Three essays on the macroeconomics of labor markets (United States, Brazil)

This thesis consists of three essays that investigate some questions in labor and macroeconomics. The first two essays study the decline in union representation in the US in the last decades. The third one analyzes the increase in informal labor markets in Brazil.; In essay I, we use a theoretical model to study the decrease in the rate of union workers in the US and UK. We analyze how skill biased technical change, union bargaining power and institutions affect deunionization. The model embodies unions as a rent extractor agent that bargain with firms that produce with a decreasing returns to scale technology. Workers' membership decision is endogenous. The simulation of the model shows that skill biased technical change, union "effective" bargaining power and legal and institutional changes can explain the drop in union rates.; The second essay also studies the causes of deunionization in the US. This essay tests four different hypotheses mentioned in the literature on deunionization: decrease in demand for union representation, impact of globalization, skill biased technical change and changes in legislation. We estimate a logistic regression using a panel data procedure with 35 industries from 1973 to 1999. We include demographic variables and conduct a variance analysis decomposition to study the impact of each variable over the drop in unionization rates. We conclude that the economic variables tested cannot be rejected by the data and they can account for between 10% and 35% of the variation on union rates.; In essay III, I study the increase in the rate of informal workers in the Brazilian economy that occurred between 1985 and 1999. In this essay we develop an overlapping generations model with incomplete markets in which agents are ex-post heterogeneous. We calibrate it to match some features of the Brazilian economy before 1988. We conduct a policy experiment which reproduces the 1988 constitution reforms that increased the retirement benefits and labor costs in the formal sector. We show that these reforms can explain the increase in informal labor. We also conduct other policy experiment and analyze its impact on the Brazilian economy.