Recorded February 9, 2004
Below is the original description of the event.
Chile is often held up as a model for the developing world because its progress on market liberalization has led to high growth rates coupled with a sharp reduction in poverty. Chile’s flexible labor market in particular has been credited with contributing to growth and lowered unemployment rates. Most recently, Chile has pioneered alternatives to traditional unemployment benefits and subsidies by implementing a “privatized” unemployment insurance system. This presentation explores what is behind this model image and points out some of its flaws by means of a survey specifically designed to ask questions that other labor market surveys avoid.
Kirsten Sehnbruch has just completed her Ph.D. on the Chilean Labor Market at Cambridge University. She has spent the last five years researching the labor market in Chile and has worked as a consultant to the Chilean government on a range of issues related to the labor market, the new unemployment insurance and the pension system. She is now a visiting scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies.