This chapter takes advantage of the unusual variance in labor market policies in Chile to examine how minimum wages and job security provisions affect different types of workers. It looks at the effects of regulations on the distribution of employment by age, and also, by skill, which has not been examined before. To this effect, the chapter uses a sample of repeated household surveys spanning the period 1960–1998 and several measures of labor market regulations across time. It makes use of cross-section and time series methods to estimate the effect that these policies have on the...

This chapter takes advantage of the unusual variance in labor market policies in Chile to examine how minimum wages and job security provisions affect different types of workers. It looks at the effects of regulations on the distribution of employment by age, and also, by skill, which has not been examined before. To this effect, the chapter uses a sample of repeated household surveys spanning the period 1960–1998 and several measures of labor market regulations across time. It makes use of cross-section and time series methods to estimate the effect that these policies have on the distribution of employment and on particular subgroups' employment rates. To assess whether the estimates are reflecting the effect of regulations instead of the effect of some unobservable correlates, the chapter also estimates the effect of labor policy on sectors not covered by regulations.