income monotonically increases with land
size and with completed education level, and positively
correlates with road access and use of electricity,
fertilizer, and irrigation. Finally, farms operated by women
are slightly more productive than farms operated by men. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS4095
Date: December 1, 2006
Author:
Verner, Dorte
The authors provide new evidence on the
impacts of trade reforms on wages and wage inequality in
developing countries. While most of the current literature
on the topic... Show More +
achieves identification by comparing outcomes
before and after one episode of trade liberalization across
industries, they propose a stronger identifying strategy.
The authors explore the recent historical record of policy
changes adopted by Argentina: from significant protection in
the early 1970s, to the first episode of liberalization
during the late 1970s, back to a slowdown of reforms during
the 1980s, to the second episode of liberalization in the
1990s. These swings in trade policy comprise broken trends
in trade reforms that they can compare with observed trends
in wages and wage inequality. After setting up unusual
historical data sets of trends in tariffs, trends in wages,
and trends in wage inequality, the evidence supports two
well-known hypotheses: trade liberalization, other things
being equal, (1) has reduced wages, and (2) has increased
wage inequality. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS3905
Date: May 1, 2006
Author:
Galiano, Sebastian ;
Porto, Guido G.
Privatization is under attack. Beginning
in the 1980s, thousands of failing state-owned enterprises
worldwide have been turned over to the private sector. But
public... Show More +
opinion has turned against privatization. A large
political backlash has been brewing for some time, infused
by accusations of corruption, abuse of market power, and
neglect of the poor. What is the real record of
privatization and are the criticisms justified? This report
evaluates the empirical evidence on privatization in a
region that has witnessed an extensive decline in the
state's share of production over the past 20 years. The
book is a compilation of recent studies that provide a
comprehensive analysis of the record of and accusations
against privatization, with important recommendations for
the future. Seven countries are investigated: Argentina,
Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Show Less -
Type: Publication
Report#: 34428
Date: March 15, 2005
Author:
Garron, Mauricio ;
Serra, Pablo ;
Torero, Maximo ;
Lopez de Silanes, Florencio [editor] ;
Barossi-Filho, Milton ;
Gertler, Paul ;
Macedo, Robert ;
Schargrodsky, Ernesto ;
Sturzenegger, Federico ;
Anuatti-Neto, Francisco ;
Ramirez, Manuel ;
Fischer, Ronald ;
Gledson de Carvalho, Antonio ;
Gutierrez, Rodrigo ;
Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio ;
Galiani, Sebastian ;
Pombo, Carlos ;
Chong, Alberto [editor] ;
Capra, Katherine ;
Machicado, Carlos
The article assesses the impact of
Argentina's main social policy response to the severe
economic crisis of 2002. The program was intended to provide
direct income support... Show More +
for families with dependent sand whose
head had become unemployed because of the crisis. Counter
factual comparisons are based on a matched subset of
applicants not yet receiving program assistance. Panel data
spanning the crisis are also used. The program reduced
aggregate unemployment, though it attracted as many people
into the workforce from inactivity as it did people who
otherwise would have been unemployed. Although there was
substantial leakage to formally ineligible families and
incomplete coverage of those who were eligible, the program
did partially compensate many losers from the crisis and
reduced extreme poverty. Show Less -
Type: Journal Article
Report#: 77477
Date: September 1, 2004
Author:
Galasso, Emanuela ;
Ravallion, Martin
To improve the likelihood of reaching
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), or more generally
to improve their social indicators, countries (or states and
provinces... Show More +
within countries) basically have two options:
increasing the inputs used to "produce" the
outcomes measured by the MDGs, or increasing the efficiency
with which they use their existing inputs. The four papers
presented in this study look at whether improvements in
efficiency could bring gains in outcomes. The first two
papers use world panel data in order to analyze country
level efficiency in improving education, health, and GDP
indicators (GDP is related to the MDGs because a higher
level of income leads to a reduction in poverty). The other
two papers use province and state level data to analyze
within-country efficiency in Argentina and Mexico for
"producing" good education and health outcomes.
Together, the four papers suggest that apart from increasing
inputs, it will be necessary to improve efficiency in order
to reach the MDGs. While this conclusion is hardly
surprising, the analysis helps to quantify how much progress
could be achieved through better efficiency, and to some
extent, how efficiency itself could be improved. Show Less -
Type: Publication
Report#: 26600
Date: June 1, 2003
Author:
Wodon, Quentin ;
Jayasuriya, Ruwan
