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| CV [Download
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OFFICE ADDRESS MAILING ADDRESS TELEPHONE FAX david.atkin@yale.edu |
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Research Interests: Development, International Trade & Applied Microeconomics |
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WORKING
PAPERS Write up in The Economist Magazine [Economist Article] This paper introduces habit formation into an otherwise standard model of international trade. Household tastes evolve over time to favor foods consumed as a child. Trade liberalization causes preferred foods to rise in price in every region, as the locally abundant foods were relatively inexpensive in the generations prior to liberalization. Neglecting this relationship between tastes and agro-climatic endowments overstates the short-run nutritional gains from agricultural trade liberalization and masks potential caloric losses for laborers. I examine the predictions of this model of trade with habit formation using household survey data from many regions of India. “Endogenous Skill Acquisition and Export Manufacturing in Mexico” [Download PDF] Studies based on firm-level data find that both exporting firms and multinational corporations pay higher wages, for a given skill level. However, the literature overlooks the fact that export manufacturing firms may also change the educational choices of the workforce. This paper confirms that for Mexico over the period 1986-2000, the export sector pays higher wages than other sectors, but school dropout increases with the arrival of new export jobs. The workers induced to enter export manufacturing eventually earn less than they would have earned had the jobs never appeared and they stayed in school. I causally identify these effects by looking within 2,443 municipalities and examining how education varies over cohorts, depending on how many new jobs arrive during a cohort’s key school-leaving ages. Unlike other formal sector jobs, where new job opportunities encourage skill acquisition, exporting industries pull workers out of school at younger ages. Export manufacturing tempts impatient students by paying very high relative wages accompanied by low returns to a few more years of education, and offering plenty of jobs to low-skill workers straight out of school. The magnitudes I find suggest that for every ten new jobs created, one student drops out of school at grade 9 rather than continuing on through grade 12. “Working for the Future: Female Factory Work and Child Health in Mexico” [New Version Coming Soon-Old Version Here] In this paper, I show that the women induced to work in export manufacturing by the opening of a new factory nearby have significantly taller children. This increased child height does not come about through higher household incomes alone, with these women reporting stronger female bargaining power within their households. |
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