Periodic Reporting for period 3 - MCLPS (The Migration Challenge: Labour Markets, Policy Reforms, and Social Cohesion)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-09-01 al 2024-02-29
International migration is among the most important issues that have shaped the policy debates and political landscape in Europe in recent decades. Both the intra-European migration of workers and the influx of refugee migrants from outside Europe pose enormous economic and political challenges to Europe in the coming decades. The research program proposed to investigate three key areas in which migration can have fundamental consequences for both economies and societies:
(i) The Impact of Migration on Workers, Firms, and Productivity;
(ii) Migration and the Rise of Populism; and
(iii) Immigration, Integration and the Policies of the Welfare State.
The specific questions to be addressed include: How does the policy of free mobility affect workers and firms in sending and receiving countries, through channels other than the standard demand-supply mechanism? How does immigration affect citizens’ voting behavior? What are the intended and unintended, and immediate and long term effects of policy reforms on residency rights of and welfare transfers to refugee migrants?
All the proposed research questions, while focused on immigration, also speak to different core issues on the frontier of economics research, including inequality, rent sharing between firms and workers, productivity, political economy, and welfare reforms. The results of this investigation will thus not only provide relevant insights for contemporary immigration policies in Europe but deepen our core understanding of the economy that should reach well beyond it.
(i) The Impact of Migration on Workers, Firms, and Productivity;
(ii) Migration and the Rise of Populism; and
(iii) Immigration, Integration and the Policies of the Welfare State.
The specific questions to be addressed include: How does the policy of free mobility affect workers and firms in sending and receiving countries, through channels other than the standard demand-supply mechanism? How does immigration affect citizens’ voting behavior? What are the intended and unintended, and immediate and long term effects of policy reforms on residency rights of and welfare transfers to refugee migrants?
All the proposed research questions, while focused on immigration, also speak to different core issues on the frontier of economics research, including inequality, rent sharing between firms and workers, productivity, political economy, and welfare reforms. The results of this investigation will thus not only provide relevant insights for contemporary immigration policies in Europe but deepen our core understanding of the economy that should reach well beyond it.
My team and I have worked extensively on several projects.
We have written the paper “Free Movement, Open Borders and the Global Gains from Labor Mobility” (joint with Ian Preston) which provides a deep and extensive assessment of the global gains of immigration.
The paper “The Impact of Immigration on Regions and Workers” (joint with Sebastian Otten, Uta Schoenberg and Jan Stuhler) provides a detailed analysis of the impact immigration has on wages and employment, developing a novel and comprehensive framework for the different effects immigration may have on different groups of workers. This work points out that conventional analysis that assesses the impact immigration has on employment and wages, on the basis of repeated cross-sectional data, estimates composite parameters that measure the effect immigration has on regions, but not on particular groups of workers, and thus does not answer many relevant questions.
The paper "Real Exchange Rates and the Earnings of Immigrants" (joint with Hyejin Ku and Tanya Surovtseva) relates origin-destination real price differences to immigrants’ reservation wages and their career trajectories in the host country, based on administrative labor market data from Germany that allows us to follow the same individuals over time.
The project “Refugee Benefit Cuts” (joint with Lars Højsgaard Andersen and Rasmus Landersø) which analyses the effects of Denmark’s Start Aid welfare reform studies not only the reform’s immediate effects but also the longer-term consequences of a reform that dramatically curtailed benefit transfers to refugees - similar to many reforms currently discussed in EU countries.
The paper "Immigration and Inequality" (joint with Yannis Kastis and Ian Preston) is concerned with the interplay between immigration and inequality and develops a framework to investigate the relationship between inequality and immigration in destination countries, through its impact on wages, on the composition of the workforces, and on the location of the overall distributions of earnings both in the short run and over time. It also discusses distributional issues, and how attitudinal responses may relate to the expected economic consequences of immigration. An application to the UK shows that immigration had only very small effects on overall inequality. T
The paper "The Dynamics of Return Migration, Human Capital Accumulation, and Wage Assimilation" (joint with Jerome Adda and Simon Gorlach) develops and estimates a dynamic model where individuals differ in ability and location preference to evaluate the mechanisms that affect the evolution of immigrants’ careers in conjunction with their re-migration plans.
The paper "Refugee Migration and the Labor Market: Lessons from 40 years of Post-arrival Policies in Denmark" (joint with Jacob Nielsen Arendt and Hyejin Ku) focusses on Denmark which has accepted refugees from a large variety of countries and for more than four decades and has also frequently changed policies and regulations concerning integration programs, transfer payments, and conditions for permanent residency.
The paper "The Labor Market Integration of Refugee Migrants in High-Income Countries" (joint with Courtney Brell and Ian Preston) provides an overview of the labor market outcomes of refugees in a variety of developed countries, based on an unusually broad collection of existing micro data sources, supplemented by evidence from data made available to us by a number of authors who have studied the topic. The paper illustrates that refugee immigrants find it far more difficult t pick up employment than economic migrants, and that their earnings catch up only gradually. This paper speaks to issues under (ii) and (iii).
We have written the paper “Free Movement, Open Borders and the Global Gains from Labor Mobility” (joint with Ian Preston) which provides a deep and extensive assessment of the global gains of immigration.
The paper “The Impact of Immigration on Regions and Workers” (joint with Sebastian Otten, Uta Schoenberg and Jan Stuhler) provides a detailed analysis of the impact immigration has on wages and employment, developing a novel and comprehensive framework for the different effects immigration may have on different groups of workers. This work points out that conventional analysis that assesses the impact immigration has on employment and wages, on the basis of repeated cross-sectional data, estimates composite parameters that measure the effect immigration has on regions, but not on particular groups of workers, and thus does not answer many relevant questions.
The paper "Real Exchange Rates and the Earnings of Immigrants" (joint with Hyejin Ku and Tanya Surovtseva) relates origin-destination real price differences to immigrants’ reservation wages and their career trajectories in the host country, based on administrative labor market data from Germany that allows us to follow the same individuals over time.
The project “Refugee Benefit Cuts” (joint with Lars Højsgaard Andersen and Rasmus Landersø) which analyses the effects of Denmark’s Start Aid welfare reform studies not only the reform’s immediate effects but also the longer-term consequences of a reform that dramatically curtailed benefit transfers to refugees - similar to many reforms currently discussed in EU countries.
The paper "Immigration and Inequality" (joint with Yannis Kastis and Ian Preston) is concerned with the interplay between immigration and inequality and develops a framework to investigate the relationship between inequality and immigration in destination countries, through its impact on wages, on the composition of the workforces, and on the location of the overall distributions of earnings both in the short run and over time. It also discusses distributional issues, and how attitudinal responses may relate to the expected economic consequences of immigration. An application to the UK shows that immigration had only very small effects on overall inequality. T
The paper "The Dynamics of Return Migration, Human Capital Accumulation, and Wage Assimilation" (joint with Jerome Adda and Simon Gorlach) develops and estimates a dynamic model where individuals differ in ability and location preference to evaluate the mechanisms that affect the evolution of immigrants’ careers in conjunction with their re-migration plans.
The paper "Refugee Migration and the Labor Market: Lessons from 40 years of Post-arrival Policies in Denmark" (joint with Jacob Nielsen Arendt and Hyejin Ku) focusses on Denmark which has accepted refugees from a large variety of countries and for more than four decades and has also frequently changed policies and regulations concerning integration programs, transfer payments, and conditions for permanent residency.
The paper "The Labor Market Integration of Refugee Migrants in High-Income Countries" (joint with Courtney Brell and Ian Preston) provides an overview of the labor market outcomes of refugees in a variety of developed countries, based on an unusually broad collection of existing micro data sources, supplemented by evidence from data made available to us by a number of authors who have studied the topic. The paper illustrates that refugee immigrants find it far more difficult t pick up employment than economic migrants, and that their earnings catch up only gradually. This paper speaks to issues under (ii) and (iii).
The project has pushed the barriers of research in various directions. The paper “The Impact of Immigration on Regions and Workers” (joint with Sebastian Otten, Uta Schoenberg and Jan Stuhler) introduces novel analysis of the impact immigration has on various groups of natives workers which have so far never been explored - for instance, the effect immigration has on workers who are not in employment at the time immigration happens. The paper "Real Exchange Rates and the Earnings of Immigrants" (joint with Hyejin Ku and Tanya Surovtseva) provides convincing first evidence that immigrants' reservation wages upon arrival are below those of comparable native workers. The project “Refugee Benefit Cuts” (joint with Lars Højsgaard Andersen and Rasmus Landersø) is one of the very few papers that use multiple designs to identify additional causal parameters, and provides a first causal analysis how a reform’s incentive effects are causally leveraged by local economic conditions. The paper "The Dynamics of Return Migration, Human Capital Accumulation, and Wage Assimilation" (joint with Jerome Adda and Simon Gorlach) introduces a completely novel aspect on the dynamics of return migration and how this is related to the selection of immigrants, with important implications for the literature that is concerned with the assimilation of immigrant populations.
There is still outstanding work on the dynamics of immigration's impact on wages of native workers. That project has been delayed due to Covid, But is on its way now. Further there have been delays on work that investigates the unintended aspects of welfare reforms, and on the relation between political attitude and immigration. Results on both projects are expected before the end of the grant if a prolongation by one year can be granted.
There is still outstanding work on the dynamics of immigration's impact on wages of native workers. That project has been delayed due to Covid, But is on its way now. Further there have been delays on work that investigates the unintended aspects of welfare reforms, and on the relation between political attitude and immigration. Results on both projects are expected before the end of the grant if a prolongation by one year can be granted.