I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a Ph.D. Fellow at the Stone Centre on Wealth and Income Inequality at VSE. My research interests are in Labour Economics and Applied Econometrics. My work studies how labour market institutions and public policy shape labour market outcomes and economic inequality.

In my job market paper, I study how unionized firms respond to new rules of collective bargaining designed to strengthen worker representation. Before 2019, most collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in Mexico were signed by paper unions—unions that exist only on paper, do not represent workers, and allow firms to forestall real unionization. I exploit Mexico’s 2019 labour reform, prompted by the USMCA, which required worker ratification of existing CBAs, causing more than three-quarters to expire, and introduced additional requirements for forming representative unions. Linking the universe of CBAs to administrative matched employer-employee data, I compare firms covered by pre-reform CBAs with firms without a CBA in a matched difference-in-differences design. I find that employment increases 3.6% by 2026, driven by an increase in hiring of low-paid workers, with no significant effects on wages or firm survival. Employment effects are concentrated among firms with characteristics associated with paper unions. I develop a partial-equilibrium model of endogenous firm sorting across union regimes to rationalize my main findings.

Before starting my Ph.D., I worked as an Economist in the Directorate General of Economic Research at Banco de México from 2018 to 2021.

I expect to graduate in 2027 and will be available for interviews during the 2026–2027 job market.

The Effects of Suppressing Paper Unions: Evidence from Mexico

Link:

Abstract: We study how unionized firms respond to new rules of collective bargaining designed to strengthen worker representation. Before 2019, most collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in Mexico were signed by paper unions—unions that exist only on paper, do not represent workers, and allow firms to forestall real unionization. We exploit Mexico’s 2019 labour reform, prompted by the USMCA, which required worker ratification of existing CBAs, causing more than three-quarters to expire, and introduced additional requirements for forming representative unions. Linking the universe of CBAs to administrative matched employer-employee data, we compare firms covered by pre-reform CBAs with firms without a CBA in a matched difference-in-differences design. We find that employment increases 3.6% by 2026, driven by an increase in hiring of low-paid workers, with no significant effects on wages or firm survival. Employment effects are concentrated among firms with characteristics associated with paper unions. We develop a partial-equilibrium model of endogenous firm sorting across union regimes to rationalize our main findings.

Are Immigrants Particularly Entrepreneurial? Firm Ownership as a Key Element in Immigrant Income Assimilation

Link: https://ratzanyelrincon.github.io/assets/pdf/Are_Immigrants_Particularly_Entrepreneurial.pdf

Abstract: Firm ownership is a defining feature of immigrant adaptation: 46% of immigrants own a firm at some point in their first 15 years post-arrival. We use Canadian data linking immigrant arrival records with individual and firm tax data to examine the process of entering firm ownership for immigrants. Higher immigrant firm ownership rates are mainly due to nonincorporated firm ownership, which looks like a last resort. Human capital plays no role in the opening of preferable, incorporated firms. Immigrants are not more entrepreneurial in terms of opening incorporated firms with employees, and standard policy levers appear to have limited effects.

Causal Inference with Groupwise Matching

Link: https://ratzanyelrincon.github.io/assets/pdf/Causal_Inference_Groupwise_Matching.pdf

Abstract: This paper examines methods of causal inference based on groupwise matching when we observe multiple large groups of individuals over several periods. We formulate causal inference validity through a generalized matching condition, generalizing the parallel trend assumption in difference-in-differences designs. We show that difference-in-differences, synthetic control, and synthetic difference-in-differences designs are distinguished by the specific matching conditions that they invoke. Through regret analysis, we demonstrate that difference-in-differences and synthetic control with differencing are complementary; the former dominates the latter if and only if the latter’s extrapolation error exceeds the former’s matching error up to a term vanishing at the parametric rate. The analysis also reveals that synthetic control with differencing is equivalent to difference-in-differences when the parallel trend assumption holds for both the pre-treatment and post-treatment periods. We develop a statistical inference procedure based on synthetic control with differencing and present an empirical application demonstrating its usefulness.

Working Income Tax Benefits, Minimum Wage, and Employment Transitions of Low-Skilled Workers: Evidence From Canada

Link: https://ratzanyelrincon.github.io/assets/pdf/WITB&MW_Ratzanyel_Rincon.pdf

Abstract: This paper examines how the Workers Income Tax Benefit (WITB)—now called Canada Workers Benefit—and its interaction with the minimum wage affect the labour market transitions for low-skilled workers using Canadian data from 1979 to 2022. Exploiting provincial variation on the maximum real tax credit and real minimum wage rates, I find that higher WITB benefits are associated with lower separation and layoff rates of single-type workers with short job tenure, while the interaction between the WITB and the minimum wage mitigates these effects. Positive effects led by the WITB are found for hiring rates of single-type teenagers, young adults, and recently unemployed people, but the overall impact of the maximum benefits on singles’ transition rate from out-of-the-labour force to in-the-labour force is negative. In contrast, family-type workers reduce their job-to-job transitions and increase their flow from out-of-labour force to in-labour force as the maximum WITB benefits increase. Importantly, the interaction between the two policies negatively affects the hiring rate of this group. Overall, these results indicate that the effects of the interaction between the WITB and the minimum wage counterbalance the direct effects of the WITB, and suggest that WITB benefits are insufficient to cover the associated costs of entering the workforce for some individuals in the target population.

 Quarterly Multidimensional Poverty in Mexico Using Machine Learning Algorithms

Link: https://ratzanyelrincon.github.io/assets/pdf/QuarterlyMultidimensionalPoverty_Ratzanyel_Rincon.pdf

Abstract: This article addresses the lack of timely information about multidimensional poverty in Mexico. Three machine learning algorithms—the LASSO logistic regression, random forest, and support vector machines—are trained with the ENIGH to find generalizable patterns of multidimensional poverty in the raw data. The fitted models are used to classify each individual in the ENOE as poor or non-poor to obtain aggregated poverty rates on a quarterly basis. These estimates are closer to the official levels of multidimensional poverty than the labor poverty measurement and provide an accurate poverty outlook more than a year ahead of the official measure.

I have been a Ph.D. Fellow at the Stone Centre on Wealth and Income Inequality at UBC since 2024. I held the Four Year Doctoral Fellowship from UBC between 2022 and 2026, and I received a Centre for Innovative Data in Economics Research Grant from UBC in 2024.

I have served as a Teaching Assistant for Introduction to Econometrics I (B.A., UBC), Econometric Methods (M.A., UBC), Mathematics for Economics (M.A., UBC), Statistics (M.A., Colmex), Game Theory (B.A., Colmex), and Mathematics II (B.A., Colmex).