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arXiv · 2512.21429

US labor market conditions and migration: a reassessment of Bahar (2025)

Francisco Rodriguez·Giancarlo Bravo
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Abstract

Bahar (2025) argues that there is a long-term cointegrating relationship between US job vacancies and southwest border crossings. We show that this conclusion is based on a misspecified Engle-Granger test applied to first differences. Once the Engle-Granger test is correctly applied to levels, evidence for a cointegrating relationship vanishes, invalidating the paper's approach to estimating short- and long-run elasticities. Bahar's approach is therefore uninformative about the relationship between US labor market conditions and migration.

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Francisco Rodriguez, Giancarlo Bravo. 2025-12-24. US labor market conditions and migration: a reassessment of Bahar (2025). https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.21429

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