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    Transitions between informal and formal employment: results from a worker survey in Bangladesh
    (© 2019 Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2019-02-13) Gutierrez, Italo A.; Kumar, Krishna B.; Mahmud, Minhaj; Munshi, Farzana; Nataraj, Shanthi
    We study transitions between different types of formal and informal employment using retrospective job histories from a new survey in Bangladesh. Workers transitioning between jobs are most likely to remain in the same type of employment, although there is still substantial churn across employment types. Private wage employees have higher probability of transitioning to a new job, and changes in earnings and benefits suggest evidence of upward mobility. Nevertheless, there is also non-trivial risk of downward mobility, especially for those transitioning into casual employment, which has the lowest level of earnings and benefits and the highest levels of exposure to workplace hazards and violence. Overall, the informal sector appears to include sub-populations consistent with both the traditional view that it is a segmented portion of the labor market with few prospects of upward mobility, and with the alternative view that it is a dynamic, entrepreneurial alternative to wage employment.
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    Offshoring and occupational wages: some empirical evidence
    (© 2012 Journal of International Trade and Economic Development) Bigsten, Arne; Munshi, Farzana; Durevall, Dick
    Offshoring has changed the pattern of international competition; labor in specific occupations rather than whole firms and sectors are now facing competition. Accordingly, wages in offshorable occupations are affected in new ways. In this article, we investigate the effects of offshoring on relative occupational wages in 13 countries for 1990–2003. Our findings show that offshoring competiveness is associated with higher relative wages in offshorable occupations, and that export growth of IT-related services leads to higher relative wages in offshorable occupations, whereas import growth of such services reduces them.
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    Globalisation and inter-occupational inequality: Empirical evidence from OECD countries
    (© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.) Bigsten, Arne; Munshi, Farzana
    How does globalisation affect inter-occupational wage inequality within countries? This paper examines this by focusing on two dimensions of globalisation: openness to trade and openness to capital flows, using a relatively new data set on occupational wages. Estimates from a dynamic model for 15 OECD countries spanning the period 1983–2003 suggest that increased openness increases occupational wage inequality in poorer OECD countries as predicted by the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson model, but for the more advanced OECD countries, we find no significant effect. The absence of the expected result for the latter category can be due to a rapid increase in the supply of skilled labour, to outsourcing of skilled jobs or because changes in the trade flows are too small to have any significant effect in those countries.