Midwest Economics Meeting Wrap Up

This weekend I was in Chicago for the Midwest Economics Association meetings. While the rest of the city was drinking and kissing Irish people, a bunch of economists were in the Hyatt on Wacker discussing their research. For those of you who have not been to an academic conference, typically there are 4 two hour sessions each day. Each session has four papers, where the author gives a 15-20 minute talk, then a discussant who has read their paper (hopefully), comments on the paper for 5 minutes.
At Economic conferences results are typically preliminary so it wouldn’t be right to cite any presentation specifically, but two interesting results I saw. First, I saw two presentations on the impact of Mexican wages, be they immigrants to the US or staying in Mexico. Both presentations suggested that Mexican workers were not bringing down US wages. George Borjas a leading immigration economist, who was not at the conference, suggests that in the short run migration to the US will bring down US wages, but in the long run this immigration will lead to growth. Below is a table of his estimates of impacts of migration on wages (from Econlog).


Impact of Mexican Immigration on US Wages
Short Run Long Run

All native workers -3.4% 0.0%

High school dropouts -8.2% -4.8%

High school graduates -2.2% +1.2%

Some college -2.7% +0.7%

College graduates -3.9% -0.5%

The other topic that seemed popular at the conference was childhood obesity. Patricia Reagan, Prof. at Ohio State, as President of the MEA gave a talk on her own work on the causes of childhood obesity. Her general conclusion is that “that overweight prevention may need to begin before pregnancy and in early childhood.” In particular she suggests that attention should be paid to the movement of puberty to earlier years, which has been associated with obesity and other health problems.

Why Burger King Should Not Pay More For Tomatoes

Eric Scholosser, the author of Fast Food Nation, penned an OP ED piece in the New York Times yesterday (link) about how Burger King should pay more for its Florida tomatoes. He argues that paying a penny more a pound for tomatoes could be directed right to the migrant workers, making their lives better.

Funny enough as he points out in the column that these farms in Florida are having a hard time keeping wages up as they have to compete with MEXICAN farms. So the impact of the extra penny would make it harder for Mexican farms to compete, thereby encouraging more migration to the United States, where being a day laborer may be more difficult.

Is this the best way to improve the lives of these workers?

Why are Mexicans living in Beloit?

Why are there Mexicans in Beloit?

One of the interesting things about running a blog is you can see how people arrived there. A few weeks ago someone from Janesville, Wisconsin googled “Why do Mexicans live in Beloit” and they wound up on my blog. This is likely because I talk about Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, where I taught last year, and Mexico. I have not talked about Mexicans living in Beloit until now.

There are definitely Mexicans living in Beloit, I know since I have sampled some of the great taquerias around the city (ones with Spanish jukeboxes and majority Latino clientele). A look at the 2000 Census data shows that Latinos make up around 10% of the Beloit population (almost as much as African Americans, 12%). Obviously, not all Latinos are Mexican, but in Beloit I’m pretty sure most are. Using Census data we can also examine specific characteristics for Latinos. According to the census about half of the Latinos (1,800 out of the 3,500) were born outside of the United States. Another interesting statistics about 2/3 household speak a language other then English at home.

One reason Latinos might decide to live in Beloit is they seem to be making about the same amount of money as the average non Latino, and much more than they would have in Mexico. For those of you who are not familiar with Janesville and Beloit the two cities are about 20 minutes apart, but Beloit has for a long time had more racial diversity, while Janesville continues to be 95% white. So perhaps there is another reason Latinos live in Beloit.

One final note even in DC I cannot find Mexican food as good as Beloit.