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Abstract
We analyze the labor market consequences of international trade, using the evidence provided by the behavior of Mexican labor markets after the introduction of NAFTA in the nineties and the accession of China to the WTO in 2001. Following an approach close to that proposed by Autor, Dorn and Hanson (2013), we use the local market variation on exposure to international markets to identify the effects of these events. We show that changes in market access and in competition in foreign markets that Mexico has faced have had a significant impact on unemployment, employment, and wages. In particular, NAFTA integration seems to have boosted manufacturing employment and overall wages, while enhanced Chinese competition tended to have the opposite effect. Additionally, we find that the labor market responses to international trade are heterogeneous across regions in the country, being significantly stronger in the regions closer to the US border.