Jaramillo, M., Ñopo, H. y Díaz, J. J. (2007). La investigación sobre el mercado laboral peruano: instituciones, capacitación y grupos desfavorecidos. En Investigación, políticas y desarrollo en el Perú (pp. 235-283). Lima: GRADE.

The aim of the paper is to focus on some of the issues central to current debates on labour policies, in which GRADE has been most interested and involved. Specifically, there are three areas on which they want to discuss the state of the art of research, raise some debates and establish their relevance for public policy-making: institutional framework, training and disadvantaged groups. First, they deal with the institutional framework of the labour market, an issue which – rightly or wrongly – has perhaps dominated public discussion in recent years. This has been associated with proposals to reform the current institutional framework, particularly the debated General Labour Law. The questions we would like to address relate to the link between the institutional framework, the formal and informal norms and rules that set the incentives and constraints for agents to act in the labour market, and labour market outcomes: employment, income, productivity and (in)formality. Regarding the second topic, we are interested in the structure of the training market, its regulation, and its connections and disconnections with the labour market. We also want to discuss how much progress has been made in researching its outcomes in terms of improving the ‘employability’ of workers. In particular, we are interested in discussing the impacts of the active policies implemented by the state in this area. Finally, we deal with the most vulnerable groups within the labour market, i.e. those whose conditions of insertion are the most precarious. The central questions here are how disadvantaged they are, what factors make them particularly vulnerable, and what actions can be taken at the policy level to support improvements in their situation. The focus is specifically on two social categories: gender and ethnicity.