Winners of the Inter-American Award for Research on Social Security 2011

Congratulations to the winners of this year:

First place (tied): Marcelo Bergolo and Guillermo Cruces for their paper titled “Labor Informality and the Incentive Effects of Social Security: Evidence from a Health Reform in Uruguay”. This paper studies the incentive effects of social security benefits on labor market informality following a policy reform in Uruguay. The reform extended health benefits to dependent children of private sector salaried workers. Compares workers with children (affected by the reform) and those without children (unaffected by the reform). Results indicate that informality rates fell significantly by about 1.3 percentage points (a 5 percent change) among workers in the treatment group with respect to those in the control group.

First place (tied): Fernando Borraz and Nicolas Gonzalez Pampillon for their paper titled “Assesing the Distributive Impact of More than Doubling the Minimum Wage: The Case of Uruguay”. The paper analyzes the role of the sharply increases in the minimum wage after 2004 in Ururguay in the slight decrease on wage inequality. They find no impact of the minimum wage increases on wage inequality. The Uruguayan experience shows that the minimum wage is not always effective as a redistribution instrument.

Third place: Alvaro Forteza and Guzman Ourens for their paper titled “Redistribution, Insurance and Incentives to Work in Latin American Pension Programs”. The paper present a new database of social security indicators for eleven Latin American countries designed to show how much they promise to pay in return to contributions. The results indicated that most programs are progressive. The length of service has a strong impacto on the expected return contributions.

We thank all participants of this year and invite researchers around the continent to participate in next year edition.