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Distribution effects of the minimum wage in four Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay
Author(s) -
MAURIZIO Roxana,
VÁZQUEZ Gustavo
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
international labour review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.433
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1564-913X
pISSN - 0020-7780
DOI - 10.1111/ilr.12007
Subject(s) - latin americans , minimum wage , economics , counterfactual thinking , wage , distribution (mathematics) , wage inequality , income distribution , inequality , demographic economics , labour economics , political science , mathematical analysis , mathematics , philosophy , epistemology , law
This article provides a comparative analysis of the distribution effects of the increase in the real value of the minimum wage in Latin America during the 2000s in four Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. Using semiparametric techniques to estimate counterfactual density functions, the authors find that the increase in the minimum wage had an equalizing effect in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, but not in Chile. This increase accounted for a considerable part of the decline in wage inequality, which was the result of compression at the lower tail of the wage distribution.