发展中国家的劳动力市场
Labor Markets in Developing Countries
Annual Review of Economics · 2025 · [{"name": "Emily Breza", "affiliation": ["National Bureau of Economic Research", "Harvard University", "Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab"]}, {"name": "Supreet Kaur", "affiliation": ["National Bureau of Economic Research", "Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab", "University of California, Berkeley"]}]
中文摘要
发展过程伴随着劳动力市场结构的显著变化。我们梳理了一组广泛的典型化特征，用以区分发展中国家与较富裕国家的劳动力市场。我们的综述围绕一个尤为突出的差异展开：在贫困国家，劳动年龄个体仅有 20–50% 的时间从事工资性工作。有证据表明，这种低水平的工资就业反映了高水平的非自愿失业（常被自雇所掩盖），以及工资刚性、市场势力和搜寻—匹配摩擦等摩擦因素。与此同时，越来越多的文献记录表明，相较于许多可获得的工资性工作——尤其是正规部门的低技能工作——劳动者更偏好自雇或失业。我们提供了若干方面的证据，说明贫困本身如何可能抑制劳动供给，因此低劳动供给可能是欠发展的结果。在整篇综述中，我们强调贫困的三个核心方面——市场缺失、社会纽带的重要性以及制度不规范性——它们对于理解劳动力市场如何随发展过程做出反应而变化、并助推这一过程，具有重要意义。
Abstract
The process of development is accompanied by marked changes in the structure of the labor market. We lay out a broad set of stylized features that distinguish labor markets in developing countries from those in richer countries. We organize our review around one particularly striking difference: In poor countries, working-age individuals are employed in wage work only 20–50% of the time. There is evidence that this low wage employment reflects high levels of involuntary unemployment (often masked by self-employment) along with frictions such as wage rigidity, market power, and search-and-matching frictions. At the same time, there is growing documentation that workers prefer self-employment or unemployment to many of the wage jobs that are available to them, especially low-skill work in the formal sector. We offer evidence on several ways in which poverty itself can dampen labor supply, so that low labor supply may be an outcome of underdevelopment. Throughout our review, we highlight three core aspects of poverty—missing markets, the importance of social ties, and institutional irregularity—that are relevant for understanding how labor markets change in response to, and help facilitate, the process of development.