Is ICE freezing US agriculture? Farm-level adjustment to increased local immigration enforcement

Jennifer Ifft and Margaret Jodlowski

Labour Economics, 2022, vol. 78, issue C

Abstract: We study the impact of US immigration enforcement through a locally-implemented program known as 287(g) on agriculture using confidential farm-level data and farm census data. We address the endogeneity of program participation by using pre-program county jail occupancy as an instrument. We provide evidence that the agricultural sector experienced limited endogenous technical change in response to the negative labor supply shock caused by increased immigration enforcement. Fuel expenses increased, consistent with predictions of an increase in automated technology by models of endogenous technical change. However, a corresponding decline in agricultural acres and employment and an increase in labor expenditure suggests capital-labor substitution was insufficient to fully offset the impact of the shock.

Keywords: Immigration enforcement; Agricultural labor markets; Farm workers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J43 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092753712200094X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:labeco:v:78:y:2022:i:c:s092753712200094x

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102203

Access Statistics for this article

Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino

More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().