Seminar "Labour reallocation, informality and productivity growth in BRICs" presented by Ilya Voskoboynikov

December 24, 2013  Ilya Voskoboynikov presented his research at the joint seminar of the Laboratory for Labor Market Studies and the Centre for Labor Market Studies.

December 24, 2013  Ilya Voskoboynikov (Laboratory for Research in Inflation and Growth at Higher School of Economics; Groningen Growth and Development Centre at the University of Groningen) presented his research "Labour reallocation, informality and productivity growth in BRICs" at the joint seminar of the Laboratory for Labor Market Studies and the Centre for Labor Market Studies.

He presented the version of the paper of de Vries and others (2012; Journal of Comparative Economics, 40(2), 211-227), enriched with the analysis of the informal sector of the Russian economy. This paper studied patterns of structural change and productivity growth in four major developing countries since the 1980s (Russia- since 1995), the BRIC countries, using a newly constructed detailed sector database. Based on a structural decomposition, we find that for China, India and Russia reallocation of labour across sectors is contributing to aggregate productivity growth, whereas in Brazil it is not. This strengthens the findings of McMillan and Rodrik (2011). However, this result is overturned when a distinction is made between formal and informal activities within sectors. Increasing formalization of the Brazilian economy since 2000 appears to be growth-enhancing, while in India and, to a lesser extent, in Russia the increase in informality is growth-reducing.


Presentation