Hannah M Postel

Journal article Explorations in Economic History · July 1, 2026 We introduce a new rule-based linking method for historical Census records. We augment earlier algorithms based on name, age and place of birth (Abramitzky, Boustan, Eriksson, 2012, or “basic ABE”), with five matching characteristics – middle initial, coun ... Full text Cite

Summaries of Doctoral Dissertations

Journal article The Journal of Economic History · June 2024 Full text Cite

Record Linkage For Character-Based Surnames: Evidence from Chinese Exclusion.

Journal article Explorations in economic history · January 2023 This paper proposes a novel pre-processing technique to improve record linkage for historical Chinese populations. Current matching approaches are relatively ineffective due to Chinese-specific naming conventions and enumeration errors. This paper develops ... Full text Cite

Comment on Kaestner, “revisiting the bracero guest worker reforms”

Journal article Econ Journal Watch · March 1, 2020 In Clemens, Lewis, and Postel (2018), we evaluate one of the largest active labor market policy interventions of its kind: the federal government decision to bar almost half a million Mexican bracero workers from the U.S. labor market in the 1960s. We—henc ... Cite

Deterring Emigration with Foreign Aid: An Overview of Evidence from Low-Income Countries.

Journal article Population and development review · December 2018 Full text Cite

Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican <i>Bracero</i> Exclusion.

Journal article The American economic review · June 2018 An important class of active labor market policy has received little impact evaluation: immigration barriers intended to raise wages and employment by shrinking labor supply. Theories of endogenous technical advance raise the possibility of limited or even ... Full text Cite

Temporary work visas as US-Haiti development cooperation: a preliminary impact evaluation

Journal article Iza Journal of Labor and Development · December 1, 2017 We report a small-sample, preliminary evaluation of the economic impact of temporary overseas work by Haitian agricultural workers. This work occurs in the USA in the context of a pilot program designed as a form of post-disaster development assistance to ... Full text Cite

Moving beyond “China in Africa”: Insights from Zambian immigration data

Journal article Journal of Current Chinese Affairs · August 1, 2017 China’s growing presence in Africa is not news: the expansion of bilateral trade and investment ties has garnered intense media and political focus over the past decade. However, less is known about the people accompanying these increasingly intensive flow ... Full text Cite