Published on Jobs and Development

Would Better Job Conditions Boost Latin America’s Productivity?

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Juan Chaparro is a PhD student in the Department of Applied Economics at University of Minnesota.

As Latin America looks for ways to boost its low productivity, a new study by Eduardo Lora (former Chief Economist, Inter-American Development Bank) and Juan Chaparro (PhD student, Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota) suggests that the answer might lie in creating a better job environment.

Construction worker for the Panama Canal extension project, 2012. Photo credit: Flickr @Gerardo Pesantez / World Bank Photo Collection (http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank/)

Chaparro tells the JKP that first they developed a model to better understand the relationship between job conditions, effort, wages, and productivity. Then they tested predictions from the model with individual-level data from the Gallup World Poll for 18 Latin American countries. Chaparro says the results are quite encouraging — better job conditions, created through identity-enhancing human resource management practices, are conducive to higher labor income and productivity.

This post was first published on the Jobs Knowledge Platform.


Authors

Juan Chaparro

Ph.D Candidate, University of Minnesota

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