David Escamilla-Guerrero

Home - JHU School of Government and Policy Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy advances governance with research, data-driven analysis, and innovative solutions to today’s challenges.

Deep breath.

I'm honored and excited to join the faculty of America's oldest research university, Johns Hopkins.

I'll start this summer as a full professor, one of the founding faculty at the brand-new School of Government and Policy.

We're building something unique & important, even historic.

The outcome: A structured dataset ready for analysis: 100+ occupations across 10-20 districts per state (31 states in total). The dataset indicates the occupation-district cells that may need human revision. Accurate-extraction rate over 98%.

The process: Systematic column-by-column extraction with triple-count verification, anchor columns for row alignment, and automated sum-checks against printed totals. Every value cross-verified before moving on. This process allows inference of blurry values with high precision

The challenge: Values must be read from blurry scans. Both structure of tables and occupations listed vary by state (PDF). Traditional OCR and ML table-extraction tools are impractical—they usually require consistent layouts to train on.

The task: Extract occupation-by-district employment data from scanned typewriter-era tables (PDF) of Mexico's 1895 census.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/david-escamilla-guerrero_i-have-been-working-with-claude-code-to-extract-activity-7428473522521411584-LZD3?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAfoSAYBU9LMJQZMbQLx4rNCdbuqvkyplP4

I have been working with Claude Code to extract historical data for one of my research projects. The final System Prompt reduces data extraction from 30 (manual extraction) to 5 days. See details below ...

International Migration International migration is one of the most powerful tools available for poverty reduction and economic development. This review synthesises rigorous quantitative evidence on the impact of migration on...

ICYMI: International migration is one of the most powerful tools for poverty reduction and economic development. This @voxdev.bsky.social review by @profdeaner.bsky.social synthesizes rigorous quantitative evidence on the impact of migration on origin countries. myumi.ch/VVmGx

The Effect of Low-Skill Immigration Restrictions On U.S. Firms and Workers: Evidence from a Randomized Lottery (Forthcoming Article) - U.S. firms hiring foreign workers in low-skill nonfarm jobs face a binding quota on the ‘H- 2B’ visa, allocated in part through a randomized lottery. We evaluate the quota’s marginal impact using the lottery, a novel firm survey, and a pre-analysis plan. Firms exogenously employing more H-2B workers in low-skill jobs increase production (elasticity 0.20–0.22), investment (1.5–2.1), and profits (0.15). The elasticity of substitution between H-2B and U.S. workers is very low (0.8–2.2). Thus the effect on U.S. employment is zero or positive overall, and positive in rural areas. Forensic analysis suggests similarly low substitutability of black-market labor.

Forthcoming in AEJ: Applied Economics: "The Effect of Low-Skill Immigration Restrictions On U.S. Firms and Workers: Evidence from a Randomized Lottery" by Michael A. Clemens and Ethan G. Lewis.

Denmark’s generous child care and parental leave policies erase 80% of the ‘motherhood penalty’ for working moms Two researchers found that Danish government benefits do not fully offset moms’ lost earnings. But they do help offset lost income for working women with kids.

“Strong financial support for mothers from the government can make motherhood more affordable and promote gender equality in economic resources.”

Investing in mothers and families - even if it doesn’t raise the birth rates - is worth doing.

Egypt’s persistently low female labour force participation reflects not a lack of education, but structural barriers that prevent women’s educational gains from translating into sustained employment.

Read today's article to learn more:

Everyone talks about the "credibility revolution", but I think one of the most valuable shifts in econ over the last decade has been the rise of rigorous descriptive historical work like this in top journals:

call for papers

nottingham campus

2025 edition picture

📢 🏹 Call for Papers 🏹📢

3rd workshop in Labour Economics at Nottingham GEP

When: June 1-2, 2026

Keynotes: Gordon Dahl (UCSD) and @annastansbury.bsky.social (MIT)

Small, in-person workshop; plenty of interactions!

🗓️ Submit by March 1 🗓️

Link: tinyurl.com/3kdpb64a

#EconSky #EconConf

Climate adaptation and vulnerability in Mexico A one-size-fits-all approach to climate change won’t work in Mexico, where climate adaptation is highly unequal. Currently, private responses such as air conditioning, migration, and financial adjustment play a central role. These mechanisms are often more accessible to higher-income households while exacerbating inequality and shifting climate risks onto poorer, informal, and rural populations, as well as overburdening health, labour, and financial systems.

🆕 Climate adaptation and vulnerability in Mexico

Today on VoxDev w/ IEA, Sandra Aguilar-Gomez (Technologico de Monterrey) discusses why a one-size-fits-all approach to climate change won’t work in Mexico: https://voxdev.org/topic/energy-environment/climate-adaptation-and-vulnerability-mexico

📢 Our new VoxDevLit on International Migration is out now!

Senior Editor Dean Yang & Co-Editors Catia Batista, Gaurav Khanna, David McKenzie, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak & Caroline Theoharides review research on international migration.

Read & download here: https://ow.ly/qXx950XWAar

Funding Opportunity!

We are now taking applications for our Early Career Research Awards. These awards provide support to recent PhD earners researching policy and employment issues. Those working in economics, sociology, public policy, political science, and related fields may apply.

#Econsky

Upjohn Institute invites applications for the 2026 Early Career Research Awards

To learn more about the program, its requirements, how to apply, or to read about previous winners, follow this link: www.upjohn.org/news/upjohn-...

Voy a ir a Berlin!

Ideas in Development: A New VoxDev Podcast YouTube video by VoxDev

🆕 We are excited to announce that we are launching a new podcast - Ideas in Development

In this introductory episode, Managing Editor @olihanney.bsky.social explains why, and previews what we have planned: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFGL...

📢 International migration is one of the most powerful tools available for poverty reduction and economic development.

At our VoxDevLit launch event on January 14, Dean Yang will summarise evidence on international migration.

Register➡️ https://ow.ly/y5n150XRWT9

Your marking is done. Family visits are over. The excesses of New Year's Eve have been salved w/ aspirin and sleep. Next semester hasn't started yet. Thus... the perfect time to submit a paper to the Fifth Annual SaNE in Applied Microeconomics!

applied-microecon.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/sane-worksho...

Immigration, Jobs and Wages: Separating Regional and Worker Effects How does immigration affect jobs and wages? Public debates often conflate regional labour market outcomes with the experiences of individual workers. The effects of immigration on “places” and “people...

(1/5) 🧠RFBerlin Research Insights: New research by Dustmann, Otten, Schoenberg and Stuhler — “Immigration, Jobs and Wages: Separating Regional and Worker Effects” — shows that immigration affects places and people very differently. www.rfberlin.com/research-ins...

Amazing example of how to infer people's valuation of their time.

Ryanair has determined customers are willing to pay $1.17 per extra two rows forward they can sit on an airplane, allowing them to disembark a bit sooner.

If that saves 1 minute, customers value their time at about $70/hour.

Here's a link to the MPP programme: www.st-andrews.ac.uk/subjects/eco...

Are you interested in studying Public Policy at @uniofstandrews.bsky.social ?

There are two scholarships available for Palestinian students:

www.st-andrews.ac.uk/study/fees-a...

AI Is Inventing Academic Papers That Don't Exist -- And They're Being Cited in Real Journals Academic articles from authors using large language model are creating an ecosystem of fake research that threatens human knowledge itself.

Do not cite an academic paper unless you’ve read it

📢 Call for papers 📢

Join us for the Bristol Applied Economics Meeting (BÆM) on the Economics of Migration, May 6-7!

Invited talks by Ran Abramitzky, Joan Monras, and Caroline Theoharides.

Submit your paper by Jan 31. Some travel funding is available. baem.info/CfP_MIG_26.pdf

Fantastic news! Congrats!

📣 Call for papers 📣

15th European Meeting of the Urban Economics Association
May 8 - 9, 2026
CREI, Barcelona

Keynotes by Edward Glaeser and Monika Piazzesi.

Please submit your paper by January 9.

urbaneconomics.org/meetings/emu...

Just 30 years after the 1870 Education Act introduced publicly funded schools, they had an attendance 1.9 million children.

Due to these schools, the gap in attaining literate occupations between lower- and higher-class children fell by approximately 18% in treated areas.

‪
With @jeromevalette.bsky.social & Jesús Fernández-Huertas Moraga, we are happy to announce the CfPapers for the

4th edition of the Junior Workshop on the Economics of Migration

on May 26-27, 2026 @uc3meconomics.bsky.social, Spain.

Submit until February 1, 2026 on economig2026.sciencesconf.org