This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. American Economic Review
  4. June 2018
  5. Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion

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

Download Full Text PDF
(Complimentary)

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.

Citation

Clemens, Michael A., Ethan G. Lewis, and Hannah M. Postel. 2018. "Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion." American Economic Review, 108 (6): 1468-87. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20170765

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • J15 Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
  • J18 Demographic Economics: Public Policy
  • J22 Time Allocation and Labor Supply
  • J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
  • J43 Agricultural Labor Markets
  • J61 Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
  • O33 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes