Éducation, informalité et efficience : un modèle d'appariement pour une économie en développement

The paper aims to theoretically analyze the impact of an increase in the access to education on employment flows of a labor market representative of a developing economy. We develop a search-matching model of a dual labor market where the formal sector is reserved for educated and trained-on-the-job workers, and where the informal sector is accessible to all workers. We study public policies aiming at improving the level of education of those populations with limited access to education. A rise in access to education, provided by an external subsidy such as non-governmental financing, increases the size of the formal sector and reduces the size of the informal sector. However, we observe a higher share of educated workers joining the informal sector. The efficiency study suggests that a public subsidy to education, financed by a tax on formal sector firms, goes against improving the labor market efficiency which would require instead a subsidy to formal job creation.