Embedded Files
Publications
Publications
"The Impact of Violence on the Dynamics of Migration: Evidence from the Mexican Revolution," (with David Escamilla-Guerrero and Zachary Ward), forthcoming at Journal of Development Economics.
"A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: The Effectiveness of Infographics in Microeconomic Principles Courses," (with Lauren Calimeris), International Review of Economics Education. 47, December 2024.
"Student Perceptions of Scientific Writing in Pharmacology: Student Generation of Collaborative Rubrics to Score a Social Pharmacology Writing Project," (with Terri Enslein and Hanna Wetzel), Pharmacology Research & Perspectives. 11(6), December 2023.
"Selection into Internal Migration in Indonesia," (with Shatanjaya Dasgupta), Empirical Economics Letters. 22(7), July 2023.
"Deportation of Criminals and Immigration back to the United States: Evidence from Central America and Mexico," (with Priti Kalsi), Applied Economics Letters. 29(19), pp. 1791-1798, 2022.
"Life after Crossing the Border: Assimilation during the First Mexican Mass Migration," (with David Escamilla-Guerrero and Zachary Ward), Explorations in Economic History. 82, 101403, October 2021.
"Guest Worker Programs and Human Capital Investment: The Bracero Program in Mexico, 1942-1964," Journal of Human Resources. 56(2), pp. 570-599, Spring 2021.
"El Sueño Americano? The Generational Progress of Mexican Americans Prior to World War II," (with Zachary Ward), The Journal of Economic History. 80(4), pp. 961-995, December 2020.
"Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique (IF-AT) Quizzes and Student Performance in Microeconomic Principles Courses," (with Lauren Calimeris), The Journal of Economic Education. 51(3-4), pp. 211-226, 2020.
"Bankruptcy, Discharge, and the Emergence of Debtor Rights in Eighteenth-Century England," (with Ann Carlos and Luis Castro Penarrieta), Enterprise & Society. 20(2), pp. 475-506, June 2019.
"Who Crossed the Border? Self-Selection of Mexican Migrants in the Early Twentieth Century," (with Zachary Ward). The Journal of Economic History 74(4), pp.1015-1044, December 2014. Online Appendix available here.
Working Papers
Working Papers
"The History That Moves Us: Colonial Duration, Era of Occupation, and Migration" (with Kristina Sargent), under review.
The current treatment of colonial ties as a binary relationship is incomplete and misleading. Using data for African migration from 1960-2000, we find that the longer the colonial relationship, the more likely a person will be to migrate to a European colonizer. This influence only appears once colonization length passes approximately 67 years. Additionally, the era of original colonization influences movement: places colonized during the ``Scramble for Africa" see less migration than those colonized before or after. This suggests that colonial relationships were much more complicated than existing work allows and warrants study of such relationships and their persistent impacts.
The Bracero Program was a massive guest worker program that allowed over four million Mexican workers to migrate legally and work temporarily in the United States from 1942 to 1964. This paper examines the development impacts of the program, especially its effect on individual investments. Exploiting microdata and within person variation in migration choices, I estimate an individual fixed effects model estimating the effect of bracero migration on the individual’s decision to start a new business. Results indicate that individuals migrating as braceros were more likely to start new businesses, and that bracero trips are more likely to result in business investment than are illegal trips. Several alternative explanations are systematically eliminated. Survival analysis is used to further explore the timing of business investment and how that was related to migration. Hazard models suggest that bracero migration was associated with a greater hazard of investment. These models also suggest that illegal migration was less successful in encouraging immediate entrepreneurial activity. This provides strong evidence that the Bracero Program increased economic growth and development by spurring new investment and that this boost was greater than for other migration options at the time.
"The Long Run Development Impacts of a Guest Worker Program: Evidence from the Bracero Program" (draft available upon request)
The Bracero Program was a historical guest worker program between Mexico and the United States that saw the temporary migration of nearly five million agricultural workers to the United States. Guest worker programs benefit the host country with relatively cheaper labor, and the sending communities with influxes of cash earned abroad. The Bracero Program provides an opportunity to understand the long term development impacts of such a policy. I compare the adult outcomes of those children who were treated with exposure to the program (father migrating to the United States as a bracero) to those children who were not exposed. I propose two methods to isolate plausibly exogenous variation and estimate this effect. One is a family fixed effects model that compares siblings, and the other is a difference-in-differences model that exploits a natural experiment in the institutional history of the program. Positive effects in the long run provide further evidence of guest worker programs as good development policy.
Google Sites
Report abuse