Research

I study labor markets shaped by high informality: informal employment, gender differences, the reach of social protection, and equality of opportunity. My work asks a practical question underneath all of these — who ends up covered, who doesn’t, and why.

Working papers

Social Insurance Without a Job: School-Linked Benefits and Early Formalization in Mexico

Working paper, 2026

In 2016, Mexico gave six million students health coverage that had nothing to do with having a job. A common worry is that benefits not tied to formal work discourage people from seeking it, but here formal employment rose fastest in states where informal work was already most common, and the effect ran entirely through wage jobs rather than self-employment.

Work in progress

Domestic Workers and Social Insurance

Work in progress

In 2019 Mexico opened enrollment at the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) to 2.3 million domestic workers, overwhelmingly women. IMSS ran a voluntary pilot first, and a reform later that year set it on a path toward a mandate. This project measures how much of the coverage gap voluntary enrollment actually closed.

From NAFTA to USMCA: Labor Market Effects in Mexico

Work in progress

In 2020, the trade agreement that replaced NAFTA made tariff-free access for cars conditional on a share of each vehicle being built by workers earning at least US$16 an hour, and wrote a requirement for genuine union representation directly into its text, an unusual move for a trade deal. This project traces whether those provisions actually changed employment and pay in Mexico, using detailed records that link workers to their employers.

Banco de México

Boxes from the Quarterly Report. These are institutional publications. Each entry links to the original.

The Gender Gap in Labor Earnings: Occupation, Hours, and Hourly Pay. Quarterly Report April–June 2026, Box 2. Read the box (PDF, in Spanish) · Summary

Other work

Health Care Utilization and Costs in Systemic Therapies for Metastatic Melanoma from 2016 to 2020. A collaboration with dermatologists and oncologists at Stanford that began through Knight-Hennessy. The Oncologist 28(3), 2023, 268–275. Article · Summary
Lactancia es desarrollo: por qué impulsar la lactancia materna en el trabajo (why support breastfeeding at work). Inter-American Development Bank, Gender and Diversity blog, August 2022. Post (in Spanish) · Summary
Duración de la informalidad laboral en México (how long an informal job lasts in Mexico). Undergraduate thesis, ITAM, 2017. Premio Citibanamex de Economía 2017 and Premio ExITAM 2018. Thesis (PDF, in Spanish) · Summary