what happens to wages after displacement faced with limited resources policymakers need to know when and where to target support for displaced workers the academic literature offers little support presenting wide ranging results with no consistent explanation for the observed differences in wages after workers are displaced in this paper we demonstrate that the heterogeneity found in the literature is consistent with varying market conditions the results suggest that support for displaced workers can be more efficiently allocated by considering the timing and location of displacement

pricing free bank notes abstract during the pre civil war period us banks issued distinct private monies called bank notes a bank note is a perpetual risky non interest bearing debt claim with the right to redeem on demand at par in specie this paper investigates the pricing of this private money taking into account the enormous changes in technology during the period namely the introduction and rapid diffusion of the railroad a contingent claims pricing model for bank notes is proposed and tested using monthly bank note prices for all banks in north america together with indices of the durations and costs of trips back to issuing banks constructed from pre civil war travelers guides evidence is produced that market participants properly priced the risks inherent in these securities suggesting that wildcat banking was not common because of market discipline

private information deposit interest rates and the stability of the banking system abstract the regulation of deposit interest rates has received little support from economists the same is true for the original rationale for such regulation that bank competition for deposits generates inherent instability in the banking system this paper develops an adverse selection model of banking in which this rationale is correct moreover in this model instability in the banking system can arise despite the presence of a lender of last resort and despite the absence of any need for deposit insurance however in the world described the regulation of deposit interest rates is shown to be an appropriate response to instability in the banking system finally it is argued that adverse selection models of deposit interest rate determination can confront a number of observed phenomena that are not readily explained in other contexts

misintermediation and macroeconomic fluctuations abstract individuals plan consumption and production for different point in the future using interest rates of various maturities as a guide however the financial intermediaries individuals work through traditionally do not match the maturity structure of their assets and liabilities as a result aggregate production plans and aggregate consumption plans for each period in the future need not coincide the resulting discrepancy will eventually appear as a recession or boom involving an unanticipated change in interest rates and production inside the original intertemporal production possibilities frontier maturity transformation is therefore not an essential function of financial intermediation but rather a mis function one which we call misintermediation

working life well being and welfare reform motivation and institutions revisited summary this article revisits the relation between economic institutions and motives to work it proposes moving away from a dominant polemical focus on the impact of a single source of security income support towards a multi factorial analysis based on control over working life as a source of well being and motivation to work drawing on surveys of two urban constituencies in sao paulo brazil it is found that income security supports an aristotelian principle of work motivation as individual development however labour market institutions and opportunity levels affect this link implications include a need to consider the distribution of economic control as a key aspect of both human and economic development

the effects of tax increment financing on economic development abstract local governments attempt to influence business location decisions and economic development through use of the property tax tax increment financing tif earmarks property tax revenues that result from growth in assessed valuation the tif revenues are to be used for economic development projects but may also be diverted for other purposes using data for the chicago metropolitan area that includes information on property value growth before and after tif adoption we find evidence that cities that adopt tif grow more slowly than those that do not we test for and reject sample selection bias as an explanation of this finding

money is an experience good competition and trust in the private provision of money the interplay between competition and trust as efficiency enhancing mechanisms in the private provision of money is studied with commitment trust is automatically achieved and competition ensures efficiency without commitment competition plays no role trust does play a role but requires a bound on efficiency stationary inflation must be non negative and therefore the friedman rule cannot be achieved the quality of money can be observed only after its purchasing capacity is realized in this sense money is an experience good

using electoral cycles in police hiring to estimate the effect of police on crime comment previous empirical studies have uncovered little evidence that police reduce crime possibly due to simultaneity problems this paper uses the timing of mayoral and gubernatorial elections as an instrumental variable to identify a causal effect of police on crime increases in the size of police forces are shown to be disproportionately concentrated in mayoral and gubernatorial election years increases in police are shown to substantially reduce violent crime but have a smaller impact on property crime the null hypothesis that the marginal social benefit of reduced crime equals the costs of hiring additional police cannot be rejected

quality over quantity reexamining the link between entrepreneurship and job creation although much has been written about the quantity of jobs created by entrepreneurs scholars have yet to examine the quality of these jobs in this article the authors begin to address this important issue by examining nearly 5 000 businesses that began operations in 2004 they investigate the extent to which nascent employers provide what many think of as quality jobs those offering health care coverage and a retirement plan the authors find that because of small scale constrained resources and protection from institutional pressures start up companies do not provide their employees with either of these proxies for job quality and their likelihood of offering health or retirement benefits increases only marginally over their first six years of operation the finding that entrepreneurs impressive record of job creation is not matched by a similarly impressive outcome with respect to job quality challenges policymakers to ensure that entrepreneurs are encouraged to create quality employment opportunities in the course of creating new businesses abstract from author

struggles to form business improvement districts bids in los angeles autonomous efforts to improve local business environments have become an increasingly important impetus for economic development business improvement districts bids as one of such autonomous organisations have clearly demonstrated benefits for promoting commercial areas over the last two decades when bids spread over a city however not every commercial district succeeds in establishing bids despite some initial efforts this research examines the types of challenges that these neighbourhoods experience in order to form bids this study is based on census data analyses and in depth interviews with city employees bid consultants executive directors of bids and community stakeholders in los angeles the results show that the areas with unsuccessful attempts of bid formation in los angeles are relatively low income immigrant neighbourhoods some of these neighbourhoods have struggled with disengaged property owners spatial conflicts among diverse ethnic groups immigrants skepticism towards govern

exclusion and the private enforcement of property rights abstract this paper develops a model of exclusion and property rights consumers choose between legal and illegal use a monopoly provider chooses a price for legal use a fine for illegal use and a level of monitoring to detect illegal use this model features a continuum of exclusion regimes instead of only the poles of private and public provision as is typical since the necessity of enforcing property rights creates two classes of users the provider is forced to price discriminate furthermore both the equilibrium and optimum feature imperfect exclusion and equilibrium exclusion is excessive

free bank failures risky bonds versus undiversified portfolios almost 30 of the 872 banks established under the free banking system 1837 62 are considered failures unable to reimburse noteholders for the full value of their bank notes upon closure lacking sufficient data economists have focused on one of two general failure explanations poor regulation design or undiversified bank portfolios i test both explanations within hazard functions using warren weber s annual balance sheet data for almost every antebellum bank my results suggest that free banking s bond secured note issue was the underlying problem but individual banks could have avoided failure by diversifying their assets with loans and controlling their circulation

taxation and executive compensation evidence from stock options abstract understanding the effects of taxes on executive compensation provides insight into the process determining this compensation and is a key input to top income tax rate policy a 2010 tax reform in canada which greatly increased the effective tax rate on stock option compensation for a subset of firms provides a natural experiment with which to address this issue difference in differences estimates suggest that this tax increase resulted in an immediate reduction in both stock option grants and the fraction of total compensation made up of stock options with limited if any substitution towards other components of compensation

how institutions and business strategies affect wages a cross national study of call centers this paper drawing on a 2003 2006 establishment level survey of 1 819 call centers in 15 countries examines effects of industrial relations institutions and employer strate gies on wage variation across coordinated liberal and emerging market economies the authors find several contradictory patterns which confirm theoretical predictions for some countries and contradict them for others suggesting diverse institutional reactions to the emergence of a new economic activity consistent with prior research denmark france and sweden exhibit patterns of low wage dispersion and no union wage premium and the united states canada and emerging market economies ex hibit quite high levels of dispersion contrary to prior research austria and germany resemble the united states in their levels of wage dispersion while the united kingdom resembles the coordinated market group finally employer strategies of outsourcing and market segmentation explain within country wage variation in most countries suggesting considerable flexibility in wage setting at the establishment level

wages and informality in developing countries we develop an equilibrium wage posting model with heterogeneous firms that decide to locate in the formal or the informal sector and workers who search randomly on and off the job we estimate the model on brazilian labor force survey data in equilibrium firms of equal productivity locate in different sectors a fact observed in the data wages are characterized by compensating differentials we show that tightening enforcement does not increase unemployment and increases wages total output and welfare by enabling better allocation of workers to higher productivity jobs and improving competition in the formal labor market jel e26 j24 j31 j46 o15 o17

public safety through private action an economic assessment of bids private actions to avoid and prevent criminal victimisation and assist public law enforcement are vital inputs into the crime control process one form of private action the business improvement district bid appears particularly promising a bid is a non profit organisation created by property owners to provide local public goods usually including public safety our analysis of 30 los angeles bids demonstrates that the social benefits of bid expenditures on security are a large multiple about 20 of the private expenditures crime displacement appears minimal crime reduction in the bid areas has been accompanied by a reduction in arrests suggesting further savings given the vital role of private individuals and firms in determining the effectiveness of the criminal justice system and the quality and availability of criminal opportunities private actions arguably deserve a more central role in the analysis of crime and crime prevention policy 1 but the leading scholarly commentaries on the crime drop during the 1990s have largely ignored the role of the private sector blumstein and wallman 2000 levitt 2004 zimring 2007 the potentially relevant trends include growing reporting rates the growing sophistication and use of alarms monitoring equipment and locks the considerable increase in the employment of private security guards and the decline in the use of cash cook and macdonald 2010 private actions can be encouraged or discouraged through regulation of the insurance industry reducing the costs of private co operation with police and courts gun control measures and other means the justification for such measures is the reasonable presumption that many sorts of private action to avoid mitigate and respond to crime generate substantial externalities business improvement districts bids are a particularly promising institution for harnessing private action to cost effective crime control a bid is a non profit organisation created by neighbourhood property owners to provide local public goods including public safety the organisation has the power to tax all the owners in the district including those who did not sign the original petition previous evaluations of bids in los angeles la indicate that they are successful in reducing crime rates brooks 2008 macdonald et al 2009 we provide a further analysis of the costs and benefits including the effect on arrests and spillovers and we estimate a dose response

the suppression of state banknotes a reconsideration george selgin it is generally believed that congress in imposing a prohibitive 10 tax on state banknotes in 1865 made the public better off by doing away with inferior brands of currency while simultaneously helping finance the civil war by stimulating bond sales to national banks in truth the tax served neither purpose the true purpose of the 10 tax was not to enhance bond sales or to improve the quality of the currency but to offset the inflationary effects of greenbacks and national banknotes in the long run the public might have been better off had state banks retained their right to issue currency jel g21 n21 let us have a bank currency that will be recognized in the next town a currency that will be recognized in new york philadelphia boston new orleans chicago or any other part of the united states representative john f farnsworth illinois april 28 1864 congressional globe 38th congress 1st session 1934 i f the national banks with the great advantages which they enjoy cannot compete successfully with the state banks it simply shows that the latter subserve better the interests of the business community and should not be destroyed representative francis kernan new york february 16 1865 congressional globe 38th congress 2d session 833 i introduction during the civil war a 10 tax was placed on any issuance of notes of state chartered or incorporated banks deliberately forcing state banks out of the paper currency business and making the regulation and issuance of currency a prerogative of the federal government and of federally chartered national banks this paper reexamines the congressional decision to suppress state banknotes american monetary historians have conventionally viewed the decision as reflecting 1 the public s intolerable disgust with an unregulated currency hammond 1957 11 compare dunbar 1922 220 and 2 the government s desire to boost the demand for national bank charters so as to expand the market for its debt e g hughes and cain 1998 373 74 dowd 1992 230 i plan to argue that neither view accounts adequately for the 10 tax the first view in particular begs important questions that have gone unaddressed if state banknotes were clearly inferior to national banknotes why was a prohibitive tax needed to drive them out of circulation just how were consumers supposed to benefit from having their choices restricted i explore several responses to these questions and ultimately conclude that consumers considered some state banknotes to be just as desirable as their national bank counterparts i argue that the 10 tax served not to overcome any banknote market failure but to force the withdrawal of relatively high quality state banknotes i then proceed to show that the tax was not needed to secure adequate bond sales to national banks proponents of the tax were striving not to increase the number of applications for national bank charters but to limit growth in the aggregate money stock i conclude by suggesting that because state banks of issue could have accommodated market demands that national banks failed to satisfy consumers might have been better served had state banknotes been allowed to survive ii the chase plan when the first shots of the american civil war were fired at fort sumter the paper currency of the united states consisted of over 200 million in banknotes issued by nearly 1 500 state chartered banks the quality of these banknotes varied according to their issuers management and regulatory environment 1 some banknotes circulated at par only near their source and at fluctuating discounts elsewhere so that persons carrying notes from state to state risked incurring currency exchange losses of the sort borne by international travelers today a few were subject to especially heavy discounts or were refused altogether because their issuers solvency was in question

friedman versus hayek on private money review essay abstract few areas of economic activity can claim as long and unanimous a record of agreement on the appropriateness of governmental intervention as the supply of money benjamin klein 1974 p 423

gated communities and the economic geography of crime abstract this paper analyzes gated communities in a geographic model of crime there are four major results first gating always diverts crime to other communities but has an overall deterrent effect on crime as long as it does not impact legitimate employment opportunities second gating expenditures may be strategic substitutes or strategic complements the latter possibility may help explain why gated communities appear to spread like a contagion third the nash equilibrium level of gating expenditures is inefficiently large fourth gating may actually increase the overall level of crime if it either affects employment opportunities or it influences the selection among multiple equilibrium crime rates

has government any role in money abstract recent interest in monetary reform has been sparked by the emergence of a world irredeemable paper money system in light of this interest we review the current validity of four good reasons friedman advanced in 1960 to rationalize government intervention we conclude that the forces that produced government involvement in the past will persist deregulation of financial intermediaries is desirable on grounds of market efficiency though it is an open question whether government should continue as lender of last resort we expect that the present world fiat money standard will neither degenerate into hyperinflation nor revert to a commodity standard

laissez faire monetary theorists in late nineteenth century america economists have recently begun to reconsider many forms of regulation of money and banks from what may be termed a laissez faire perspective some have questioned fundamentally the rationale for any government role this development raises an interesting question for historians of thought what intellectual support did the concept of a free market monetary system receive in the 19th century the heyday of classical liberalism and laissez faire thought this paper takes up the question by critically surveying american monetary writings from the last half of the 19th century 2 we find that the idea of a laissez faire monetary policy was never very popular in the united states though it did have proponents whose work was often insightful most of the relevant literature was written in response to consequences wrought by the monetary legislation of the civil war that legislation included not only the national bank acts 1863 4 but also an ancillary measure effective 1866 placing a prohibitive tax on state bank notes these laws forced banks of issue to become national banks and thus to buy federal bonds as collateral for their notes which had the intended effect of creating an extra demand for the federal government s wartime debt in addition congress authorized the issue of legal tender greenback currency by the treasury a frequent theme in the post bellum monetary literature was the alleged deficiency or inelasticity of the currency supply some the greenbackers and silverites wanted the government to increase its contributions to the money supply others especially toward the end of the century argued for the establishment of a centralized agency with special powers of note issue a handful of writers renewed the radical jacksonians campaign for laissez faire in money and banking 3 in their view the defects of existing arrangements could best be solved by deregulation of banking and by removal of the federal government from the business of supplying money

volunteering to be taxed business improvement districts and the extra governmental provision of public safety abstract when the median voter s preference sets the level of local public goods some voters are left unsatisfied is there an institution by which subsets of voters can resolve the collective action problem and increase the local provision of public goods if so what are the consequences in response to problems such as crime and vandalism neighborhood property owners have established business improvement districts bids to provide local public goods when a bid is approved by a majority of property owners in a neighborhood state law makes contributions to the bid budget mandatory this resolution of the neighborhood s collective action problem reduces crime bids in the city of los angeles are robustly associated with crime declines of 6 to 10 indeed crime falls regardless of estimation technique fixed effects comparing bids to neighborhoods that considered but did not adopt bids using propensity score matching and comparing bids to their neighbors strikingly these declines are purchased cheaply attributing all bid expenditure to violent crime reduction and thus ignoring the impact of bid expenditure on many quality of life crimes bids spend 21 000 to avert one violent crime this higher bound estimate is substantially lower than the 57 000 social cost of a violent crime

state restrictions on local debt their role in preventing default abstract default by a local government can impose a negative externality upon other localities within a state because the state s ability to enforce debt repayment depends upon the proportion of municipalities favoring repayment localities benefit from maintaining their state s reputation for enforcement hence jurisdictions not wishing to default favor enforcement of repayment by other jurisdictions a debt limit increases support for enforcement by reducing the proportion of municipalities preferring default we characterize when such a limit is optimal we also examine the role of special districts which typically neither are subject to a debt ceiling nor fully backed by the jurisdiction

the micro empirics of collective action the case of business improvement districts abstract this paper carries out a micro level analysis of collective goods provision by focusing on the formation of business improvement districts bids the paper s theoretical and empirical analysis is unusually complete in that it considers the entire process of collective action including participation in initial organization voting and ultimate impact on property values bid benefits are shown to be highly uneven and bid formation is not a pareto improvement furthermore large anchor participants benefit disproportionately and are crucial for the viability of the institution consistent with olson 1965 these results while demonstrated in a particular setting apply to collective action more generally whenever a market failure leaves room for a collective response the presence of anchor participants encourages collective action and the action even though in a sense voluntary has uneven benefits

interpreting new evidence about china and u s silver purchases abstract this paper offers a reinterpretation of the influence on china of america s silver policy in the early 1930 s recently compiled evidence about events in china are described and interpreted in light of a model of free banking under a commodity standard our interpretation is that the u s silver purchase program did not set off a chain of bad economic events which eventually forced china off silver and onto a fiat standard rather china was forced off silver by its own government which wanted to make itself the beneficiary of the capital gain associated with the appreciation of silver and to relieve itself of the restrictions that are imposed on government finance by a commodity standard

political jurisdictions in heterogeneous communities we investigate whether political jurisdictions form in response to the trade off between economies of scale and the costs of a heterogeneous population we consider heterogeneity in income race ethnicity and religion and we test the model using american school districts school attendance areas municipalities and special districts we find strong evidence of a trade off between economies of scale and racial heterogeneity we also find evidence of a trade off between economies of scale and income heterogeneity conversely we find little evidence that ethnic or religious heterogeneity shapes jurisdictions to clarify the direction of causality between heterogeneity and jurisdictions we exploit shocks to racial heterogeneity generated by the two world wars

do agricultural land preservation programs reduce farmland loss evidence from a propensity score matching estimator more than 80 governmental entities concerned about sprawl open space and farmland have implemented purchase of development rights pdr programs preserving 2 23 million acres at a cost of 5 47 billion are pdr programs effective in slowing the rate and acres of farmland loss employing propensity score matching methods and a 50 year 269 county data set for six mid atlantic states we find empirical evidence that pdr programs have had a statistically significant effect on farmland loss having a pdr program decreases a county s rate of farmland loss by 40 to 55 and decreases farmland acres lost by 375 to 550 acres per year

improving police services evidence from the french quarter task force abstract this study sheds light on the improvement of police services by examining the french quarter task force fqtf an anti crime program in new orleans french quarter first we provide new evidence that increasing police presence is effective in crime prevention our difference in differences estimates suggest that the fqtf which increased police visibility in the french quarter reduced robberies aggravated assaults and thefts by 37 4 16 9 and 13 respectively second our findings imply that the proper use of monitoring and incentive strategies has the potential to further improve police services exploiting the program s change in management we find that providing officers with more monitoring and performance incentives led the fqtf to reduce robberies by 22 12 and aggravated assaults by 5 56 each quarter

do open market operations matter theory and evidence from the second bank of the united states abstract modigliani miller theorems for open market operations describe conditions under which central bank portfolio rearrangements will have no consequences for allocations relative prices or the time path of the price level such theorems for government owned central banks have limited applicability and hence are difficult to test we develop a modigliani miller theorem for privately owned central banks and test its implications using data from the second bank of the united states the data are consistent with an absence of price level effects due to open market operations and are inconsistent with standard versions of the quantity theory of money

union recognition by multinational companies in china a dual institutional pressure perspective over the last decade chinese authorities have pressed foreign multinational companies to recognize official trade unions employing cross classified multilevel modeling on a large data set 10 108 foreign owned firms cross embedded in 32 home countries and 755 chinese cities this study examines the antecedents of the varied positions of foreign owned firms toward union recognition around the midpoint of the first decade of the 2000s a time when the government led union recognition campaign in china was gaining strength drawing on a dual institutional pressure perspective the authors theorize that the likelihood that a foreign owned firm will recognize a union depends on both the industrial relations system in the home country and the location of its operations in the host country specifically a foreign owned firm is more likely to recognize unions if it originated from a nation where the legitimacy of collective representation is high and if it is located in a chinese city where union recognition is prevalent among chinese owned firms

public provision of private goods government may provide a good that can if legally permitted be supplemented by private purchases policy is determined by majority rule under standard assumptions on preferences a majority voting equilibrium exists a regime of positive government provision with no restriction on private supplements is shown to be majority preferred to a regime of either only market provision or only government provision combined public and private expenditure on the good is higher under this dual provision regime than under either of the alternatives under some preference configurations the median income voter is pivotal under others a voter with income below the median is pivotal

asymmetric information and optimal bank reserves one traditional argument in favor of bank reserve requirements holds that since a b ank and its depositors are asymmetrically informed as to the bank s reserve position and its portfolio the bank will hold too few reserves and too risky a port folio this being the case presumably a central banking authority is equipped t o impose and to monitor a minimal reserve requirement yielding a pareto superior outcome this paper analyzes this position in the context of a formalmodel and shows that at least for some parameters of the model there is such a case for a minimal reserve requirement copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

explaining the demand for free bank notes abstract this paper explains why the risky notes of banks established during the free banking era 1837 1863 were demanded even when relatively safe specie gold and silver coin was an alternative free bank notes were demanded because they were priced to reflect the expected value of their backing the empirical evidence supports this explanation specifically in new york wisconsin and indiana the expected value of backing was sufficient for free bank notes to circulate at par which they did in minnesota the backing for notes was very poor they exchanged well below par being treated as small denomination securities

the emancipation proclamation confederate expectations and the price of southern bank notes we examine the behavior of a semimonthly series of the confederate dollar price of bank notes these notes traded at par with confederate dollars from october of 1861 until november 5 1862 we use a model of the demand for two currencies to argue that this departure from par results from altered southern expectations after the 1862 congressional elections assured the enactment of the emancipation proclamation previously southerners believed a win or a negotiated settlement would allow a return to the union intact when these expectations changed bank notes appreciated against confederate dollars in addition our empirical work shows that notes appreciated following northern victories

solvency regulations and the management of banking risks abstract in the recent years international banking authorities have succeeded implementing harmonized solvency regulations however two stages can be distinguished 1 up to 1993 a rigid approach has prevailed with the cooke ratio for credit risks and the standardized approach to market risks 2 since then a movement towards flexibility has been acknowledged notably with the validation of internal models of the var type and the precommitment proposal of kupiec and o brien the objective of this article is to discuss the pros and cons of these different approaches within a coherent conceptual framework that applies contract theory to the regulation of banking

private money and banking regulation we show that the regulation of lending practices is desirable for the optimal provision of private money in an environment in which bankers cannot commit to repay their creditors neither an unregulated banking system nor a form of narrow banking in which banks hold 100 in reserves can provide the socially efficient amount of money if bankers provided such an amount then they would prefer to default on their liabilities we show that a regulation that increases the value of the banking sector s assets e g by limiting competition in credit markets will mitigate the commitment problem if the return on the banking sector s assets is made sufficiently large then it is possible to implement an efficient allocation

the strategic advantage of being poor private and public provision of public goods when people know that a public good is to be privately provided in the future economic behaviour may change in periods before the one with the private provision game individuals have a distortionary incentive to reduce their disposable income so as to shift the burden of provision to others the incentive is eliminated if the government provides a sufficient amount of the public good in a second best world private provision of public goods has been claimed to be a reasonably good alternative to public provision this claim needs to be reconsidered in the light of these results

bank panics government guarantees and the long run size of the financial sector evidence from free banking america governments attempt to increase the confidence of financial market participants by making implicit or explicit guarantees of uncertain credibility confidence in these guarantees presumably alters the size of the financial sector but observing the long run consequences of failed guarantees is difficult we look to america s free banking era and compare the consequences of a broken guarantee during the indiana centered panic of 1854 to the panic of 1857 in which guarantees were honored our estimates of a model of endogenous market structure indicate substantial negative long run consequences to financial depth when panics cast doubt upon a government s ability to honor its guarantees

banks free banks and u s economic growth the federalist financial revolution may have jump started the u s economy into modern growth but the free banking system 1837 1862 did not play a direct role in sustaining it despite lowering entry barriers and extending banking into developing regions we find in county level data that free banks had little or no effect on growth the result is not just a symptom of the era as state chartered banks seem to have strong and positive effects on manufacturing and urbanization jel g21 n21 o43

on defining and measuring the informal sector evidence from brazil summary recent debate on the reasons for the informal sector has led to renewed focus on how to operationalize the measurement of informal employment this paper investigates congruence between three empirical measures of the rate of informality using brazilian household survey data for the period 1992 2004 sixty three percent of the economically active are informal according to at least one definition but only 40 are informal according to all three regression analysis is used to shed further light on differences in these measures appropriate measurement is therefore of high significance to policy analysis and design of appropriate strategies to reduce informality

the causes of free bank failures a detailed examination abstract in this paper we propose and test a new explanation of bank behavior during the free banking era 1837 1863 arguing against the conventional view that free bank failures were due to wildcat banking we claim they were caused by falling asset prices confronting both explanations with our new and detailed data set developed from state auditor reports we find that the falling asset price explanation of free bank failures explains far more failures than does the wildcatting hypothesis

labor turnover and labor legislation in brazil one of the main characteristics of the brazilian labor market is its impressively high job and worker turnover rates although labor legislation in brazil is very restrictive dismissal costs are not high when compared with other latin american countries moreover many authors argue that the design of some job security programs creates perverse incentives that generate labor turnover the objective of this paper is twofold first we describe brazilian labor legislation with emphasis on job security provisions and their incentives on workers reallocation then after reviewing the most recent evidence on labor turnover in brazil we investigate the effects of changes in job termination costs implemented in the 1988 constitution and in a labor law of september 2001 on employment duration both legislation changes increased firing costs and should have therefore reduced turnover for formal workers affected by them a simple differences in differences methodology is applied to monthly individual data from pesquisa mensal de emprego pme ibge which has information on previous employment spells for those currently unemployed the results establish that both changes reduced turnover for formal workers affected by the legislation a significant increase in average employment duration of affected workers relative to not affected workers was observed after both legislation changes we also provided evidence that the 1988 constitutional change reduced the probability of fake layoffs although there are still a high number of such agreements being made between workers and their employers