Reference Report on Estefan Davila’s “Women’s Access to the Labour Market and Domestic

Violence: Causal Evidence from Mexico”

Estefan’s article highlight’s the accrued causal impact of the improvement to the labor
market of female to domestic violence and divorce using a newly constructed labor market
dataset. The paper primarily focuses on the variation of the market in Mexico in an industry
level, which have a high demand for female labor. The author notes that an increase in the
number of women in the labor market has significantly reduced the income gap between males
and females, which has, in turn, resulted in an associated increase in female-instigated divorces
on the grounds of the number of domestic violence charges and domestic violence itself. The
author correlates the findings to the instrumental violence theories, which hold that violence is a
fundamental instrument of control and dictatorship. 
Notably, the relationship between divorce instigation and female labor market access is
evident in many countries. The author explores the impact of maquiladora employment, which
represent about 4.2% of the total jobs in Mexico and mostly employs female workers. Based on
maquiladora employment, the author explores and studies two significant areas (Estefan, 2). The
first area is unemployment and manufacturing share, hours, and earning based on gender. The
second area is divorce rates, relative to male-female employment and access to the labor market.
The author notes that maquiladora improves the labor market for both females and males but

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more so for females. Women with low bargaining power in the labor market constantly face
increased domestic violence due to their inflexibility based on their finance.

Evaluation

The paper focuses on a relatively important question on the impact of women’s access to
labor on domestic violence and divorce. The author is able to bring out possible social change as
a result of gender-based economic change in the labor market. However, main areas of concern
are the sensitivity of the results produced by the author, the accrued impact of the selected
sample size and migration in Mexico, the check for the correlation of labor across the country for
effective response, dynamics which include short and long-run effect and the exogeneity of
shocks on an industry level in Mexico. 

Shortcomings

The sensitivity of the results 
Based on the approaches that the author uses in the series of tests that he conducts, it is
evident that the selection of the samples has gaps and does not adequately reflect the key
outcomes of the paper. Also, the use of maquiladora employment limits the application of the
result by largely suppressing the sample size. According to Boddy, the sample size of the given
research largely determines the outcome and conclusions made by either reducing or increasing
the error (426). Although the variables considered in the study largely remain unchanged, the
female instigated divorce rate is not estimated, precisely limiting the effectiveness of the data.
After the addition of the time-varying covariates, the result produced remains identical to
the baseline estimates, which reduces their significance in conclusion. To improve on the data
sensitivity element of the paper, the author should consider checking the magnitude and
importance of each variable to ensure it is viable, relevant and significant to the research

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(Cho17). To address this issue, the author should consider diversifying the sample and accrued
variables to avoid the exclusion of some of the factors. 
Effects of the population size and migration 
The accrued use of maquiladora employment as the population size to test the local labor
market and divorce rate is largely impacted by migration into the treated commuting zones,
which can, in turn, mechanically affect the results acquired (Bryman 53). In the analysis, the
author does not pay attention to this notion, which could have significantly affected the findings
and conclusion. Based on this scenario, it is possible that the divorce rate for maquiladora
employment increased mechanically even in the absence of the behavioral response by the local
and native females to domestic violence. Therefore, the accrued results obtained by the author
could have been a result of the change in population count and internal migration. It is an error
that is evident in many social research papers. 
Exogeneity of local exposure
In the research, the author largely relies on the exogeneity of local exposure, which limits
the scope of the study. Borusyak, Peter, and Xavier suggest the need to use exogeneity of
industry-level aggregate shocks in the identification of the causal effects to improve the outcome
of the research (56). This notion involves the estimation of the parameters using industrial level
regressions with an accrued assumption that shocks are not correlated with the unobservable
correlates of the outcome of the regression. Therefore, the author should have considered
regressing the effect of maquiladora employment using the industry level regressions.

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Works Cited

Boddy, Clive Roland. “Sample size for qualitative research.” Qualitative Market Research: An
International Journal 19.4 (2016): 426-432.
Borusyak, Kirill, Peter Hull, and Xavier Jaravel. Quasi-Experimental Shift-Share Research
Designs. No. w24997. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2018.
Bryman, Alan. Social Research Methods. Oxford university press, 2016.
Cho, Jeasik. Evaluating Qualitative Research. Oxford University Press, 2017.
Estefan Davila, Manuel Alejandro. Essays in Development Economics. Diss. UCL (University
College London), 2019.