Research
Publications
Schooling and Child Labor: Evidence of Mexico's Full-Time School Program, with Mireille Kozhaya, Economics of Education Review
This paper examines the effect of a program that extended the length of the school day from part-time to full-time in Mexico, on school enrollment, time spent on schooling activities, as well as market and excessive domestic work of children aged 7 to 14. We further analyze possible spillover effects within the household focusing on older siblings and parents. To identify the effect, we take advantage of the staggered implementation of the Full-Time Schools (FTS) program across municipalities from 2009 to 2018. The results show that the FTS program has no impact on school enrollment, but increases the weekly hours allocated to schooling activities, and at the same time reduces child labor hours. A one standard deviation increase in the share of FTS reduces the probability of engaging in child labor by 0.9 percentage points, which implies a 12% reduction in child labor.
Media coverage: Forbes Mexico
The Effects of Enhanced Enforcement at Mexico’s Southern Border: Evidence from Central American Deportees, Demography.
Immigration enforcement cooperation between final-destination and transit countries has increased in the last decades. I examine whether the Southern Border Plan, an immigration enforcement program implemented by the Mexican government in 2014, has curbed intentions of unauthorized migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to migrate to the United States. I use the announcement of the Southern Border Plan to implement a difference-in-differences approach and compare the evolution of short-run intentions to engage in additional unauthorized crossings of Central American (treatment group) relative to Mexican deportees (comparison group). The findings suggest that increased enforcement in Mexico decreases the likelihood of attempting repeated unauthorized crossings.
Remittances and the Brain Drain: Evidence from Microdata for Sub-Saharan Africa, with Julia Bredtmann and Sebastian Otten, Journal of Development Studies.
Based on unique microdata from five Sub-Saharan African countries that contain comprehensive information on both migrants and their households at the origin country, we investigate the effect of migrants’ education on their remittance behaviour. Our results reveal that migrants’ education has no impact on the likelihood of sending remittances, but a positive effect on the amount of money sent, conditional on remitting. The latter effect holds for internal migrants and migrants in non-OECD countries, while it vanishes for migrants in OECD destination countries once characteristics of the origin household are controlled for.
Heterogeneous Rebound Effects in Individual Mobility: Evidence from German Households, with Manuel Frondel and Colin Vance, Journal of Transport Economics and Policy.
This article investigates heterogeneity in the direct rebound effect of individual mobility using discrete-continuous models. After deriving formulae for the marginal effects obtained from these selection correction approaches, we estimate a joint model of automobile ownership and distance driven to quantify the rebound effect — the behaviorally induced increase in driving that results from higher fuel economy. Our findings suggest that 30–80 per cent of the emissions reduction from an efficiency improvement is lost to increased driving. The magnitude of this range indicates that estimates of the climate impacts from technological change should take the rebound effect into account.
Other Publications
Bachmann, R., Martinez-Flores, F., Rulff, C., (2021) Die Lohnlücke in der Zeitarbeit - eine empirische Analyse auf Grundlage von BA-Daten und der Verdienststrukturergebung. RWI Projektberichte.
Bachmann, R., W. Dürig, H. Frings, L. Höckel and F. Martinez Flores (2017), Minijobs nach Einführung des Mindestlohns – Eine Bestandsaufnahme. Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftspolitik 66 (3): 209-237. DOI: 10.1515/zfwp-2017-0014
Working Papers
Religious Terrorism, Forced Migration, and Women's Empowerment: Evidence from the Boko Haram Insurgency with Paola Elice and Arndt Reichert
This paper examines the link between violent attacks of the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, forced migration, and the empowerment of women in host communities. The paper finds positive effects of distant attacks on the economic well-being of women, their use of modern contraceptive methods, and rejection of traditional gender views. At the same time, however, the findings show an increase in the risk that women experience domestic violence. The paper then extensively examines forced displacement as an effect channel and its importance relative to other possible channels for explaining the spatial dispersion of the effects. Compared with Boko Haram attacks, the results are remarkably different for Fulani pastoralist-farmer clashes over natural resources.
Climate Anomalies and International Migration: A Disaggregated Analysis for West Africa, with Sveta Milusheva and Arndt Reichert
Migration is one of the channels West African populations can use to adjust to the negative impacts of climate change. Using novel geo-referenced and high- frequency data, this study investigates the extent to which soil moisture anomalies drive international migration decisions within the region and toward Europe. The findings show that drier soil conditions decrease (rather than increase) the probability to migrate. A standard deviation decrease in soil moisture leads to a 2 percentage point drop in the probability to migrate, equivalent to a 25 percent decrease in the number of migrants. This effect is concentrated during the crop-growing season and likely driven by financial constraints. The effect is only seen for areas that are in the middle of the income distribution, with no impact on the poorest or richest areas of a country, suggesting that the former were constrained to start and the latter can address those financial constraints.
Child Labor Bans, Emplyoment, and School Attendance: Evidence from Changes in the Minimum Working Age, with Mireille Kozhaya.
This paper examines the effect of a program that extended the length of a school day from four to six or eight hours in Mexico, on school enrollment, time spent on schooling activities, and child labor of children aged 7 to 14. To identify the effect, we take advantage of the staggered implementation of the FTS program across municipalities. The results show that extending the school day has no effect on the probability of being enrolled in school, but a positive effect on the weekly hours allocated to schooling activities. When focusing on child labor, we find a reduction of 1.6 hours worked, mainly driven by a decrease in the probability of engaging in work by 6.3 percentage points. For boys, we observe a decrease in the probability of engaging in market work and for girls a decrease in the probability of engaging in domestic work.
Media coverage: El Economista