The Employment Effects of Mexican Repatriations: Evidence from the 1930's / Jongkwan Lee, Giovanni Peri, Vasil Yasenov.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lee, Jongkwan.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Peri, Giovanni.

Yasenov, Vasil.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w23885.

NBER working paper series no. w23885

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Employment Effects of Mexican Repatriations

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2017.

Summary:

During the period 1929-34 a campaign forcing the repatriation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans was carried out in the U.S. by states and local authorities. The claim of politicians at the time was that repatriations would reduce local unemployment and give jobs to Americans, alleviating the local effects of the Great Depression. This paper uses this episode to examine the consequences of Mexican repatriations on labor market outcomes of natives. Analyzing 893 cities using full count decennial Census data in the period 1930-40, we find that repatriation of Mexicans was associated with small decreases in native employment and increases in native unemployment. These results are robust to the inclusion of many controls. We then apply an instrumental variable strategy based on the differential size of Mexican communities in 1930, as well as a matching method, to estimate a causal "average treatment effect." Confirming the OLS regressions, the causal estimates do not support the claim that repatriations had any expansionary effects on native employment, but suggest instead that they had no effect on, or possibly depressed, their employment and wages.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2017.