Manuela Angelucci

US Border Enforcement and the Net Flow of Mexican Illegal Migration

I investigate the effect of US border enforcement on the net flow of Mexican undocumented migration, both of which have been considerably increasing in the last 3 decades. This effect is theoretically ambiguous, as increases in border controls deter prospective migrants from crossing the border illegally but lengthen the duration of current illegal migrations. The inflow and outflow of illegal Mexican migration respond to changes in border enforcement. The marginal effect of enforcement on the inflow increases with enforcement and is consistent with the hypothesis that tighter enforcement selects more productive migrants. This positive selection makes the outflow sensitivity to marginal enforcement changes comparatively more stable over time. A marginal increase in border controls increases the stock of undocumented migrants between 1972 and 1986, has either no effect or a small and negative effect between 1987 and 1996, and has a larger and significant negative effect between 1997 and 2003.

The Effect of Ownership and Competitive Pressure on Firm Performance in Transition Countries: Micro Evidence from Bulgaria, Romania and Poland

This paper uses a unique representative firm level data set to analyse the effect of domestic and international competitive pressure and ownership changes in three emerging economies, Bulgaria Poland and Romania. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: Domestic competitive pressure, measured by market structure, and increased import penetration are associated with higher firm performance in Poland irrespective of the ownership structure of firms. Furthermore the positive effects of increased import competition are reinforced for foreign owned firms. In contrast, in Bulgaria and Romania, increased import penetration is associated with lower firm performance, while there is some evidence that more competitive market structures are associated with higher total factor productivity. However, these effects depend on the ownership structure of firms, which suggests the existence of complementarities between competitive pressure and ownership changes. The results also indicate that privatisation has positive effects on firm performance. In particular, domestic private firms and foreign owned firms outperform state owned firms. Furthermore, there is evidence that foreign owned firms do better than domestically owned private firms especially in Bulgaria and Poland. The results on ownership are somewhat weaker for Romania.

Migration and Financial Constraints: Evidence from Mexico

This paper shows that poor households’ entitlement to an exogenous, temporary, but guaranteed income stream increases Mexican migration to the United States, although this income is mainly consumed. Some households use the entitlement to this income stream as collateral to finance the migration. The new migrations come from previously constrained individuals and households and worsen migrant skills. In sum, financial constraints to international migration are binding for poor Mexicans, some of whom would like to migrate but cannot afford to. As growth and antipoverty and microfinance programs relax financial constraints for the poor, low-skilled Mexican migration to the United States will likely increase.

Win Some Lose Some? Evidence from a Randomized Microcredit Program Placement Experiment by Compartamos Banco

Theory and evidence have raised concerns that microcredit does more harm than good, particularly when offered at high interest rates. We use a clustered randomized trial, and household surveys of eligible borrowers and their businesses, to estimate impacts from an expansion of group lending at 110% APR by the largest microlender in Mexico. Average effects on a rich set of outcomes measured 18-34 months post-expansion suggest some good and little harm. Other estimators identify heterogeneous treatment effects and effects on outcome distributions, but again yield little support for the hypothesis that microcredit causes harm.

Oportunidades: Program Effect on Consumption, Low Participation, and Methodological Issues

In this paper we estimate the effect of the Mexican conditional cash transfer program, Oportunidades, on consumption, and we explore some issues related to participation in the program and to the estimation of treatment effects. We discuss the comparability of treatment and control areas, provide evidence that the expected transfer may not be sufficiently high to induce many eligible households to participate, and find positive effects on consumption.

Program Evaluation and Spillover Effects

This paper is a practical guide for researchers and practitioners who want to understand spillover effects in programme evaluation. It defines spillover effects and discusses why it is important to measure them. It explains how to design a field experiment to measure the average effects of the treatment on subjects, both eligible and ineligible, for the programme in the presence of spillover effects. In addition, it discusses the use of nonexperimental methods for estimating spillover effects when the experimental design is not a viable option. Evaluations that account for spillover effects should be designed such that they explain both the cause of these effects and whom they affect. Such an evaluation design is necessary to avoid inappropriate policy recommendations and neglecting important mechanisms through which the programme operates.

Conditional Cash Transfer Programs, Credit Constraints, and Migration

This paper models the effect of anti�?poverty conditional cash transfer programs on labor migration. Their effect on migration depends on both the size and type of transfers. Conditional transfers, where the potential recipient has to comply with some requirement in order to qualify for eligibility, may decrease contemporaneous migration for some households, but increase future migration for others. In contrast, unconditional grants may increase current migration.

Village Economies and the Structure of Extended Family Networks

Abstract This paper documents how the structure of extended family networks in rural Mexico relates to the poverty and inequality of the village of residence. Using the Hispanic naming convention, we construct within-village extended family networks in 504 poor rural villages. Family networks are larger (both in the number of members and as a share of the village population) and out-migration is lower the poorer and the less unequal the village of residence. Our results are consistent with the extended family being a source of informal insurance to its members.

Aid Programs' Unintended Effects: The Case of Progresa and Migration

This paper analyzes the effect of aid on international and domestic migration and explores the causal effect of income on migration. The theoretical model predicts that the effect of aid on migration is ambiguous, depending on both the size and type of transfers. For some household types, e.g., those that are credit constrained, conditional transfers, where the potential recipient has to comply with some requirement in order to qualify for eligibility, may decrease contemporaneous migration but increase future migration. In contrast, unconditional grants may increase the level of migration at all times. Randomized data from a Mexican development program, Progresa, are used to test these hypotheses. The empirical analysis verifies that unconditional transfers increase current migration, while conditional transfers reduce it. Overall, the program generates an increase in international migration but no change in domestic migration.

Consumption and investment in resource pooling family networks

This paper examines a novel motive for resource pooling in family networks in rural economies: to relax credit constraints and facilitate investment in non-collateralizeable assets for which credit market imperfections are most binding. We thus complement established literature examining risk-sharing motives for resource transfers within family networks, as well as motives based on kinship tax obligations. We do so exploiting the Progresa program data, in which family networks can be identified, households are subject to large exogenous resource inflows, and detailed responses on consumption and an array of investments can be tracked in a household panel over five years. We find that for every dollar that accrues to the family network through Progresa transfers, food consumption expenditures increase by around 65c for both households eligible for Progresa and ineligible members of the same family network. Hence the marginal propensity of families to invest/save out of every dollar is around .35, and we document how this is channeled towards easing credit constraints poorer network members face in financing non-collateralizable investments into their childrens human capital. We show these consumption and investment benefits of being embedded within a family network are sustained five years after households first experience resource transfers from Progresa. Hence the interplay between resource inflows and resource pooling by family networks can place network members on sustained paths out of poverty.