Essays on labor markets, gender, and external shocks in manufacturing firms in Indonesia
Author: Hasannudin, Zenathan
Under the direction of: Maria Bas
Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University
English text
Keywords: Economy, Indonesia, Financial reforms, Wage inequality, Total factor productivity, Women entrepreneurship, Commodity prices, Firm-level data, Inclusive finance, Labor market, Women entrepreneurs, Financial market, Wages, Wage disparity, Manufacturing.
Abstract
Change in policy and external shock is crucial for the manufacturing sector since they could affect their main cost of inputs, which are capital and labor. In fact, given that manufacturing sector absorbs more labor than the agriculture and service sectors, policy reform and external shocks have the ability to shift the labor market. This shift could be in the change of demand for labor, both skilled and unskilled, or change in the wage as the cost of production in manufacturing sectors. Under this background, the subject of this doctoral thesis revolves around the analysis of these links between policy reform, external shocks, and the labor market manufacturing sectors. The thesis provides rigorous empirical tests to analyze those links, using rich manufacturing firm data in Indonesia between 1990 and 2015. In this manner, Indonesia is an ideal country to observe since the developing nation has abundant unskilled workers, an open economy, a price taker on the global market, and experiencing various reforms and shocks during the observation period. The structure of this dissertation is as follow. Chapter 1 will discuss the relationship between financial liberalization and skill premium for medium and large manufacturing firms in Indonesia. Chapter 2 use a similar dataset to look upon the effect of external stocks like the fluctuations of palm oil price to labor demand and wage structure of the palm oil processing industry in the country. Chapter 3 provides evidence that women entrepreneurs will benefit from better access to bank lending in increasing the firms‘ performance.
