AAEA members present research at ASSA
MILWAUKEE, Wis., Dec. 13, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- AAEA invites media to attend their sessions at the ASSA 2025 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA.
On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 10:15 am – 12:15 pm (PST) at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, four AAEA members will speak at the session "Farm Labor Supply Challenges and Policy Implications."
Presentations in this session include (speakers are listed first):
AEWRs and H-2A Employment
- Marcelo Castillo, United States Department of Agriculture
Adverse Effect Wage Rates (AEWRs) are regional minimum wages established for foreign farmworkers working in the United States through the H-2A visa program. In the late 2000s, the Department of Labor (DOL) implemented a temporary restructuring of the H-2A program. A notable modification was the transition from using a USDA survey of farm employers (NAICS 111 and 112) to a DOL survey of non-farm employers providing support services to farms (NAICS 115) for determining AEWRs. This policy shift resulted in an average decrease in AEWRs of $1, or a 10% wage decline from 2008 to 2009. Our analysis indicates that this change led to a significant increase in H-2A program participation among firms that had previously engaged with the program.
The Effects of De Facto Immigration Enforcement Shocks on the Agricultural Labor Supply
- Alejandro Gutierrez-Li, North Carolina State University
The United States has been experiencing a reduction in the farm labor supply for many years. In this paper, we develop a novel empirical approach that leverages time and geographic variation in immigration-related arrests to examine farm labor supply responses. While previous work has analyzed the role of the activation of policies in labor market outcomes, our approach documents that frequent and unforeseen changes in the intensity of immigration enforcement impact labor supply decisions even in periods of policy inaction. Using data from the Current Population Survey and immigration-related arrests, we find that an unexpected surge in arrests decreases the labor force participation of non-citizen farmworkers by as much as 4 percentage points, and the number of hours workers engage in agricultural activities by up to 25%. Furthermore, we show that the negative impact of enforcement on the agricultural labor supply was stronger for women and in states where labor-intensive agriculture dominates. Overall, our results suggest that localized enforcement likely put downward pressure on immigrant populations and deleteriously affected farmers employing a large fraction of foreign farmworkers.
Farmworkers and Non-Farm Work: Evidence from the NAWS
- Zachariah Rutledge, Michigan State University
Historically, U.S. farmers have relied on a highly elastic supply of low-wage labor from rural Mexico. The supply of labor to U.S. farms depends on three variables: The total supply of immigrant farmworkers, the willingness of farmworkers to engage in follow-the-crop migration, and farmworkers' commitment to agricultural work. Recent studies show that the supply of farmworkers from rural Mexico and follow-the-crop migration are decreasing over time. We use data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey to test whether farmworkers' likelihood of shifting to nonfarm work is increasing, as well. Our econometric analysis finds evidence of a recent upward trend in farmworkers' probability of working in nonfarm occupations in the U.S. and that this trend is accelerating over time. Farmworkers who are male and have more extensive off-farm networks, higher educational attainment, legal documentation, are able to speak English well, or are willing to travel substantial distances to work have a higher probability of recently working in a nonfarm occupation. The positive impact of off-farm networks indicates that farmworkers' movement to nonfarm work is self-perpetuating: farmworkers who participate in nonfarm work contribute to off-farm networks that, in turn, stimulate others to work off farm. Changes in the characteristics of Mexico's rural population, including sharp increases in rural education, appear to be at least partly responsible for the rising trend in off-farm work, suggesting that the trend is unlikely to reverse in the future. In California and the Pacific Coast regions, the share of farmworkers who will engage in nonfarm work is predicted to increase sharply over the next 20 years. An increasing trend in off-farm work may contribute to farm labor scarcity and rising farm worker wages.
Haste Makes Waste: Workplace Speed-Quality Spillovers and Compensation Strategies
- Alexandra Hill, University of California-Berkeley
Empirical researchers often consider a single determinant of labor productivity: speed. This paper asks whether they are neglecting spillovers on output quality. Using high-frequency data on the speed and quality of strawberry harvesters' work, we offer novel evidence that workers who are paid per unit of output, a piece rate, tradeoff between speed and quality. Leveraging two plausibly exogenous mechanisms - peer speed and piece rate increases - that boost worker speed, we identify the associated quality decreases; 10 percent increases in speed are associated with reductions in quality on the order of 1.5 to 1.7 percent. Next, we implement two alternative payment schemes, one where workers receive additional pay tied to the quality (in addition to quantity) of output, and a second where supervisors receive this quality bonus. We find that both lead to improvements in quality and lead to notable reductions in the speed-quality tradeoff and find the worker-paid incentive scheme to be most effective in terms of maximizing both quantity and quality of output.
If you are interested in attending the session, please contact Allison Ware in the AAEA Business Office.
ABOUT AAEA: Established in 1910, the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) is the leading professional association for agricultural and applied economists, with 2,500 members in more than 60 countries. Members of the AAEA work in academic or government institutions as well as in industry and not-for-profit organizations, and engage in a variety of research, teaching, and outreach activities in the areas of agriculture, the environment, food, health, and international development. The AAEA publishes three journals, the Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (an open access journal), the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, as well as the online magazine Choices and the online open access publication series Applied Economics Teaching Resources. To learn more, visit http://www.aaea.org.
Media Contact
Allison Ware, Agricultural & Applied Economics Association, 414-918-3190, [email protected], www.aaea.org
SOURCE Agricultural & Applied Economics Association
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