No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Self-employment in Latin America
... Among other things, as Cáceres and Cáceres (2017) indicates, the need and importance of this work is based on the fact that particularly in Latin America, self-employment is a means of subsistence in response to unemployment, economic stagnation, and inequality of opportunity. ...
... Accordingly, the positive influence between both factors takes place when the increase in unemployment also leads to an increase in self-employment, which is known as the "refugee effect" (Audretsch, Carree & Thurik, 2001). In this sense, Cáceres and Cáceres (2017) conclude for the case of some Latin American countries, that male self-employment increases as male unemployment increases, but it does not apply to female unemployment. In addition, male self-employment decreases when economic growth increases. ...
... This takes place regardless of gender, although maybe to a greater extent among women. It could be said that this result is in line with Cáceres and Cáceres (2017) when they affirm that self-employment is a manifestation of a historical framework of inequality of opportunities and low taxation, which gives rise to a persistent poverty trap. ...
There has been a numerous amount of economic research carried out which has aimed at identifying the factors that could contribute positively to economic growth. The economic literature available on this matter appears to acknowledge that entrepreneurship is one of the elements that could positively contribute to this growth. Among other factors, both entrepreneurship and knowledge are generally considered to play an important role regarding this macro-economic goal. Bearing this in mind, the positive bond that exists between both of them, which also contributes to economic growth and improvements in welfare, is increasingly analyzed in the different economic studies available. The goal of this paper is to empirically analyze the existing relationship between economic growth, knowledge and entrepreneurship within the context of Latin American countries during the period 2001-2016. For this purpose, the self-employment variable has been used as an empirical proxy of entrepreneurship. In general, the availability of reliable statistical information on entrepreneurship is quite limited especially in the case of the Latin American countries. Consequently, this is one of the reasons why there is a lack of unanimity as to the application of one dataset or another to measure entrepreneurship in the analysis. Therefore, although it is true that there is certain disagreement regarding the use of the aforementioned empirical proxy, there are, however, several references in favor of the use of self-employment statistics in the analysis of entrepreneurship. In order to do so, first of all we study the existing link between economic growth and certain determining factors such as public expenditure, investment, human capital, knowledge and entrepreneurship. Afterwards, we analyze the effects on entrepreneurship caused by such factors as, for example, unemployment, taxes and education (as a proxy of knowledge). © 2018, University of Finance and Management in Warsaw. All rights reserved.
... Under this theory, people become entrepreneurs as a result of positive motivation, such as the need for being independent, being one's own boss, the desire to fulfil one's own business ideas, the need for occupational challenges, which drives them to achieve a better professional and financial position. Furthermore, Caceres and Caceres (2017) [9] have found gender differences in terms of entrepreneurial push and pull motivators, as wages is what pushes women to entrepreneurship stronger than men. Research findings do not make it clear which of the types of entrepreneurial motivation plays a more important role in economic practice. ...
... One implication is that the impact of remittances on poverty reduction may be limited in view of the evidence that self-employment does not reduce poverty (Cá ceres, 2017b). The response to the increase in exports is negative and significant, that is, the growth of the export sector de-feminizes informality. ...
This study analyzes the determination of the deindustrialization process experienced by Mexico and the Central American countries, and the repercussions on employment, domestic savings, investment, and economic growth. The methodology consists of estimating VAR models with panel data from the 1990-2018 period. The results indicate that the percentage occupied by the manufacturing sector in GDP increases in the face of shocks to exports, investment, and the ratio of female to male salaried employment, and does not have a significant response to the increase in remittances. A measure of relative deindustrialization is introduced, defined as the ratio of the value-added of the manufacturing sector to imports, whose responses to shocks to exports and remittances are negative, but its response to salaried employment is positive. Faced with shocks to the ratio of female to male salaried employment, the responses of the domestic saving rate, per capita international reserves, and labor productivity was positive, but the response of the trade deficit was negative. These results show that deindustrialization must be analyzed in the context of the labor market of the countries and consider gender aspects.
... Furthermore, Caceres and Caceres (2017) have found gender differences in terms of entrepreneurial push and pull motivators, as wages is what pushes women to entrepreneurship stronger than men. ...
This article aims to consider the entrepreneurship as an occupational choice and to understand the flow among different forms of occupations. The choice of the form of professional activity depends on the perception of attractiveness of both forms, people who perceive entrepreneurial profits as more beneficial than workers’ wages more likely decide to become entrepreneurs than waged employees. However, in the presented paper, the choice is considered not only between entrepreneurship and employment but also concerns the scale of entrepreneurship. The issue of entrepreneurship as an occupational choice is presented empirically using the time series data for Poland on a quarterly basis in the years 2003-2018. The influence of the overall economic situation, which determines business opportunities and average salaries, on the choice between a proper entrepreneur, a quasi-entrepreneur and a hired worker is presented with the use of regression analysis. The results show that changes in the overall economic situation and in the level of average wages lead to flows between proper entrepreneurs and quasi-entrepreneurs, and thus, to changes in the employment structure. Improving market conditions encourage people to follow the path of proper entrepreneurship or to become hired workers, while abandoning quasi-entrepreneurship.
... Self-employment, as one kind of entrepreneurship (Blanchflower and Oswald 1998), unquestionably the oldest way by which individuals offer their labour in a market economy (Aronson 2019). This is a significant field for developing countries, given its positive role in socio-economic development (Caceres and Caceres 2017), a premise that dates from the work of Schumpeter (1934). Following a long-term decline, the issue of self-employment has received considerable attention in recent years because of its critical role in the reduction of unemployment (Thurik et al. 2008). ...
Self-employment is a field of special importance to developing countries in view of its positive role on socio-economic development. This study exploits a unique nationally representative database using the 1949–1985 China Demographic Data, the 2016 China Labour Force Dynamic Survey, and the 1959–1999 China Drought Disaster Data. Through a difference-in-differences estimation, we reveal that the Great Chinese Famine bear significantly upon individuals’ self-employment decisions. Specifically, a 1% increase in famine intensity results in a 3.89% and 2.31% decrease in the probability of self-employment and self-employed entrepreneurs entering the agricultural sector, respectively. Using rainfall as an instrument, we further show that the documented relationship is causal. Overall, we provide strong empirical evidence that famine exposure significantly affects one’s self-employment decisions, and can help design policies aiming to promote self-employment and the development of small businesses.
... This hypothesis holds that people become self-employed in light of economic growth. In such a growth condition, people pick self-employed as it offers new business opportunity, carrier, and income (Rene Caceres & Ann Caceres, 2017). Other than the economic circumstance that clarifies the reason for selfemployed, several elements that can fundamentally influence the choice to go into selfemployed include, e.g., level of education and training (Carpenter & Loveridge, 2017). ...
... On the one hand, leaving the labour market implies giving up economic independence as well as social security benefits. On the other hand, switching to part-time work, self-employment or informal jobs also implies lower hourly wages, reduced or null access to occupational and social insurance benefits, lack of job security, as well as lower or inexistent pension income in old age (Williams 2000;Budig 2006; Bardasi and Gornick 2007;Temkin 2009;Caceres and Caceres 2017). Furthermore, taking these types of jobs may have long-term consequences associated with lower accumulation of human capital (Gasparini and Tornarolli 2009;O'Reilly and Bothfeld 2002;Miller 1997). ...
We study the causal effect of motherhood on labour market outcomes in Latin America by adopting an event study approach around the birth of the first child based on panel data from national household surveys for Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. Our main contributions are: (i) providing new and comparable evidence on the effects of motherhood on labour outcomes in developing countries; (ii) exploring the possible mechanisms driving these outcomes; (iii) discussing the potential links between child penalty and the prevailing gender norms and family policies in the region. We find that motherhood reduces women’s labour supply in the extensive and intensive margins and influences female occupational structure towards flexible occupations—part-time work, self-employment, and labour informality—needed for family–work balance. Furthermore, countries with more conservative gender norms and less generous family policies are associated with larger differences between mothers’ and non-mothers’ labour market outcomes.
... In other words, the experience of youth unemployment can lead to generating, after several years, a labor supply made up of workers who lack good education and skills, who dropped out of school, and who carry the psychological consequences of having been unemployed. Caceres (2013) has shown that in Latin America labor productivity is negatively associated with informality. It is observed in equations (2) and (3) of Table 5, where labor productivity is the dependent variable, that the female and male youth unemployment rates with lags of 8 and 14 years respectively, have negative and significant coefficients. ...
This paper analyzes the determinants and consequences of youth unemployment in Honduras. The study is based on the estimation of error correction models that express youth unemployment in terms of real sector variables. The results indicate that exports, remittances and self employment reduce youth unemployment, while the expansion of the service sector increases it; other results show that youth unemployment is susceptible to economic activity in the other Central American countries, specifically to economic growth in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Youth unemployment exerts negative impacts on Honduras’ productivity and on economic growth. The study also highlights the role of education on preventing youth unemployment and the importance of designing a Youth Agenda that would comprise several initiatives that are of special value to Honduran youth. It is hoped that these results would motivate policy makers and society in general to increase investments in the human capital areas so that youth avoid falling into the traps resulting from unemployment.
Informality, Poverty and Consumption in Mexico: Empirical Evidence between 1993 and 2019
In this document we explore the relationship between informality, poverty and “predictable consumption” in Mexico. We start from a macroeconomic model with two types of agents to recover the predictable consumption series, which represents the individuals who spend all their income in each period. We estimate predictable consumption with an instrumental variables method to solve the problem of simultaneity between consumption and income. Using this series, we test the hypothesis that individuals with predictable consumption are people living in poverty or working in the informality. Our results suggest that some of the variations in predictable consumption are due to changes in poverty. This document is the first to analyze the heterogeneity of consumption in Mexico, mapping out its behavior with two types of consumers, from which it is concluded that a considerable part of private consumption (almost 40%) is consistent with the permanent income hypothesis. Furthermore, this article is the first to formally document the strong relationship between poverty and informality in Mexico, which has important economic policy implications.
Emerging research on the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic draws attention to the labor effects of the crisis in the Global South. Developing countries show high levels of labor informality, where most workers cannot work from home and depend on daily income. In addition, the scarce and late state aid makes it difficult for workers to cope with the economic hardships caused by the pandemic. This research explores the employment trajectories of workers throughout the ongoing pandemic in Chile: a neoliberal country with a strong male breadwinner culture and high levels of income inequality. Using longitudinal non-probabilistic data for Chilean employment, this study finds that men lost their jobs to a lesser extent and returned to the labor market faster than women. Likewise, male workers with family (with a partner and young children) remained employed in a higher proportion than female workers with family, and most of these women shifted from employment into care work. The existing literature already pointed out how economic crises can have adverse effects on progress towards gender equality, and the current economic crisis seems to be no exception. Labor informality and low-skilled jobs were highly related to unemployment during the first months of COVID in Chile. These are important variables in a developing economy such as Chile, where around one-third of the population works under these conditions. This article concludes by reflecting on the importance of addressing the present crisis and future economic recovery with a gender perspective.
This chapter reviews the literature on economic informality. It first provides a review of the informality literature more generally and then a more focused review of informality in Latin America, including various perspectives (legalist, structuralist, Marxist, microenterprise). We offer a comprehensive review of previous work on informality in Paraguay, including Programa Regional del Empleo para América Latina y El Caribe (PREALC)’s first major study of informality in the region (1973 in the Metropolitan Region of Paraguay). Lastly, the chapter introduces the various measures or proxies of informality utilized in our analyses.
This chapter explains the data source, the annual encuesta permanente de hogares, study time frame, and multivariate statistical model used to answer our research question concerning the determinants of economic informality. We utilize ten measures across three areas (social benefits, organizational practices, and firm characteristics) to proxy informality (the dependent variable) in Paraguay. We explain the use of nearly two dozen independent variables and provide descriptive statistics for both sets of variables (dependent and independent). The chapter ends with a presentation of our conceptual model for exploring the determinants of informality in Paraguay.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.