EPH Ecosystem — Germán A. Tessmer

A decade of work with Argentina’s Permanent Household Survey (EPH): research on survey redesigns, methodological documentation, open datasets, and applied reports.

Since 2015 I have worked continuously with Argentina’s Encuesta Permanente de Hogares (EPH), the country’s main household survey. What began as applied reports at the Observatorio Económico Social UNR evolved into a full open-data infrastructure — a harmonized dataset, estimated series that extend the survey backwards in time, reference documentation, and a research agenda on survey redesigns. Materials are ordered by hierarchy and recency: the most recent work supersedes the earliest reports, which are kept as part of the record.

Research

  • From Breaks to Bridges: An Architecture for Survey Redesigns That Expand Conceptual Scope (with Bárbara Boggiano) → SSRN → bridge_eph.R Companion script: rebuilds the aggregate variables removed from the raw INDEC user databases by the Q4-2024 redesign, applying the paper’s deterministic bridge rules (base R only).

  • Evolución del premio laboral en Argentina: variaciones para un período corto con información confiable, I trimestre 2017 a II trimestre 2018 MA thesis, Maestría en Economía, Universidad de San Andrés, 2019 (advisor: Walter Sosa Escudero). Wage premia by educational attainment estimated with Mincer equations and Heckman selection models on EPH microdata. → Repository

Data & Documentation

  • Series de datos estimadas de formalidad laboral más allá del empleo asalariado en Argentina a partir de la Encuesta Permanente de Hogares (EPH), 2016-T4 – 2025-T4 (with Bárbara Boggiano) Universidad Nacional de Rosario, 2026. Quarterly labor formality and informality series (37 quarters) under the expanded 17th ICLS concept, covering all employed workers — including the self-employed — rather than only wage earners, as the historical pension-contribution proxy did. The unobserved span is recovered by backcasting with a post-LASSO logistic model trained on the overlap between the two EPH measurements; the headline series is hybrid (observed where available, calibrated prediction elsewhere), with full traceability of the source of each value. Companion data to From Breaks to Bridges, built on the EPH – Observatorio dataset below. → Dataset Contents: individual-quarter microdata for the 4-quarter (canonical) and 5-quarter (robustness) training windows, ready-to-use formality and informality rates by quarter × agglomerate, a full variable dictionary, and an R script that builds the merge key against the raw INDEC user databases. Fixed period, not updated quarterly. CC BY 4.0 — citation required.

  • EPH – Observatorio. Encuesta Permanente de Hogares de Argentina. Explicada, etiquetada y ampliada (with Santiago Moleres & Laureano E. Hess) Universidad Nacional de Rosario, 2024. → Dataset → separa_eph.R Companion script: splits each person-level dataset back into its household and individual bases, preserving types, factors, and labels (base R only).

  • Manual Metodológico EPH – Observatorio Observatorio Económico Social UNR, 2026. Methodological companion to the dataset: documents the Q4-2024 questionnaire redesign, constructed variables, and the methodological breaks relevant for longitudinal analysis. → Repository

  • Diccionario EPH – Observatorio Observatorio Económico Social UNR, 2026. Reference documentation for the processed EPH databases. → Repository

  • Manual EPH – Observatorio (with Luciano Jara Musuruana & Patricio Almeida Gentile) Observatorio Económico Social UNR, 2020. First-generation manual for the EPH databases compiled and extended by the Observatorio, superseded by the 2026 documentation. → Repository

Software

  • Python — comparability_bridge() / puente_comparabilidad() (with Bárbara Boggiano) Contributed to and merged into pyeph, the Python library for Argentina’s EPH (Instituto Humai), released in v1.7.0, 2026. The package documentation cites the working paper and the EPH – Observatorio dataset. → Docs → Release → PyPI

Publications

  • Cruzar la meta y seguir corriendo. La Universidad Nacional de Rosario y la empleabilidad de sus graduados en el Gran Rosario (with Ana Inés Navarro, Vanesa D’Elia, et al.) Xanto Editora, 2018. ISBN: 978-987-42-9366-4. → Repository

Applied Reports

  • Formalidad laboral argentina. Una historia alternativa creíble Observatorio Económico Social UNR, 2026. Applied readout of the estimated series: formality and informality across the full universe of employed workers — wage earners, own-account workers, employers and family workers — over the 36 quarters from Q4-2016 to Q3-2025, spliced with the official INDEC measurement available since Q4-2024. The traditional pension-contribution measure reaches only wage earners and sits 7 to 12 percentage points above the estimated series, with 97.9% of that gap explained by the change in universe rather than by any real change in informality. Own-account informality nearly doubles the wage-earner rate and drives the aggregate level. Includes a chapter on the Gran Rosario agglomerate and a panel covering the 32 agglomerates surveyed by the EPH. → Repository

Earlier EPH-based reports produced at the Observatorio Económico Social UNR mark the starting point of this line of work; data treatment and methods improved substantially in the documentation and series above.

  • Pre-Covid: Indicadores socio-económicos para AGR y Argentina (with Luciano Jara Musuruana, Diego Marfetán Molina, Lucia Papa & Patricio Almeida Gentile) Observatorio Económico Social UNR, 2020. → Repository

  • ¿Cuánto gana mi vecino? Contrastes en Rosario (with Norberto Martín) Observatorio Económico Social UNR, 2017. → Repository

  • La Mujer en el Gran Rosario, hoy (with Norberto Martín) Observatorio Económico Social UNR, 2016. → Repository

  • Informe sobre Indicadores Sociales, IV Trimestre de 2014 (with Norberto Martín) Observatorio Económico Social UNR, 2015. → Repository