Research
Publications
Full-time Schools and Educational Trajectories: Evidence from High-Stakes Exams
Economics of Education Review, 96: 102443, 2023. Joint with Francisco Cabrera-Hernández and Cecilia Peluffo
IZA Discussion Paper No. 15602
Abstract: This paper estimates the effects of extending the school day during elementary school on students' education outcomes later in life. The analysis takes place in the context of a large-scale program introduced in 2007 that extended the school day from 4.5 to 8 hours in Mexico City’s metropolitan area. The identification strategy leverages cohort-by-cohort variation in full-time enrollment in elementary schools. The results indicate that full-time elementary schools have positive and long-lasting effects on students' performance, increasing high-stakes high school admission test scores by 4.8 percent of a standard deviation. The effects are larger for females than for males. The difference in the effects between males and females of 2.1 percent of a standard deviation represents 16% of the gender gap in the high school admission exam. Moreover, full-time schooling decreases the probability of delays in schooling completion.
Journal of Labor Economics, 41(4): 997-1039, 2023. Joint with Eunsik Chang
Abstract: This paper provides evidence that even short-term shocks to student cognitive performance have long-lasting consequences for human capital development. We use administrative data from Mexico City to show that students’ exposure to violent crime in the week immediately prior to a high-stakes exam lowers females’ test scores by 11 percent of a standard deviation. As a result, 19 percent of female students exposed to violent crime are subsequently assigned to less-preferred, lower-quality high schools. We find no such effect for males, leading to a further gender disparity in test scores and later education outcomes. We show that crime-induced concentration problems are an underlying mechanism behind the detrimental effects on test scores.
Violence-Induced Migration and Peer Effects in Academic Performance
Journal of Public Economics, 217: 104778, 2023. Joint with Cecilia Peluffo
Abstract: We document that local violence generates spillover effects beyond areas where violence takes place, via out-migration from violence-affected areas and peer exposure to violence. We use violence-induced student migration as an exogenous source of variation in peer exposure to violence to estimate its effects on student academic performance in relatively safe areas. Our results show that municipalities that face more violence experience higher rates of student out-migration. In receiving schools in areas not directly affected by violence, adding a new peer who was exposed to local violence to a class of 20 students decreases incumbents' academic performance by 1.2 percent of a standard deviation. Negative effects are more pronounced among girls and high-achieving students.
Uneven Effects, an Evolutionary Model of Poverty Traps After Trade Liberalization
Review of Political Economy, 1-19, 2023. Joint with Leopoldo Gómez-Ramírez
Abstract: This paper theoretically examines trade liberalization’s effects on workers’ human capital for a high-wage economy. Using an evolutionary game theory approach (EGT), we examine whether liberalization affects workers’ education, perhaps making them fall into a poverty trap. We find that, on average, workers increase their investment in human capital. We extend the investigation to include that, due to ex-ante historical and institutional circumstances, trade liberalization exerts heterogeneous effects on different types of workers and that the circumstances enabling them (or not) to educate differ. We find that liberalization makes some workers increase their human capital while other workers do not, leaving the latter more likely to fall into a poverty trap. By extending this investigation to the issues of trade liberalization and heterogeneous workers, we contribute to the EGT literature on poverty traps. Furthermore, unlike existing theoretical literature, which has ultimately argued that people’s different natural abilities are the reason behind their heterogeneous education responses, our analysis brings to the forefront the role of ex-ante historical and institutional factors. The paper also offers a novel theoretical foundation for empirical findings related to globalization’s effects on Americans’ education.
Some Benefit, Some Are Left Behind: NAFTA and Educational Attainment in the United States
Economic Inquiry, 60(4): 1581-1606, 2022. Joint with Leopoldo Gómez-Ramírez
Abstract: This paper examines the persistent effects of eliminating tariffs on Mexican imports, following the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), on Americans' human capital investment. We leverage quasi-experimental changes in tariffs on Mexican imports across birth cohorts and within states. We show that NAFTA increases the probability of ever attending college and earning a degree. These results, however, mask important heterogeneous effects within the sample. We find white Americans drive these positive effects. In contrast, the educational attainment of racial and ethnic minorities, especially men, shrank under NAFTA, decreasing their probability of graduating from high school.
Full-Time Schools, Policy-Induced School Switching, and Academic Performance
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 196: 79-103, 2022.
Abstract: While many developing countries are extending their school day from half- to full-time, little is known about the effects of such programs on student outcomes. Mexico recently extended its school-day duration from 4.5 hours to 8 hours through a full-time schools program. Using administrative student-level panel data, I exploit variation in the rollout of this program to identify its effect on math and language test scores. Controlling for endogenous switching between schools, I find that full-time schooling improves students' math and language test scores, respectively, by 2.4 and 1.5 percent of a standard deviation in the first year of implementation. These results persist, growing to 13.7 and 10.8 percent of a standard deviation after five years. Moreover, the main results indicate that failure to control for endogenous school switching inflates the effects of five years of exposure to full-time schooling by a factor of 1.2 on math test scores and by a factor of 1.6 on language test scores.
Hidden Violence: How COVID-19 School Closures Reduced the Reporting of Child Maltreatment
Latin American Economic Review, 29(4): 1-17, 2020. Joint with Francisco Cabrera-Hernández
Abstract: This study examines how school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic affected the reporting of child maltreatment in Mexico City. We use a rich panel dataset on incident-level crime reports and victim characteristics and exploit the differential effects between school-age children and older individuals. While financial and mental distress due to the COVID-19 pandemic may result in additional cases of child maltreatment, synthetic control and difference-in-differences estimations document an average reduction in child maltreatment reports of 29% and 30%, respectively, with larger reductions among females and in higher-poverty municipalities. These results highlight the important role education professionals in school settings play in the early detection and reporting of domestic violence against school-age children.
Easing the Constraints of Motherhood: The Effects of All-Day Schools on Mothers' Labor Supply
Economic Inquiry, 57(2): 890-909, 2019. Joint with Francisco Cabrera-Hernández
Abstract: Low rates of female labor force participation have been linked to the absence of childcare policies. This paper examines the the degree to which extending the school day by three and a half hours in elementary schools, a large implicit childcare subsidy, affects labor force participation, the number of weekly hours worked, and the monthly earnings of females with elementary-school-age children. To do so, we exploit within-individual variation in access to full-time schools and a rotating panel of households that contains twelve years of individual-level data on labor outcomes and sociodemographic characteristics. Results from long-difference models show that extending the school day increases mothers' labor supply, increasing mothers' labor force participation by 5.5 percentage points and the number of weekly hours worked by 1.8. Moreover, these increases are accompanied by an increase in monthly earnings.
Kingpin Approaches to Fighting Crime and Community Violence: Evidence from Mexico's Drug War
Journal of Health Economics, 58: 253-268, 2018. Joint with Jason Lindo
Cato Institute. Research Briefs in Economic Policy No. 31
Abstract: This study considers the effects of the kingpin strategy, an approach to fighting organized crime in which law-enforcement efforts focus on capturing the leaders of criminal organizations, on community violence in the context of Mexico's drug war. Newly constructed historical data on drug-trafficking organizations' areas of operation at the municipality level and monthly homicide data allow us to control for a rich set of fixed effects and to leverage variation in the timing of kingpin captures to estimate their effects. This analysis indicates that kingpin captures cause large and sustained increases to the homicide rate in the municipality of capture and smaller but significant effects on other municipalities where the kingpin's organization has a presence, supporting the notion that removing kingpins can have destabilizing effects throughout an organization that are accompanied by escalations in violence. We also find reductions in homicides in municipalities surrounding the municipality where kingpins are captured.
Media coverage: The Atlantic, TIME and Newsweek
Working Papers
Parents' Effective Time Endowment and Divorce: Evidence from Extended School Days, joint with Cecilia Peluffo and Mariana Viollaz. Revision requested at Journal of Public Economics.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 15304
Abstract: Policies that extend the school day in elementary school provide an implicit childcare subsidy for families. As such, they can affect parents' time allocation and family dynamics. This paper examines how extending the school day affects families by focusing on marriage dissolution. To do so, we exploit the staggered adoption of a policy that extended the availability of full-time elementary schools across different municipalities in Mexico. Using administrative data on divorces, we find that the extension in the school day by 3.5 hours leads to a significant increase in divorce rates, and the effect grows with every year of municipalities' exposure to the program. Increased female labor force participation due to the availability of childcare is likely to be one of the mechanisms that relaxed restrictions to marriage dissolution.
Improvements in Schooling Opportunities and Teen Births, joint with Lucas Nogueira Garcez, Cecilia Peluffo, and Mayra Pineda-Torres. Under review.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 16791
Abstract: We study the causal relationship between educational attainment and teenage birth rates by focusing on a large-scale, country-wide reform that made high school compulsory and removed previously existing school capacity constraints in Mexico. Relying on administrative data on schools and births, we implement a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits variation across time and municipality-level exposure to the reform to explore the effects of expanding educational opportunities on teenage fertility. We find that teenage birth rates decreased by 2.8 percent after the education reform in municipalities with high increases in high school availability relative to municipalities with low increases. This decline is not driven by a decline in the time teenagers had to engage in risky behaviors (incapacitation effect) but a potential change in expectations for the future.
Long-term Pre-conception Exposure to Local Violence and Infant Health, joint with Eunsik Chang and Sandra Orozco-Aleman. Under review.
Abstract: This paper studies the effects of mothers’ long-term pre-conception exposure to local violence on birth outcomes. Using administrative data from Mexico and two different empirical strategies, our results indicate that mothers’ long-term exposure to local violence prior to conception has detrimental effects on infant health at birth. The results suggest that loss of women’s human capital and deterioration of mental health are potential underlying mechanisms behind the adverse effects, highlighting intergenerational consequences of exposure to local violence. Our findings shed light on the welfare implications of local violence that are not captured in in-utero exposure to violence.
Persistence of the Spillover Effects of Violence and Educational Trajectories, joint with Cecilia Peluffo.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 16374
Abstract: This paper provides evidence on how having violence-exposed peers who migrated to nonviolent areas affects students' educational trajectories in receiving schools. To recover our estimates, we exploit the variation in local violence across different municipalities in the context of Mexico's war on drugs and linked administrative records on students' educational trajectories. We find that peer exposure to violence in elementary school imposes persistent negative effects on students in nonviolent areas. Having elementary school violence-exposed peers has detrimental effects on students' academic performance in a high school admission exam and grade progression. For every ten students previously exposed to local violence who migrated to Mexico City's metro area, approximately five incumbent students in safe municipalities are placed in lower-ranked and less-preferred schools.
Kingpin Strategy, Violence, and Academic Performance, joint with Cecilia Peluffo and Carlos Trejo-Pech
Abstract: We examine the effects that the capture of high-ranked members of drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) has on students' academic performance. Our identification strategy leverages the timing of the captures of the DTOs' leaders as a measure of exposure to community violence. Using an individual-level panel dataset, we find that these events harm students' performance in standardized tests. The decline in test scores is more pronounced in municipalities with more than one active DTO, suggesting that the increase in confrontations among DTOs after a leader's capture is a potential mechanism explaining the results.
Women as Caregivers: Full-Time Schools and Grandmothers' Labor Supply, joint with Francisco Cabrera-Hernández
Abstract: This study analyzes the effects of publicly provided childcare on the labor supply of grandmothers. We do so in the context of Mexico's Full-Time School program which, since 2007, has gradually increased the length of the school day by 3.5 hours in public elementary schools. We document how the availability of full-time schools in a municipality affects grandmothers' decisions to participate in the labor market. We estimate these effects using data collected under a rotating panel design and within-individual variation in the availability of full-time schools. Childcare subsidies, through longer school days, increase grandmothers' labor force participation and employment, especially in the informal market.
Criminal Instruments: Shift-Share Designs and Collinearity, joint with Enda Hargaden
Abstract: This paper provides evidence that machine learning techniques can improve Bartik instrument research designs. We show that collinearity in a Bartik first-stage can render point estimates uninterpretable as a local average treatment effect (LATE). In addition to providing more precise estimates we show that addressing collinearity—for example, with Lasso—can also relax the assumptions needed for interpreting those estimates as a LATE. Our empirical focus is the effect of unemployment on crime. Compared to a baseline Bartik specification, a Lasso-style first-stage reduces the estimated effect of job losses on crime by forty-five percent.
WORKS IN PROGRESS
"Ambient Air Pollution and Students’ High-Stakes Exam Performance: Evidence from Mexico,” joint with Scott Holladay and Xin Jin.
"Moving for Good: Educational Gains from Leaving Violence Behind,” joint with Cecilia Peluffo.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
"Causas y Costos de la Violencia en Mexico." Boletin de Politica Economica. No. 20, January 2023.
"Non-technical Summary of Kingpin Approaches to Fighting Crime and Community Violence: Evidence from Mexico's Drug War," with Jason M. Lindo. Cato Research Briefs in Economic Policy, No. 31, July 2015.
"Victimizacion en la Zona Metropolitana de Guadalajara," with Irvin M. Soto Zazueta. Ensayos Sobre Victimizacion, Percepcion de la Inseguridad y Corrupcion en Mexico. Mexico: 2015, editor Willy W. Cortez. pp. 33-54.
"La Espacialidad de la Victimizacion. Metodologia y Caso," with Mauricio Ramirez Grajeda. Temas de Economia Publica Local. Mexico: 2011, editor Juan J. Jardon Urrieta. pp. 295-306.