This paper demonstrates that low-skilled Mexican-born immigrants' location choices in the U.S. respond strongly to changes in local labor demand, and that this geographic elasticity helps equalize spatial differences in labor market outcomes for low-skilled native workers, who are much less...

Since the implementation of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, many analysts have attempted to measure the effects of new state welfare policies, particularly work requirements, sanctions, and time limits, on the Act's key goals-reducing cash assistance...

This paper demonstrates that immigration decisions depend on local labor market conditions by documenting the change in low-skilled immigrant inflows in response to supply increases among the US-born. Using prereform welfare participation rates as an instrument for changes in native labor...

This paper uses insights from behavioral economics to explain a particularly surprising borrowing phenomenon: one in six undergraduate students offered interest-free loans turns them down. Models of impulse control predict that students may optimally reject subsidized loans to avoid excessive...

This paper investigates the local labor supply effects of changes to the minimum wage by examining the response of low-skilled immigrants’ location decisions. Canonical models emphasize the importance of labor mobility when evaluating the employment effects of the minimum wage; yet few studies...

We empirically study the dynamics of labor market adjustment following the Brazilian trade reform of the 1990s. We use variation in industry-specific tariff cuts interacted with initial regional industry mix to measure trade-induced local labor demand shocks, and then examine regional and...

We develop a specific-factors model of regional economies that includes two types of workers, skilled and unskilled. The model delivers a simple equation relating trade-induced local shocks to changes in local skill premia. We apply the methodology to Brazil's early 1990s trade liberalization...

This paper empirically studies the dynamics of labor market adjustment following the Brazilian trade reform of the 1990s. The paper uses variation in industry-speci?c tari? cuts interacted with initial regional industry mix to measure trade-induced local labor demand shocks and examines regional...

This paper studies price and quality differences across international intermediate input suppliers. We develop price measures that account for (i) differences in product characteristics, (ii) unobserved quality differences, and (iii) pure (frictional) price dispersion across suppliers. Using...

A growing body of research examines the regional effects of trade liberalization using a weighted average of trade policy changes across industries. This paper develops a specific-factors model of regional economies that provides a theoretical foundation for this intuitively appealing empirical...