Effects of Colombia's Social Protection System on Workers' Choice between Formal and Informal Employment
研究哥伦比亚1990年代初扩大社会项目（特别是公共医疗保险）是否抑制了正规就业，发现该政策使非正规就业增加约4个百分点。
We examine whether the Colombian government's expansion of social programs in the early 1990s, particularly the publicly provided health insurance, discouraged formal employment. Using household survey data and variation across municipalities in the onset of interviews for the SISBEN, the instrument used to identify beneficiaries for public health insurance, we find robust and consistent estimates of an increase in informal employment of approximately 4 percentage points. We find similar results using an alternative dataset, consisting of a panel of individuals interviewed for the first and second SISBEN. Our findings suggest that marginal individuals optimized when deciding whether to participate in the formal sector.