Gordon Hanson's Paper Referenced on Employment in a Mexican Border City
From the Fed: Maquilas and El Paso Economy
04/22/2012
Robert Gilmer,
El Paso Inc.
In the 1970s, El Paso's economy was dominated by low-wage apparel, especially by makers of men's slacks like Billy the Kid, Farah and Levi-Strauss.
Today's El Paso is quite different, with change led by rapid growth at the University of Texas at El Paso, the new Medical Center and the expansion of Fort Bliss.
But the ghost of the old apparel business is still with us, at least in the sense that low-wage manufacturing remains a dominant factor in the El Paso business cycle and as a powerful job creator.
This is not our low-wage employment, of course, but the maquiladoras in our sister city Juarez.
Click here to read the full article.
Related Links
Gordon Hanson is director of the Center on Emerging and Pacific Economies and professor of economics at UC San Diego, where he holds faculty positions in the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and the Department of Economics. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a co-editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics. Prior to joining UC San Diego in 2001, he was on the economics faculty at the University of Michigan (1998-2001) and at the University of Texas (1992-1998).
