We analyze the outcomes of 332 cases from a labor court in Mexico in which a judge awarded money to a plaintiff who claimed to have been fired by a firm without cause. The judgments were enforced in only 40% of the cases. A plaintiff may try to enforce a judgment by petitioning the court to...

This paper evaluates the impact of the Bono Trabajador Activo, a training voucher program in Chile, on workers' labor market outcomes. Using detailed administrative datasets of the National Employment Service and the Unemployment Insurance System, we apply difference-in-difference and IV...

Large wage differences between countries ("place premiums") are well documented. Theory suggests that factor price convergence should follow increased migration, capital flows, and commercial integration. All three have increased between the United States and Mexico over the last 25 years. This...

Mexican wage inequality rose following Mexico's accession to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization in 1986. Since the mid-1990s, however, wage inequality has been falling. Since most trade models suggest that output prices can affect factor prices, this paper...

China's exports reduce wages in importing countries, but few studies have looked at competition in third party markets. We examine labor market outcomes in Mexico's apparel and textile sectors associated with U.S. apparel and textile imports from China. Using data on U.S. imports in conjunction...

Economists have shown that international trade increases economic growth, with trade liberalization and integration having characterized the last 50 years. While trade can increase national welfare, recent estimates from both developed and developing countries show that labor market adjustment...

This paper focuses on how the forces of globalisation, specifically the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA), have affected women's wages in the apparel sector in developing countries. Using household and labour force surveys from Cambodia and Sri Lanka, we find large positive wage premiums and a...

This paper estimates how compliance with national labor law and international labor standards within Jordan's garment exporting factories changed after the implementation of a transparency program that made compliance assessments publicly available. The estimation employs data from Better Work...

This paper explores the link between the prevalence of violent conflicts and extremely low female labor force participation rates (FLFPR) in South Asia. We merge Labor Force Surveys (LFSs) from Bangladesh, Sri-Lanka, India, and Pakistan to the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to estimate the...

This paper studies how a positive export shock - the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) - spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, we instrument export demand with...