This article uses economy-wide modeling techniques to offer an intra-regional perspective on the impacts of trade reforms on rural economies and migration for five Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua) that are negotiating the Central American...

The availability of immigrant farmworkers from Mexico critically shapes fruit, vegetable, and horticultural (FVH) production in the United States. We test the impact of recent policy reforms on the supply of Mexican labor to U.S. farms, using a 2-way fixed effects model and new data from rural...

Do non-wage fringe benefits affect women’s off-farm work decisions? We test the impact of the 1995 introduction of universal National Health Insurance (NHI) in Taiwan on off-farm labor force participation (LFP) among farm wives. Our results, based on a difference-in- differences approach,...

This paper evaluates the effects of annual fluctuations in temperature and precipitation on labor allocation in rural Mexico. We use a 28-year panel of individuals to investigate how people adjust their sector and location of work in response to year-to-year variation in weather. Controlling for...

The availability of immigrant farm-workers from Mexico is a critical factor affecting the fresh fruit and vegetable sector in the United States. This paper uses a retrospective panel data set from rural Mexico to examine the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Immigration...

Most economic research on migration impacts in source economies focuses on the households that send migrants and receive remittances, ignoring linkages that transmit migration’s influences to others in local and regional economies. This paper offers an alternative, disaggregated economy wide...

The potential importance of natural resources for the livelihood of poor rural households has long been recognized but seldom quantified and analyzed. In this paper we apply poverty and inequality measures to national and community level data sets to explore the impacts of resource extraction on...

The supply of immigrant workers from Mexico is critical to both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors in the United States. Approximately one half of all Mexican immigrants are females who typically are employed in positions that have minimal legal status requirements, e.g., domestic...

Evidence is presented in support of the “brain gain” view that the likelihood of migrating to a destination wherein the returns to human capital (schooling) are high creates incentives to acquire human capital in migrant-sending areas. In Mexico, even though internal migrants are more...