The U.S.–Mexico border provides a number of examples of pairs of neighboring cities, one in the U.S. and the other in Mexico. The advent of the North American Industrial Classification System provides a new opportunity to look at these cities using a common industrial classification system. Using U.S. data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis, and comparable information from the 1999 Mexican economic census, we were able to compare employment by industry sector in city pairs that are located along the Texas–Mexico border: El Paso–Juarez, Laredo–Nuevo Laredo, Brownsville–Matamoros, and McAllen–Reynosa. ; This paper focuses on the distribution of employment in border city pairs. It is primarily descriptive in nature, but looks at industrial structure from several perspectives. First, we look at each city as part of its own national economy, then as part of the combined U.S.–Mexico economy. Second, we demonstrate that each city-pair has a distribution of employment by industry that complements the sister city. Different wage levels, distinct legal and regulatory systems and unlike stages of development provide each city with unique opportunities to specialize in the local marketplace. Finally, we interpret the role of these cities as part of a combined US-Mexico economy. The chief economic role played by all city-pairs is that of a manufacturing center, driven largely by maquiladora activity and its support industries.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in its series Working Papers with number
05-03.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: