Endogenous Skill Acquisition and Export Manufacturing in Mexico
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aer.20120901.pdf
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861.43 KB
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Author(s)
Atkin, David
Atkin, David G
Date Issued
August 2016
Journal
American Economic Review
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Atkin, David. “Endogenous Skill Acquisition and Export Manufacturing in Mexico.” American Economic Review 106, 8 (August 2016): 2046–2085
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This paper presents empirical evidence that the growth of export manufacturing in Mexico during a period of major trade reforms (the years 1986 to 2000) altered the distribution of education. I use variation in the timing of factory openings across commuting zones to show that school drop-out increased with local expansions in export-manufacturing industries. The magnitudes I find suggest that for every 25 jobs created, one student dropped out of school at grade 9 rather than continuing through to grade 12. These effects are driven by less-skilled export-manufacturing jobs which raised the opportunity cost of schooling for students at the margin.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/AER.20120901
