In the mid 1980s, Mexico undertook major trade reform, privatization and deregulation. This coincided with a rapid expansion in wages and employment that led to a rise in wage dispersion. This paper examines the role of industry and occupation-specific effects in explaining the growing dispersion. We find that despite the magnitude and pace of the reforms, industry-specific effects explain little of the rising wage dispersion. In contrast occupation-specific effects can explain almost half of the growing wage dispersion. Finally, we find that the economy became more skill-intensive and that this effect was larger for the traded sector because this sector experienced much smaller low-skilled employment growth. We therefore suggest that competition from imports had an important role in the fall of the relative demand for less-skilled workers.

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Over the last 5 years, the U.S. Congress has voted on several pieces of legislation intended to sharply reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. Given that climate change is a world public bad, standard economic logic would predict that the United States would “free ride” and wait for other nations to reduce their emissions. Within the Congress, there are clear patterns to who votes in favor of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. This paper presents a political economy analysis of the determinants of “pro‐green” votes on such legislation. Conservatives consistently vote against such legislation. Controlling for a representative's ideology, representatives from richer districts and districts with a lower per‐capita carbon dioxide footprint are more likely to vote in favor of climate change mitigation legislation. Representatives from districts where industrial emissions represent a larger share of greenhouse gas emissions are more likely to vote no. (JEL Q54, Q58, R50)