On 05.11.2015, Dr. Antonio Baez successfully defended his doctoral thesis "Three Empirical Essays on Informality", supervised by Dr. Raul Ramos, in the Sala de Graus at the Faculty of Economics and Business. Dr. Jaume García, Dr. Enrique López-Bazo, and Dr. Josep Lluis Roig composed the Doctoral Committee.

Antonio’s dissertation consists of three empirical studies focusing on informality from two different perspectives: its causes and its consequences. The first application uses macroeconomic data in order to analyse whether Foreign Direct Investment decisions are associated to a higher level of informality in the labour market. The second and third applications consider the case study of Mexico, where informality levels are clearly above the average. Using microdata, the second application tries to answer why informality is much more relevant in some Mexican Regions than in others. Different explanatory factors such as education, unemployment levels and corruption are considered. The third application considers productivity differences between formal and informal microfirms using different criteria to define them and the role of different firm characteristics such as the age or the motivation of the owner.