Labor market regulations may constrain the availability of part-time jobs, creating challenges for workers who prefer shorter hours. I provide empirical evidence that mothers with young children in Mexico are more likely to work informally due to the limited availability of short-hour employment in the formal sector. I analyze two distinct life events that increase mothers’ demand for shorter hours: childbirth and the loss of childcare support following the death of a grandmother. In both cases, mothers are more likely to transition to informal employment, with adjustments in working hours occurring exclusively within the informal sector. I develop a model of labor supply and sector choice based on the key assumption that the formal sector does not accommodate shorter hours. Using this model, I evaluate two potential policy interventions: reducing constraints on minimum hours in the formal sector and expanding subsidized childcare. I find that relaxing minimum-hour constraints in the formal sector increases the share of formal employment for women, raises their wages and welfare, and, unlike expanding subsidized childcare, does so without straining the government budget.

We provide new evidence on one of the most salient and least studied determinants of migration: the probability of finding a job. We develop a dynamic spatial search-and-matching general equilibrium framework in which people migrate in order to search for work in a different labor market. To bring the model to the data, we use Tanzania’s annual census of firms, which is unique among low-income countries for having nationally representative data on vacancies and hiring. To isolate the effect of the job-finding rate on migration, we exploit Tanzania’s first minimum wage law, which stipulated different levels across industries. We find evidence of partial compliance with the law, and that firms facing high minimum wages reduced hiring and vacancy posting more than those facing low minimum wages. In the model, the minimum wage has two effects: it increases the expected wage for a searching worker and it reduces the profitability of posting a vacancy for a firm, unless there is a sufficiently large increase in the number of searching workers. We find that the minimum wage induced migration towards labor markets where employment fell the least, rather than those where wages rose the most. This pattern arises because, at low levels of employment, the marginal value of an increase in the job-finding rate is an order of magnitude larger than that of a marginal increase in wages. Because we impose no curvature on the utility function, these estimates likely represent a lower bound on the importance of the job-finding rate for migration.

Public transportation infrastructure is crucial for shaping labor market outcomes, especially in cities across developing countries where inadequate transit options often limit access to formal employment. In cities like Mexico City, formal jobs are typically concentrated in the center, while peripheral areas suffer from long and costly commutes. In this paper, we ask to what extent the lack of public transportation infrastructure causes a misallocation of labor into informal work, and how commuting frictions affect men and women differently. We evaluate the impact of a new public transportation system—a cable bus—on the transition to formal employment. Using changes in commute times, we analyze the relevance of three key frictions: proximity, flexibility, and safety. Our findings show that reduced commute times encourage shifts from informal to formal employment, with significantly larger effects for women. Notably, shorter walking times are the most critical factor for women, highlighting that safety concerns are a major barrier keeping women out of formal employment.  

This paper examines the unintended consequences of stringent childcare regulations on women’s labor market outcomes in the United States. The U.S. is one of the few advanced economies that does not provide universal public childcare. Over recent decades, the financial burden of childcare has risen sharply, with costs more than doubling between 1990 and 2020. Using variations in state childcare regulations, specifically minimum square footage requirements, and their timing, I estimate the effects of childcare costs on female labor force participation and hours worked. The results indicate no significant impact on the extensive margin of labor force participation. However, there is a significant negative effect on the intensive margin, primarily affecting low-skill workers. This disparity is explained by differences in childcare arrangements used between low- and high-skill women. Low-skill women, who often rely on family-based childcare, face greater challenges substituting informal care for formal care, leading them to reduce their working hours. In contrast, high-skill women, who frequently use babysitters, can expand their use of such services without reducing their hours worked.