Skip to main content

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

Publication ,  Journal Article
Clemens, MA; Lewis, EG; Postel, HM
Published in: 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 perverse impact. We study a natural policy experiment: the exclusion of almost half a million Mexican 'bracero' farm workers from the United States to improve farm labor market conditions. With novel archival data we measure state-level exposure to exclusion, and model the labor-market effect in the absence of technical change. We reject such an effect and fail to reject a null effect.

Duke Scholars

Published In

The American economic review

DOI

EISSN

1944-7981

ISSN

0002-8282

Publication Date

June 2018

Volume

108

Issue

6

Start / End Page

1468 / 1487

Related Subject Headings

  • Economics
  • 38 Economics
  • 35 Commerce, management, tourism and services
  • 15 Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services
  • 14 Economics
 

Citation

APA
Chicago
ICMJE
MLA
NLM
Clemens, M. A., Lewis, E. G., & Postel, H. M. (2018). Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican <i>Bracero</i> Exclusion. The American Economic Review, 108(6), 1468–1487. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20170765
Clemens, Michael A., Ethan G. Lewis, and Hannah M. Postel. “Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican <i>Bracero</i> Exclusion.The American Economic Review 108, no. 6 (June 2018): 1468–87. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20170765.
Clemens MA, Lewis EG, Postel HM. Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican <i>Bracero</i> Exclusion. The American economic review. 2018 Jun;108(6):1468–87.
Clemens, Michael A., et al. “Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican <i>Bracero</i> Exclusion.The American Economic Review, vol. 108, no. 6, June 2018, pp. 1468–87. Epmc, doi:10.1257/aer.20170765.
Clemens MA, Lewis EG, Postel HM. Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican <i>Bracero</i> Exclusion. The American economic review. 2018 Jun;108(6):1468–1487.

Published In

The American economic review

DOI

EISSN

1944-7981

ISSN

0002-8282

Publication Date

June 2018

Volume

108

Issue

6

Start / End Page

1468 / 1487

Related Subject Headings

  • Economics
  • 38 Economics
  • 35 Commerce, management, tourism and services
  • 15 Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services
  • 14 Economics