2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Life-Cycle Earnings Profiles, Informality, Inequality and Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Economies
| Project/Area Number |
21K01439
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| Research Institution | National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies |
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Principal Investigator |
Hsu Minchung 政策研究大学院大学, 政策研究科, 准教授 (20467062)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2021-04-01 – 2024-03-31
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| Keywords | life cycle income profie / informal employment / inequality |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In FY2021, I have worked with international researchers and hired several assistants to collect household survey data, which can provide sufficient information to identify employment types (formal/informal) and to estimate informal workers’ income, from Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
The data sets from Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam are panel data, and the data sets collected from Japan and Thailand are repeating cross-sectional.
Some data analysis has been started with Indonesian, Taiwanese and Vietnamese data. Data cleaning is still in progress with Japanese and Thai data. I have also reviewed related literature and tried to design a better research strategy with the data sets from various countries since some of them are panel data and the others are repeating cross-sectional data. Among the related literature, Gunther and Launov (2012, JDE) estimated equations of earnings with formal/informal sectors and reported that returns to education and experience are higher in the formal sector. However, Joubert (2015, IER) using data from Chile and reported that there was no significant difference between two sectors. I have decided to address this issue with the data collected from developing countries in Asia, such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. This will deliver useful policy implications.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
I have cooperated with several international researchers and successfully collected data from several target countries. Now I am working on data analysis to estimate returns to education and life-cycle earnings profiles for both formal and informal workers.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
I plan to focus on returns to education and experience and compare the differences between developed economies and emerging economies. For the emerging economies, like Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, I will further analyze the differences between formal and informal employments. Some previous studies found the return to education is lower in the informal sector but some others found there was no significant difference between the two sectors. Because most studies used Latin American data, I plan to address this issue and compare the results with those previous findings.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Because of the prolonged COVID pandemic, some overseas research meeting was postponed and the plan for hiring some local assistants for data analysis was also postponed.
So I plan to reschedule the research meetings and hire several part-time assistants in Japan and other countries to continue the work of data cleaning and analysis in FY2022.
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