Biography: Dr.
Joe Kaboski is a Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame and a Fellow of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. His research focuses on growth, development, and international economics, with particular emphasis on structural change, finance & development, schooling & growth, microfinance, and the role of inventories in international trade. Outside of his academic appointments, Dr. Kaboski is a fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in both the Development and Economic Fluctuations & Growth groups, and a fellow and board member of the Bureau of Research in Economics Analysis of Development (BREAD)
Dr. Kaboski's work has been published in leading journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, and Econometrica. In 2012, in recognition of his work on microfinance, he was a receipient of the Frisch Medal, awarded biennially for the best paper in Econometrica over the previous five years.
Student Lecture: 13 March 2025
Microfinance
This talk will give an overview of microfinance, especially microcredit. It will cover the basic theory of why microfinance can offer advantages. It will review the empirically estimated microeconomic impacts of microcredit programs around the world, and the predicted macroeconomic impacts of microcredit availability at an economy-wide scale.
Faculty Lecture: 14 March 2025
Outsourcing Policy and Worker Outcomes: Causal Evidence from a Mexican Ban
A weakening of labor protection policies is often invoked as one cause of observed monopsony power and the decline in labor’s share of income, but little evidence exists on the causal impact of labor policies on wage markdowns. Using confidential Mexican economic census data from1994 to 2019, we document a rising trend over this period in on-site outsourcing, particularly among large firms, and a negative association between outsourcing and labor compensation, including profit sharing, employment benefits, and mandated social security. We leverage higher frequency data from a manufacturing panel survey, matched employer-employee data, and a ban on domestic outsourcing in 2021 to show that the ban drastically reduced outsourcing, increased wages at the bottom of the distribution, increased labor’s share, and reduced measured markdowns among high-markdown firms without lowering output or productivity or affecting employment or its composition. However, we also find that the reform reduced capital investment and increased the probability of market exit among smaller firms.