TY  - JOUR
AU  - Markusen,James R.
AU  - Zahniser,Stephen
TI  - Liberalization and Incentives for Labor Migration: Theory with Applications to NAFTA
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6232
PY  - 1997
Y2  - October 1997
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6232
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6232.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James R. Markusen
Department of Economics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0256
Tel: 303/492-0748
Fax: 303/492-8960
E-Mail: james.markusen@colorado.edu
AB  - One of the motivations for NAFTA from the US point of view was to reduce the" incentives for Mexican migration into the US.  Unskilled rural males are a primary source of" illegal immigration and also Mexico's relatively abundant factor. This group should therefore" be made better off by trade and investment liberalization according to the traditional" Heckscher-Ohlin model.  Existing evidence, along with best guesses of many experts in the" area, suggest that NAFTA is unlikely to have a significant positive impact on this group least not within the time frame of several decades.  We draw on a number of recent theoretical" contributions in order to offer reasons why NAFTA may not raise the wages of unskilled" Mexican workers.
ER  -