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We examine spending on consumption items which have signaling value in social interactions across groups with distinctive social identities in India, where social identities are defined by caste and religious affiliations. The classification of such items was done by eliciting responses to a survey in India. We match the results of our survey with nationally representative micro data on household consumption expenditures. We find that disadvantaged caste groups such as Other Backward Castes spend nine percent more on visible consumption than Brahmin and High Caste groups while social groups such as Muslims spend eleven percent less, after controlling for differences in permanent income and demographic composition of households. These differences are significant and robust. Additionally, we find that these differences can be partly explained as a result of the status signaling nature of such consumption items.JEL Classification: D12, D70, O10

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Informality in the labour market is far from clearly defined in the development literature. To understand the nature of informality in terms of the legalistic and the productivity view, this paper makes an empirical contribution to the debate. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the informality dimensions in the Mexican labour market, employing a rich labour market data set. A substantial overlap between the current social security coverage, contracts and individual's job history is found. Moreover, age, education, marital status and scores in the Raven's test, an ability measure, are significant determinants for the various forms of informality. 4 The closest paper to this, by Henley et al. (2009), investigates informality in the Brazilian labour market. However, my paper looks at further dimensions of individual labour market informality, such as migration and job history, and thereby exploits the panel structure. 5 As Fields (2009) argued, it is important to understand what measure of informality is in the studies at hand. He proposed instead of talking about 'formality' versus 'informality' that the actual dividing criteria should be used, such as 'covered' versus 'uncovered'. M. Khamis

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The changes in women and men's work lives have been considerable in recent decades. Yet much of the recent research on gender differences in employment and earnings has been of a more snapshot nature rather than taking a longer comparative look at evolving patterns. In this paper, we use 50 years of US Census Annual Demographic Files (March Current Population Survey) to track the changing returns to human capital (measured as both educational attainment and potential work experience), estimating comparable earnings equations by gender at each point in time. We consider the effects of sample selection over time for both women and men and show the rising effect of selection for women in recent years. Returns to education diverge for women and men over this period in the selectionadjusted results but converge in the OLS results, while returns to potential experience converge in both sets of results. We also create annual calculations of synthetic lifetime labor force participation, hours, and earnings that indicate convergence by gender in worklife patterns, but less convergence in recent years in lifetime earnings. Thus, while some convergence has indeed occurred, the underlying mechanisms causing convergence differ for women and men, reflecting continued fundamental differences in women's and men's life experiences. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SJEL Classification: J3, J16, J24, N3