Juan Duran (p)

This paper uses the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and granular data on Mexican municipalities to study the local effects of trade liberalization on college wage premia, housing costs, and urban amenities between 1990 and 2010. I measure local exposure to international trade by constructing a market access database of each municipality's lowest-cost route to the closest US truck port. I find that municipalities facing larger trade exposure experienced: (1) declines in local wage differences between college and noncollege graduates, both in nominal and real terms; (2) smaller increases in local urban amenities. I interpret these results under the notion of spatial equilibrium in which non-monetary urban amenities compensate for gaps in real wages across cities.

Kenneth Castillo-Hidalgo (p)

This paper aims to explore the existence and the corresponding effects of inter-sectoral agglomeration economies in a developing country like Chile. Chile exhibits a strong dependence on natural resources, especially mining. Besides being a highly geographically concentrated activity, the Chilean mining sector strongly relies on subcontracted companies in charge of non-core tasks through outsourcing. Throughout this channel, knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) companies might play a role in the formation of knowledge spillovers and productivity-enhancing innovation processes. We estimate the impact of the spatial concentration of KIBS-supplying firms on mining labor productivity by following a multi-level approach, relying upon individual- and aggregate-level data on income. In addition, a spatial analysis of these interactions is carried out, aiming to explore for spatial dependency and potential intra-territorial structures. Results suggest a positive effect of KIBS agglomeration on our proxy for mining workers' productivity at the individual level. Results from the exploratory spatial analysis suggest mixed evidence of spatial spillovers from KIBS agglomeration. These results yield relevant policy implications for knowledge-intensive firms location, promotion of a knowledge-based economy supported by natural resources, and sub-national-level development perspectives.

Sabine Bacouël-Jentjens, Grégory Levieuge, Jose Riascos (p), Camélia Turcu

This study investigates the impact of mining on sustainable development in Mexico and tests whether the mining sector has an effect on consumption, inequalities, education, and the environment. Using data from 2,403 municipalities over a period of 30 years (1990-2020) using four waves of data, we find that the mining sector has mixed effects on sustainable development. The impact of mining depends on the characteristics of the mine, particularly its size and mineral extracted. While exploration of giant deposits tends to increase municipality income, it decreases the growth of consumption for neighboring areas. Negative spillovers are not present for the exploration of medium-sized deposits, and an increase in income for municipalities is observed. Additionally, mining tends to reduce inequalities regardless of the type of operation. The study provides a more nuanced understanding of the impact of mining on various aspects of sustainable development, contributing to ongoing debates on the relationship between natural resource extraction and sustainable development in Mexico.