Productividad, informalidad y salarios reales: Análisis empírico sobre las provincias del Ecuador

Abstract

CONDITION FOR PUBLICATION OF PROJECT. Over the last decade, the Ecuadorian labor market has undergone visible structural deterioration due to growing labor informality and the productive gap between provinces in different regions, which is directly reflected in the real incomes earned by workers in Ecuador. This research seeks to empirically analyze the effects of wage determinants such as labor productivity, levels of informality, infrastructure, education, poverty, and business density to identify the effects of their fluctuations on real wages. The analysis was carried out using panel data from Ecuador's 24 provinces for the period 2018 to 2023, using a fixed effects vs. random effects model approach to observe the heterogeneity that exists between provinces and a dynamic model using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to analyze the persistence of their lags over time. It was determined that productivity has a stimulating effect on wages of 0.019%, while labor informality penalizes income by 0.30%, highlighting the need for labor policy reforms that are adapted by province and can be sustained over time to see real results. Keywords: Employment, Real Income, Labor Heterogeneity, Labor Reform.