Three Essays on Labor Markets

his dissertation consists of three distinct papers. The first chapter estimates the labor market value of being bilingual (English-speaking) in Mexico. The second chapter studies employers' ex ante discriminatory practices in China and Mexico. Finally, the third chapter estimates a compensating differential for fatality risk for workers in Mexico. An abstract for each chapter is provided below.;Chapter 1 Abstract: In spite of the generally accepted status of English as a lingua franca, the labor market returns to English for its role as an international language are understudied. In this paper I use advertisements from Computrabajo.com.mx to estimate the returns to English in Mexico. I find that the wage premium for English speakers is approximately 28 percent for the sample as a whole. The evidence suggests that English may provide a path to upward economic mobility in Mexico, and that this holds true for persons of all skill levels.;Chapter 2 Abstract: When permitted by law and custom, employers sometimes engage in ex ante screening of job candidates using demographic criteria like age and gender. We study this practice using four samples of job ads, taken from job boards in China and Mexico. Consistent with Kuhn and Shen's (2013) screening cost model, we find a strong, negative skill-targeting relationship in all four data sets: employers are less likely to express an explicit age or gender preference in a job ad as the job's skill requirements rise. We also find that employers' age and gender preferences interact in a strong and consistent way across all four data sets: relative to women, men's (revealed) desirability as workers rises dramatically between the ages of 18 and 40. While some of this pattern can be linked to an age-dependent demand for feminine beauty and to gender differences in firms' marital status preferences, other aspects of the pattern are harder to explain.;Chapter 3 Abstract: The escalation in violence in recent years resulting from the Mexican government's war on drug trafficking has caused a large and unprecedented increase in workplace fatality risk for workers in Mexico. We exploit this increase to estimate a compensating differential for fatality risk using panel data constructed from a national employment and occupation survey. We also provide estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) in Mexico. Our results imply a VSL between...