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Lucas Ronconi

Centro de Investigacion y Accion Social (CIAS), Argentina, and IZA, Germany

IZA World of Labor is an excellent effort to build a strategic bridge: between research and policy

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Director of Research, Centro de Investigacion y Accion Social (CIAS), and Professor of Economics, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Research interest

Compliance, enforcement, informal labor, labor law, low-wage labor markets

Website

https://www.iza.org/person/8191/lucas-ronconi

Positions/functions as a policy advisor

Consultant to Argentine Ministry of Labor, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank

Qualifications

PhD Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, 2007

Selected publications

  • "Enforcement matters: The effective regulation of labor." International Labor Review 157:3 (2018): 331–356 (with R. Kanbur).

  • "U.S. free trade agreements and enforcement of labor law in Latin America." Industrial Relations 57:1 (2018): 35–56 (with S. Dewan).

  • The Impact of Labor Inspections and Labor Sanctions on Registered Employment. Empirical Evidence for Argentina Using Administrative Data. International Labour Organization Working Paper Series No. 24, 2018 (with M. Ohaco).

  • "Labor inspections in the developing world: Stylized facts from the enterprise survey." Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society 55:3 (2016): 468–489 (with R. Almeida).

  • "Labor exclusion and the erosion of citizenship responsibilities.” World Development: 74 (205): 453—461 (with S. J. Rodrigo Zarazaga).

article(s)

  • Enforcement of labor regulations in developing countries

    Enforcement improves legal compliance, but its impact on welfare is country specific and unclear

    Lucas Ronconi, March 2019
    More than half of private sector employees in the developing world do not receive legally mandated labor benefits. These regulations have typically been enacted by democratically elected governments, and are valued by both formal and informal workers. Increasing public enforcement (e.g. inspections, fines, and workers’ access to the judiciary) can be a powerful tool to reduce violations (e.g. increase the number of employees earning above the minimum wage). Which factors determine enforcement, and whether enforcement produces more social benefits than costs, are, however, unanswered questions.
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