I think that it is difficult to get a handle on what is actually happening in a place like Mexico. De Janvry's former student, Nora Lustig, has a fairly comprehensive article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
I would add that the agricultural phenomenon that I suggested can be extended to all sorts of traditional activities.
As Rakesh suggested, long before NAFTA, Mexico was having trouble creating enough jobs.
On Thu, Apr 12, 2001 at 01:01:36AM -0700, Rakesh Narpat Bhandari wrote:
> Michael Perelman and Brad had the following exchange:
>
> >> > Why can't you say it? NAFTA allows US agricultural goods, which
> >>require very
> >>> little labor, to displace Mexican agriculture, which is very
> >>>labor intensive.
> >>> So, let's say that 1 farm worker displaces 20 in Mexico and that
> >>>10 of these
> >> > displaced farm workers are employed, displacing 3 U.S. workers.
> >> >
> >
> >But that has not happened yet (although Sherman Robinson is still
> >scared that it might)...
>
>
> The ejidos have been suffering through a deepening crisis for at
> least two decades now; supplemental income has been needed for some
> time--I don't think free trade can be blamed alone. But if there is
> someone here with expertise, that would be most helpful. As Brad's
> colleague Alain deJanvry may point out, the inability to make a
> transition to (so called) higher value added fruit and vegetable
> exports has had many causes (and it was on the possibility of this
> transition that NAFTA was sold) : lack of access to credit, reduction
> of subsidies for crucial inputs as they grow more expensive, lack of
> productive foreign investment (despite the privatization of land) and
> continuing US non tariff barriers. I am not sure that NAFTA can alone
> be held responsible, though the touted agricultural transformations
> seem not to have been realized. The presures on the border should
> then only build. Magdalena Barros Nock argues that neo-liberalism
> as a whole has led to the continuing crisis of the ejidos. See
> Disappearing Peasantries: Rural Labour in Africa, Asia and Latin
> America, ed. Deborah Bryceson, Cristobal Kay and Jos Mooj.
>
> RB
>
> ps I sent Doug a private note on one of Bronfenbrenner's journalistic
> summaries of her work a month or so ago; I don't see how her own
> findings in any way prove that NAFTA has been the main cause of shut
> downs upon unionization or threat of unionization. Her own evidence
> that in only one of ten cases do firms threaten to move to Mexico if
> there a move to unionize. It would seem that the more important
> reform would be of domestic laws that allow firms to respond as such
> to unionization drives, not NAFTA per se.
>
>
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-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu