Income mobility and risk during the business cycle: Comparing adjustments in labour markets in two Latin-American countries

Abstract

This paper uses panel data from Argentina and Mexico and a new measure of mobility - the Gini index of mobility - to answer three questions. First, is there a trend towards rising labour income mobility over time in these two countries? Second, is there a relationship between income mobility and growth common to both countries, or does that relationship depend on the institutional features of each country's labour markets? Third, do we observe more labour income mobility within some groups such as the young and the less educated than within other groups?