Research

Research Interests

Labor Economics

Applied Econometrics

Economics of Education

Publications

Minimum eligibility age for social pensions and household poverty: Evidence from Mexico, with Clemente Avila and David Escamilla-Guerrero (2024), Economic Inquiry, 62(1): 175-196.

This paper examines the impact of social pensions on old-age poverty. To achieve causal identification, we leverage the reduction in the minimum eligibility age of Mexico's flagship non-means-tested social pension program. We find that the program's expansion significantly reduced extreme poverty, mainly among indigenous seniors and in rural areas. However, it had negligible effects on labor force participation, suggesting that social pensions were not effective in ensuring minimum economic well-being and simultaneously inducing retirement among seniors at early stages of old age. The program's small cash transfer and mistargeting are among the main explanations.

Working papers

Foreign language skills and labor market outcomes: The case of English in Mexico

In this paper, I study the prevalence of English skills and the labor market returns to English skills in Mexico. I use individual-level data from the 2014 Subjective Well-being Survey, which, unlike other large nationally representative data sets, includes a measure of English proficiency. To address concerns regarding endogeneity in the relationship between English skills and labor market outcomes, I exploit policy changes in various Mexican states that introduced English instruction (as a subject) in public elementary schools during the 1990s. Using a Two-Way Fixed Effects specification, I estimate the effect of these state policies introducing English instruction. Subsequently, I utilize the variation in English skills resulting from these policy changes to estimate the causal effect of English skills on labor market outcomes. I offer robust estimates in the presence of heterogeneous treatment effects due to variations of the treatment over time and across treated regions. My findings indicate that these policies offering English instruction did not significantly affect wages, shifted workers out of physically demanding occupations, and increased the likelihood of speaking English. 

Presentation for AEFP Annual Conference

Impact of English instruction on labor market outcomes: The case of Mexico (with Alejandrina Salcedo and Francisco Cabrera-Hernandez)

In this paper, we measure the effect of exposure to a foreign language in school on student achievement and labor market outcomes. We exploit a policy change in Mexico that introduced English instruction in elementary schools through the National English Program in Basic Education (NEPBE) in 2009. We construct a novel database, which contains nationwide information on elementary school students linked to school panel data on characteristics like hours of English instruction as well as their labor market records in adulthood. Using a Two-Way Fixed Effects (TWFE) model, we find that exposure to English instruction reduces the likelihood that an individual participates in formal sector employment. It is likely that this result is due to exposure affecting enrollment in high school and college, as our analysis focuses on young adults aged 16-24. Focusing on a sub-sample that is unlikely to be enrolled by age 16, we find that exposure to English instruction has no effect on wages. However, we do find a positive effect among high-achieving individuals. On the other hand, exposure reduced men's mobility but increased women's. This could be explained by women substituting jobs in agriculture for manufacturing industries. Furthermore, within manufacturing, we find a strong substitution of low-English intensive jobs for high-English intensive ones. Finally, we did not find any effect of exposure on reading and mathematics test scores, which suggests that the estimated effect of exposure to English language on wages is not reflecting changes to general cognitive skills. 

Work in progress

Other publications

PhD dissertation

Developed at the Central Bank of Mexico

In collaboration with my former students

Master's thesis