Suzanne Duryea

For Better or for Worse? Job and Earnings Mobility in Nine Middle- and Low-Income Countries

Recent evidence suggests that most market economies show significant dynamism. Many firms are created and destroyed every year, and surviv ing firms undergo a continuous process of transformation.1 As a result, a substantial number of jobs are created and destroyed, and an even larger num ber of workers change status in the labor market, moving across jobs, from employment to unemployment and back to employment, and also entering and exiting the labor market.2 Large, if not even larger, rates of mobility are also observed in developing countries.3 As noted by Haltiwanger and others, one of the most controversial debates on institutional design and economic policy has been sparked around the trade offs associated with labor mobility.4 On the one hand, mobility may promote efficiency and growth if economic forces induce the reallocation of resources toward the most productive uses. On the other hand, high mobility may imply that workers are uncertain and have concerns about income security.

The Role of Universities in Intergenerational Social Mobility: Examining Mobility at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil

This paper analyzes social mobility as realized by students of a high quality public flagship nuniversity in Brazil, the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), applying the methodology of nChetty et al. 2017 in the paper Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational nMobility. Intergenerational income mobility is analyzed using the family income of students nmatriculating to the university in 2005-2006 and individual earnings 8-9 years later. Upward nmobility is defined as the percentage of students who attain the highest quintile of individual nearnings among those who matriculated from the lowest income families. The mobility index for nUFPE is compared to public flagship and private universities in the United States as calculated nby Chetty et al. (2017). While these are non-causal estimates they nonetheless suggest that npublic universities can play a key role in facilitating upward social mobility in Brazil.