Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion

Michael Clemens, Ethan G. Lewis and Hannah M. Postel

American Economic Review, 2018, vol. 108, issue 6, 1468-87

Abstract: An important class of active labor market policy has received little impact evaluation: immigration barriers intended to raise wages and employment by shrinking labor supply. Theories of endogenous technical advance raise the possibility of limited or even perverse impact. We study a natural policy experiment: the exclusion of almost half a million Mexican bracero farm workers from the United States to improve farm labor market conditions. With novel labor market data we measure state-level exposure to exclusion and model the absent changes in technology or crop mix. We fail to reject zero labor market impact, inconsistent with this model.

JEL-codes: J15 J18 J22 J31 J43 J61 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20170765
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (145)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20170765 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... tTxn14DofHm9_PkAtLxH (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... WU0UKICnNdK1XD9DfHIR (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... Adv9tHpaHn9elHY3LWoH (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion (2017)
Working Paper: Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:108:y:2018:i:6:p:1468-87

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().