Does Informality Imply Segmentation in Urban Labor Markets? Evidence from Sectoral Transitions in Mexico

This article offers an alternative to the traditional dualisticview of the relationship between formal and informal labor markets.For many workers inefficiencies in formal sector protectionsand low levels of labor productivity may make informal sectoremployment a desirable alternative to formal sector employment.The analysis offers the first study of worker transitions betweensectors using detailed panel data from Mexico and finds littleevidence in favor of the dualistic view. Traditional earningsdifferentials cannot prove or disprove segmentation in the developing-countrycontext. The patterns of worker mobility do not suggest a rigidlabor market or one segmented along the formal/informal division.     

The Algerian Retrenchment System: A Financial and Economic Evaluation

The government of Algeria has adopted a new retrenchment systemto facilitate labor shedding in a public sector characterizedby redundant workers and in an environment of already high unemployment.This article assesses the financial viability of the retrenchmentsystem and the inherent welfare costs and benefits associatedwith layoffs. A Financial flows model tracks the UnemploymentInsurance Fund's revenue and expenditure flows during the projectedfive-year adjustment period. It finds that even in the presenceof massive retrenchment (21 percent of formal sector employment),the fund accumulates reserves equivalent to nearly 2 percentof gross domestic product. Because many displaced workers willend up in the informal sector, the resulting productivity gainsor losses depend crucially on the initial level of productivityin the public sector. At the same time, retrenchment entailsunambiguous benefits by reducing subsidies to state-owned enterprises,thereby generating efficiency gains. Considering these two effectstogether, the welfare model estimates that retrenching 13 percentof the formal sector will generate annual net welfare gainsranging from costs of $358 million to gains of $774 million.     

The Thai Rural Credit System: Public Subsidies, Private Information, and Segmented Markets

Thailand has sought to increase farmers' access to credit bygovernment intervention. In 1966 it created a government agriculturalbank to lend solely to farm households, and beginning in thelate 1970s it required commercial banks to lend heavily in therural sector, either directly or by making deposits in the agriculturalbank. The result was an enormous expansion of credit in therural sector. But because formal lenders were either unableor unwilling to solve the information problems involved in thebroad range of rural credit transactions, the informal creditsector (which charged interest rates many times higher thanthe formal sector) continued to thrive. Using household surveysand surveys of moneylenders, this article provides a detailedanalysis of the ways in which lenders in the informal sectorhave solved the information problems of providing credit. Theauthors argue that the informal sector is competitive, and thathigh interest rates reflect high information costs, not thescarcity of funds.     

Social trust and corporate financial asset holdings: Evidence from China

This study examines the impact of social trust on firms’ holdings of non-currency financial assets using a large sample of firms in China’s real sector. We find that firms in regions of the high social trust hold fewer financial assets, consistent with the notion that credibility in high-trust regions reduces information asymmetry and transaction cost among market participants. This leads to better access to formal and informal financing and higher profitability for the real economy, eventually depressing firms’ financial asset allocations. We also find that the negative effect of social trust on financial asset holdings is more prominent for private firms and firms with weak internal monitoring from large shareholders, suggesting that corporations rely more on trust in these cases; it is less pronounced when firms are in regions with good legal systems, proving social trust to be a substitute for formal institutions.     

Informal authority and economic outcomes of family firms: An issue of national power distance

This paper delivers empirical evidence of how the informal authority of owner families determines the extent to which these can extract private benefits and secure preferential resource access. We argue that owner families in high power distance cultures enjoy increased informal authority. Consistent with our predictions, family firms in higher power distance countries display lower operating performance and are less likely to underinvest. Both effects are moderated by family ownership, family management involvement, and formal country-level governance mechanisms. Moreover, family firms in higher power distance countries are more commonly led by family members and pay lower costs of debt. Overall, our results emphasize the relevance of informal institutions for the economic outcomes and governance situation of family firms.     

Tariffs versus VAT in the presence of heterogeneous firms and an informal sector

The debate over the use of tariffs or value added taxes in developing countries has focused on the difficulty of collecting VAT from the informal sector. This paper contributes by considering this issue with heterogeneous firms and endogenous entry. This yields two results. First, a cut in the tariff reduces the size of the informal sector. Second, the imposition of VAT need not increase the size of the informal sector. Turning to simulation results, we find that switching from a tariff to a revenue-neutral VAT increases welfare, in part because of the selection effect generated by heterogeneous firms.     

Financial openness and firm exports: Evidence from Foreign-owned Banks in China

Firms involved in international trade require an active and efficient financial market to facilitate their credit services and this is enhanced by financial openness. This study identified the impact of financial openness on Chinese firms' exports by 386 foreign-owned banks in China from 1996 to 2019 as a quasi-natural experiment. We constructed an estimation technique that combines the parallel trend test (PTT) and propensity score matching (PSM) with difference-in-difference (DID) estimators. We found that the gross and selection effects of financial openness are positive, and significantly increase firms' exports by 27.5%. Moreover, the impact differs for various firms: in terms of scale, small and micro firms benefit the most, and in terms of industry, manufacturing firms achieve the highest growth. Additionally, foreign-owned banks reduce firms' transaction costs and production expenditures, while increasing their total factor productivity (TFP) and credit alternatives.     

A competitive model of the informal sector

In developing nations, formal workers tend to be more experienced, more educated, and earn more than informal workers. These facts are often interpreted as evidence that low-skill workers face barriers to entry into the formal sector. Yet, there is little empirical evidence that such barriers are important. This paper describes a model where, in equilibrium, the characteristics of formal and informal workers differ systematically, even though labor markets are perfectly competitive. The informal sector emphasizes low-skill work, as in the data, because informal managers have access to less outside financing, and choose to substitute low-skill labor for physical capital.     

Does social trust restrain firm financing violations? Evidence from China

We use a sample of Chinese firms to examine the impact of social trust, as an informal institution, on firm financing violations. Our findings suggest that when a firm is located in a region with high social trust, it commits fewer financing violations than those committed by firms in a region of low social trust. The results are robust for alternative measures of financing violations (fraudulent activities when issuing new shares, changing the use of new funds to uses other than the stipulated purposes, or illegally using third‐party loan guarantees), social trust, and after using instrumental variables estimation to account for endogeneity. Additional analysis suggests that the impact of social trust on restraining financing violations is more pronounced for firms having lower interest costs, facing low industry competition, located in high marketisation regions, and having good internal control. The findings show that the impact of social trust on financing violations is moderated by the economic reality of the firm (interest costs and competition), the formal institutional environment (level of marketisation), and the internal governance of a firm (internal control).     

Informal or formal financing? Evidence on the co-funding of Chinese firms

Different modes of external finance provide heterogeneous benefits for the borrowing firms. Informal finance offers informational advantages whereas formal finance is scalable. Using unique survey data from China, we find that informal finance is associated with higher sales growth for small firms but lower sales growth for large firms. We identify a complementary effect between informal and formal finance for the sales growth of small firms, but not for large firms. Co-funding, thereby simultaneously using the informational advantage of informal finance and the scalability of formal finance, is therefore the optimal choice for small firms.     

Productivity-based asset pricing: Theory and evidence

In a general real business cycle model, we derive a pricing kernel that involves only production function arguments. The productivity shock is the single factor and the capital stock relative to a productivity measure is the conditioning variable. The model compares favorably with the complementary consumption-based and market-based approaches and with the Fama-French three-factor model. A size premium arises from differences in unconditional sensitivities—small firms are more sensitive to productivity shocks—and a value premium from differences in conditional sensitivities to productivity shocks—growth firms are more sensitive to productivity shocks when the productivity risk premium is low.     

Is export tax rebate a quality signal to determine firms’ capital structure? A financial intermediation perspective

This paper empirically examines the casual effect of export tax rebates (ETRs) on firm capital structure. The results of analyzing large panel data on Chinese manufacturing firms from 2007 to 2015 suggest that firms that obtain ETRs are more likely to access leverage. Moreover, ETRs affect the leverage ratio through funding fixed assets investments, smoothing financial costs, and alleviating for internal financing. In addition, ETRs are positively associated with leverage through improvements in firm performance, including firms’ total factor productivity, profitability, and labor productivity. Additionally, the effect of ETRs on leverage plays a stronger role in private firms than in state-owned or foreign firms.     

National Culture and Profit Reinvestment: Evidence from Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises

We examine the role of national culture—an important informal institution—in the profit reinvestment decisions of small firms in emerging markets. Prior economic development literature focuses on formal institutions as determinants of growth. However, in emerging markets where formal institutions are less developed, informal institutions should have more of a direct versus indirect impact through formal institutions. We find that Schwartz's cultural dimensions of Embeddedness and Hierarchy negatively affect profit reinvestment, and that access to external financing (strength of property rights) is more important for reinvestment decisions in countries with low (high) Embeddedness and Hierarchy.     

The Impact of Firing Costs on Turnover and Unemployment: Evidence from the Colombian Labour Market Reform

Reductions in firing costs are often advocated as a way of increasing the dynamism of labour markets in both developed and less developed countries. Evidence from Europe and the U.S. on the impact of firing costs has, however, been mixed. Moreover, legislative changes both in Europe and the U.S. have been limited. This paper, instead, examines the impact of the Colombian Labour Market Reform of 1990, which substantially reduced dismissal costs. I estimate the incidence of a reduction in firing costs on worker turnover by exploiting the temporal change in the Colombian labour legislation as well as the variability in coverage between formal and informal sector workers. Using a grouping estimator to control for common aggregate shocks and selection, I find that the exit hazard rates into and out of unemployment increased after the reform by over 1\% for formal workers (covered by the legislation) relative to informal workers (uncovered). The increase of the hazards implies a net decrease in unemployment of a third of a percentage point, which accounts for about one quarter of the fall in unemployment during the period of study.     

Productivity and liquidity management under costly financing

We explore theoretically and empirically the relationship between firm productivity and liquidity management in the presence of financial frictions. We build a dynamic investment model and show that, counter to basic economic intuition, more productive firms could demand less capital assets and hold more liquid assets compared to less productive firms when financing costs are sufficiently high. We empirically test this prediction using a comprehensive dataset of Chinese manufacturers and find that more productive firms indeed hold less capital and more cash. We do not, however, observe this for US manufacturers. Our study suggests a larger capital misallocation problem in markets with significant financing frictions than previously documented.     

Estimating dynamic R&D choice: an analysis of costs and long‐run benefits

This article estimates a dynamic structural model of discrete Research and Development (R&D) investment and quantifies its cost and long‐run benefit for German manufacturing firms. The model incorporates linkages between R&D choice, product and process innovations, and future productivity and profits. The long‐run payoff to R&D is the proportional difference in expected firm value generated by the investment. It increases firm value by 6.7% for the median firm in high‐tech industries but only 2.8% in low‐tech industries. Simulations show that reductions in maintenance costs of innovation significantly raise investment rates and productivity, whereas reductions in startup costs have little effect.     

Employment protection, firm selection, and growth

How do firing costs affect aggregate productivity growth? To address this question, a model of endogenous growth through selection and imitation is developed. It is consistent with recent evidence on firm dynamics and on the importance of reallocation for productivity growth. In the model, growth is driven by selection among heterogeneous incumbent firms and is sustained as entrants imitate the best incumbents. In this framework, firing costs not only induce misallocation of labor, but also affect growth by affecting firms’ exit decisions. Importantly, charging firing costs only to continuing firms raises growth by promoting selection. Also charging them to exiting firms is akin to an exit tax, hampers selection, and reduces growth—by 0.1 percentage points in a calibrated version of the model. With job turnover very similar in the two settings, this implies that the treatment of exiting firms matters for growth. In addition, the impact on growth rates is larger in sectors where firms face larger idiosyncratic shocks, as in services. This fits evidence that recent EU-U.S. growth rate differences are largest in these sectors and implies that firing costs can play a role here.     

The substitution hypothesis of agency conflicts: Evidence on Shariah compliant equities

According to the substitution hypothesis and recent evidence, firms that are better governed carry less debt and experience fewer agency problems. This may also imply that firms with lower debt are better governed and experience lower agency costs. We test this hypothesis by comparing the agency costs of Shariah compliant (SC, and therefore low debt) and Shariah noncompliant (SNC) firms, using a proprietary dataset comprising constituents of the Dow Jones Islamic index for the period 2006–2015. The findings support the hypothesis but are contingent on the firm's idiosyncratic risk; SC firms with low idiosyncratic risk have higher agency costs.     

Costly contracting in a long‐term relationship

We examine a model of contracting where parties interact repeatedly and can contract at any point in time, but writing formal contracts is costly. A contract can describe the external environment and the parties' behavior in a more or less detailed way, and the cost of writing a contract is proportional to the amount of detail. We consider both formal (externally enforced) and informal (self‐enforcing) contracts. The presence of writing costs has important implications both for the optimal structure of formal contracts, particularly the tradeoff between contingent and spot contracting, and for the interaction between formal and informal contracting. Our model sheds light on these implications and generates a rich set of predictions about the determinants of the optimal mode of contracting.     

Stock markets,credit markets,and technology-led growth

The high-tech sector accounts for the majority of corporate innovation in modern economies. In a sample of 38 countries, we document a strong positive relation between the initial size of the country's high-tech sector and subsequent rates of GDP and total factor productivity growth. We also find a strong positive connection between a country's equity (but not credit) market development and the size of its high-tech sector. Our main difference-in-differences estimates show that better developed stock markets support faster growth of innovative-intensive, high-tech industries. The main channels for this effect are higher rates of productivity and faster growth in the number of new high-tech firms. Credit market development fosters growth in industries that rely on external finance for physical capital accumulation but is unimportant for growth in innovation-intensive industries. These findings show that stock markets and credit markets play important but distinct roles in supporting economic growth. Stock markets are uniquely suited for financing technology-led growth, a particularly important concern for advanced economies.