Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion

We acknowledge helpful feedback from Daron Acemoglu, Lee Alston, Alessandra Casella, Adam Chilton, Thomas Hertz, Gaurav Khanna, Ted Miguel, Melanie Morten, Suresh Naidu, Mead Over, Eric Posner, Raymond Robertson, C. Peter Timmer, two anonymous reviewers, and seminar participants at the University of Chicago, the University of Oslo, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Boston University, and the Center for Global Development. For archival assistance we are grateful to Stephanie Bartz, Dorie Bertram, Sheila Brushes, David Clark, Julie Day, Donna Daniels, David Holbrook, Jennifer Huck, Amber Kohl, Celina Nichols McDonald, Rudy Meixell, Nancy Mulhern, Amy Rian, and Amy Zimmer; for data entry to Nisha Binu and Marija Jovanovic; and for research assistance to José Elías Serranía Bravo. This work was supported by a generous grant from Good Ventures. The paper represents the views of the authors alone and not necessarily those of the authors’ employers, or funders, or the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• February 1, 2017