Using data on border enforcement and macroeconomic indicators from the United States and Mexico, we estimate a two-country business cycle model of labor migration and remittances. The model matches the cyclical dynamics of unskilled migration and documents the insurance role of remittances in...

This paper documents state dependence in labor market fluctuations. Using aThreshold Vector Autoregression model (TVAR), we establish that the unemployment rate, the job separation rate, and the job finding rate exhibit a larger response to productivity shocks during periods with low aggregate...