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The migration of Mexican immigrants to the U.S. is one of the largest bilateral migration flows in the world and remittances from these immigrants represent a crucial source of income for Mexican households. As the United States tightens controls on illegal migration, this may impact both migration durations and remittances. Tighter borders increase crossing costs, often because migrants need to pay smugglers (coyotes). Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, we find that higher crossing costs increase the probability of remitting, the remittance rate and the duration of stay as undocumented workers pay off the crossing debt. If immigrants did not incur these crossing debts then more of their earnings could be spent in the United States or by their households in Mexico on productive activities and durations in the U.S. might be lessened at the margin. This suggests some potential gain to both the U.S. and Mexican economies through expanding guest worker programs and consequently reducing the hiring of coyotes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid growth of international migration and remittances has led to a wealth of research examining these trends. One of these lines of research attempts to determine the relationship between migration, remittances and the adoption of "Green Revolution" high yield variety (HYV) seeds. This literature proposes that migration and remittances may increase HYV use by reducing household risk and credit constraints. Given the large scale of both migration and remittances, getting an accurate measurement of these impacts is crucial to designing and implementing policies in rural areas. This paper examines the relationship between migration, remittances and agricultural technology. The credit and risk hypotheses are tested using data from the Mexican Migration Project. The main focus of the paper is examining the issue of endogeneity with respect to migration and remittances. When the probit approach is tested, evidence of endogeneity bias with respect to migration and remittances is found. The risk and credit hypotheses are then tested with two-stage and three-stage analyses, in order to address the problem of endogeneity. The results are found to be significantly different when methodologies are employed to deal with endogeneity; suggesting this is an issue that needs to be addressed. Overall, the results find some evidence to support both the credit and risk hypotheses; although the results for the risk hypothesis are more mixed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The positive impact of education on earnings, wages, and economic growth is well documented; however, the issue of education-occupation matching in developing countries has been largely ignored. Since workers’ levels of schooling and their occupations’ required level of education both affect wages, policymakers may find it useful to note if such mismatches exist, if they impact wages, and if they can be avoided. Empirical results from Mexico suggest that in order to obtain the maximum economic benefits from increases in educational attainment levels, a developing country needs to take steps to assure increases in occupational levels also occur. Additional evidence of the positive link between educational attainment and wages is also provided. Due to the multi-period nature of the data; a new method of measuring required education is developed which opens up the education-occupation matching literature to data sets which are not cross sectional in nature. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper constructs and tests a model that incorporates relative deprivation into the migration decision. Relatively deprived individuals view their situations as less than a community standard. Another innovation of this paper is the utilization of a cluster approach to wage differentials. This cluster method takes account of individual characteristics while avoiding the severe multicollinearity problems inherent in the standard wage equation approach. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, relative deprivation is found to be a significant motivating factor in domestic migration decisions. The results also suggest that Mexico-US migration may be increasing relative deprivation in Mexican communities. For policymakers, the results indicate that policies attempting to slow domestic rural-to-urban migration must address both relative and absolute outcomes in communities. Investments in communities that raise aggregate incomes, but increase relative deprivation, could result in an increase in migration out of the community, not in a decrease as intended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present and test a model that incorporates education-occupation matching into the migration decision. The literature on education-occupation matching shows that earnings are affected by how individuals' education matches that required by their occupation. Accordingly, individuals with more schooling than required by their occupation have an additional incentive to migrate: the increase in earnings that occurs with a more beneficial education-occupation match. Using data from Mexico, we found statistical support for the importance of education-occupation matching in migration decisions. Education-occupation matching provides a plausible explanation for the mixed findings in the literature on the relationship between educational attainment and migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convincing investors that the Mexican government is committed to the reform and restructuring process is an ongoing battle. Regulatory credibility cannot be built in a day. However, the CRE's (as well as Pemex's and the Mexican government's as a whole) actions to date have laid the groundwork for durable regulation, and inspired investor confidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]