|
on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Berticeroni, Carlotta; Piemontese, Lavinia; Prarolo, Giovanni; Schiavone, Antonio |
| Abstract: | This study explores the crucial role of local immigration history in shaping the relationship between the arrival of refugees and support for anti-immigration parties. Using unique georeferenced individual-level survey data, we show that opening refugee hosting facilities close to voters polarises support for anti-immigration parties: in neighbourhoods with established immigrant communities such support reduces, while it increases in areas with fewer long-term immigrants. These findings are consistent when using official electoral outcomes. We extend the analysis beyond the direct effect of exposure to immigrants by examining the role of voters’ demographics. Our results are mainly driven by male, childless, and low-skilled working-age voters. Moreover, facilities that highlight the presence of short-term immigrants amplify the main effects. These findings underscore the importance of considering both the composition of the immigrant population and individual demographics to fully understand how contact influences voter behaviour. Crucially, by examining the interplay between long- and short-term immigrant presence, our study provides a unifying framework that explains the polarised voter responses to refugee shocks, reconciling contrasting outcomes observed in different contexts. |
| Keywords: | Immigration; Voting behaviour |
| JEL: | D72 F22 J15 R23 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19236 |
| By: | Jonathan Pardo; Sulin Sardoschau |
| Abstract: | Do migrants become more anti-immigration over time? How do incumbents react to new arrivals? We link large-scale survey data to local immigration flows across 138 European regions from 2002 to 2024, identifying effects via a leave-out shift-share instrument within a triple-difference design. Immigrants arrive strongly pro-immigration, but support erodes over time, halving the native-immigrant gap within two decades. Exposure to new inflows contributes to this convergence: a rising local immigrant share reduces pro-immigration attitudes for both groups, with substantially larger effects for first-generation immigrants. Low-skilled incumbents respond more to inflow size, high-skilled to newcomers' skill composition. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, backlash, attitudes, newcomers |
| JEL: | D74 J15 D83 Z10 D72 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26182 |
| By: | Randall Akee; Jimmy Chin; Daniel L. Crown |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we characterize trends in the earnings assimilation of immigrant workers from 1981 to 2021. We use administrative longitudinal data that contain the earnings of workers beginning in their first year of residence in the United States and in each year thereafter, allowing us to identify immigrants who eventually leave the United States (referred to here as return migrants). We use those data to produce the first examination of trends in earnings assimilation over a 41-year period and to estimate earnings assimilation separately for return migrants versus those who stay in the United States. We document several new facts about immigrants who arrived between 1981 to 2010. First, roughly one-fifth to one-third of immigrants return migrate from the United States within 10 years after arrival. Second, return migrants have entry earnings similar to those of permanent migrants but experience slower rates of earnings growth. Third, earnings assimilation occurs relatively quickly for cohorts arriving since the mid-1990s: The earnings of permanent immigrants converge, or come close to converging, with those of native-born people within 10 years after arrival. Migrants from earlier arrival cohorts experience significant earnings growth but generally do not converge to that of the native born. We discuss how changes in the labor market quality of immigrant cohorts (measured by their relative earnings upon entry) and selective return migration play an important role in determining whether repeated cross-sectional data over- or underestimate earnings assimilation. |
| JEL: | F22 J31 J61 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35582 |
| By: | Suqin Ge; Naijia Guo; Zibin Huang; Junsen Zhang; Li Zhang |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how innovation shapes migration across skill groups. Using Chinese microdata from 2005-2015, we find that cities with faster patent growth attract more low-skilled than high-skilled migrants, opposite to patterns in developed countries. These cities see similar wage growth for both groups but limited amenity gains. We develop and estimate a spatial equilibrium model showing that low-skilled workers prioritize wages, while high-skilled workers value amenities, which rise with the share of skilled workers. Patent shocks draw in more low-skilled workers, reducing amenities and deterring high-skilled migration. Overall, technological growth raised wages and welfare without increasing spatial inequality. |
| Keywords: | Patent, Migration, Spatial equilibrium, Wage, Amenity |
| JEL: | J24 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26176 |
| By: | Ran Abramitzky; Leah Boustan; Ahmet Gulek; Jens Hainmueller |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of H-1B immigration on U.S. industries that employ H-1B workers and their trading partners. Using a novel cross-industry design and the 1999--2003 expansion of the H-1B visa cap for identification, we find that H-1B exposure raised incomes for natives and pre-existing immigrants, with gains concentrated in non-STEM occupations. Income gains propagate forward through supply chains to downstream industries but not backward to upstream industries, consistent with a productivity shock rather than a labor supply shock. We find no direct effect on patenting, suggesting that productivity gains arise from better task execution rather than patentable invention. |
| Keywords: | H-1B, High-skilled immigration, Synthetic control, Input-output networks, Task complementarity |
| JEL: | J15 J24 J61 L14 O31 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26213 |
| By: | Michael A. Clemens |
| Abstract: | Governments traditionally use quotas to limit immigration, but the US government has recently proposed taxes on immigration, focused on high-skill foreign workers. The effects of a high-skill immigration tax hinge on price elasticities of demand and supply that the literature has rarely measured. I estimate key response elasticities to evaluate the effects of a $100, 000 tax on Optional Practical Training (OPT) work permits, the largest single channel through which high-skill immigrants enter the US economy. Depending on the incidence of the tax, evaluation requires estimating the price elasticity of demand for US university degrees with the OPT option, the price elasticity of the supply of OPT placements by universities, or the price elasticity of US employers' demand for OPT workers. In all incidence scenarios OPT starts for a given level of international enrollment fall by roughly a fifth or more, and by as much as four fifths under university incidence. The resulting decline in OPT opportunities would reduce international student enrollment at universities, costing them hundreds of millions to over four billion dollars a year in net margin. I illustrate the need for further research on the relevant response elasticities by showing that plausible parameters yield a zero or even negative net fiscal impact of an expanded $100, 000 tax on H-1B workers. The need for better models and estimates will grow with the prevalence of immigration taxes. |
| Keywords: | Optional Practical Training, H-1B, immigration, immigrant, labor, tax, fee, payment, duty, tariff, skill, talent, foreign, student, graduate, college, higher ed, university, demand, supply, elasticity, STEM |
| JEL: | F22 H22 I23 J61 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26217 |
| By: | Abdurrahman Bekir Aydemir; Giacomo Battiston; Riccardo Franceschin; Asli Ebru Sanlıtürk |
| Abstract: | Do migrants want to conform to the host country social norms? We examine this question in the fertility domain with an RCT evaluating the impact of receiving information about native fertility norms on the fertility preferences, intentions, and beliefs of forced migrants. The treatment reduces migrants' expectations about natives' actual and desired fertility. Information lowers the probability of intending to have a child within two years and within five years, and the ideal number of children, both of which are correlated with future pregnancies among sample households, and affects concerns about stigmatization based on family size. Effects are stronger among men and more religious individuals. In these groups, they persist even 7-8 months after the intervention. They are not driven by priming effects and point to a specific role of natives' norms. Indeed, a second treatment providing information about the fertility of migrants from the same group has no statistically significant impact on intentions and weaker effects on the ideal number of children. Our findings are consistent with a framework in which migrants are misinformed about natives' social norms and update their beliefs when exposed to new information. |
| Keywords: | Forced migration; Fertility preferences; Social norms; Information frictions; Cultural integration; Belief updating; Randomized controlled trial. |
| JEL: | J31 F22 D83 C93 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26205 |
| By: | Cristina Cattaneo; Daniela Grieco; Nicola Lacetera; Mario Macis |
| Abstract: | We conducted a survey experiment with over 8, 000 participants in Germany, Hungary and Italy to examine how information about the economic impact of immigration affects the support for more open immigration policies. Respondents who received projections showing higher future incomes under more open immigration policies reported greater support for these policies. The treatment also partly changed how prior attitudes affected policy preferences. Structural estimates suggest that majority support for immigration above current levels would require annual per-capita income gains of about 1.2% in Italy and 1.7% in Germany, and still larger or unattainable gains in Hungary. These increases are large relative to recent historical growth rates, suggesting that economic benefits alone are unlikely to generate vast support for more open immigration policies. |
| Keywords: | immigration policy, survey experiments, public opinion. |
| JEL: | C99 D02 D64 D91 F22 J15 P16 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12879 |
| By: | Aysun Hızıroğlu Aygün; Murat Güray Kırdar; Murat Koyuncu; Quentin Stoeffler |
| Abstract: | A central concern with social and humanitarian assistance is that unconditional cash transfers might discourage work among recipients. Refugees, however, differ from the chronically poor households in most cash-transfer studies. Displaced from once-stable livelihoods, many retain skills and labor-force attachment that transfers might help reactivate. We study this question using the largest humanitarian cash transfer scheme in the world, the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) in Turkey, which for most of the past decade hosted more refugees than any other country. Drawing on a survey designed to represent Turkey's refugee population, we exploit the program's dependency-ratio eligibility rule in a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of cash transfers on refugee employment. Far from discouraging work, we find that receiving cash transfers increases the probability that any man in the household works by 13.2 percentage points and the share of working men by 19.3 percentage points. We find no evidence of an effect on refugee women's already-low labor supply. A design-based local-randomization analysis around the eligibility cutoff corroborates these responses with exact finite-sample inference, implying effects of 9.8 and 17.4 percentage points, respectively. Turning to mechanisms, we find that the transfers improve access to information, reduce reliance on harmful food-coping strategies, and raise enrollment in Turkish language courses. The transfers also raise spending on education. These findings suggest that cash transfers relax the liquidity and information constraints that refugees face in the labor market rather than inducing a shift toward leisure. |
| Keywords: | humanitarian assistance; forced displacement; unconditional cash transfers; social protection; work disincentives; regression discontinuity design; Turkey |
| JEL: | I38 J21 J22 J61 O15 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26221 |
| By: | Dany Bahar (Center for Global Develoment); Jesús Marcano (Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF)); Carlos Moya (MEG Inteligencia de Datos); Roberto Patiño (Institute 2100) |
| Abstract: | Over 8 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2014, mostly settling in Latin America. Using original survey data from nearly 3, 000 Venezuelan migrants across nine Latin American countries, this paper examines how legal immigration status shapes labor market integration and settlement intentions. Legal status is strongly associated with better labor market outcomes: migrants with documentation are 30.5 percentage points more likely to receive wages through a bank account, 21.6 pp more likely to hold a written employment contract, and similarly more likely to contribute to social security, pay taxes, and hold formal jobs—associations that are robust across specifications, bootstrap inference, and leave-one-out analysis. Legal status alone, however, is not associated with wanting to stay in the host country: legal and undocumented migrants report virtually identical settlement intentions. There is suggestive evidence that a link between legal status and settlement may materialize when legal status is paired with formal employment, particularly written contracts. The findings point to the potential value of complementing regularization programs with measures that facilitate formal employment, financial inclusion, and labor market integration. |
| Date: | 2026–05–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:ppaper:394 |
| By: | Peter Haan; Julia Schmieder; Izabela Wnuk-Soares |
| Abstract: | We study how immigration affects prices through changes in labor supply. Using policy-driven increases in immigration to Germany and administrative data covering the universe of nursing homes, we find that one additional foreign-born woman per 100 residents reduces nursing-home care prices by 2.6 percent. The price effects are concentrated in more competitive markets. Examining potential mechanisms, we find that immigration lowers labor costs as nursing homes shift toward lower-paid foreign-born workers. We find no evidence of declines in inspection-based measures of quality or of scale effects. Finally, immigration increases the use of informal care, potentially strengthening competitive pressure from the broader care market. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, labor supply, prices, nursing homes |
| JEL: | J61 F22 J30 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp2177 |
| By: | Beltramo, Theresa; O'Brien, Matthew; Nimoh, Florence; Sequeira, Sandra |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the link between financial security and social cohesion, in a low-income setting where cohesion and prosociality play a crucial role in the integration of refugees into ultra-poor host communities. We first generate an exogenous shock to the financial security of both hosts and refugees, by implementing a field experiment of a large cash transfer and employment support program. Increasing the financial security of both refugees and hosts leads to higher levels of trust, new friendships with out-groups, a greater willingness to share resources with out-groups and a stronger sense of belonging for refugees. This increased our overall social integration index by 0.73 standard deviations relative to the control group. We then exploit a climate shock that negatively affected the financial security of some of the participants in our study. Consistent with a causal interpretation of the relationship between financial security and social cohesion, participants who experienced even a moderate reduction in financial security reported a disproportionately large weakening of prosociality of 0.53 standard deviations. Taken together, these findings suggest that individuals can shift between cooperative and competitive mindsets in response to changes in their economic circumstances. On the one hand, providing income and employment support to both refugees and low-income host community members led to more cooperative attitudes and behaviors, thus promoting gains in social cohesion and in socioeconomic integration. However, these gains were fragile and easily undone when individuals were exposed to a negative climate shock that made scarcity top of mind again. |
| Keywords: | Refugees; Climate shocks; Integration |
| JEL: | O12 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19296 |
| By: | Tim Sargent |
| Abstract: | This report makes the case that the surge in immigration over the last few years, particularly amongst Non-Permanent Residents (NPRs), has contributed to the recent decline in Canada’s productivity. Because the capital stock moves slowly, faster population growth reduces the available stock of machinery, buildings, and natural resources per worker, making them less productive. And because new immigrants and NPRs are less productive than immigrants who have been in the country for a long period of time, a surge in immigration lowers the average quality of the workforce. None of this means that no one in the economy benefits from immigration. Owners of capital certainly benefit when labour is cheaper and more abundant. However, the principal beneficiaries of immigration are immigrants themselves. Given the huge wage disparities between Canada and the developing countries from which the vast majority of immigrants come from, the potential economic gain to immigrants is very large. Governments can improve the economy’s adjustment to the higher immigration through policies to improve the investment climate would help increase the capital stock, and better credential recognition to reduce the wage gap for new immigrants. However, policy action on these fronts can only go so far. Ultimately, it is always going to take some time for the capital stock to catch up with a bigger workforce, and new immigrants are likely to be less productive for a significant period This means that if immigration remains at its current level, it is likely to remain a drag on productivity for some time to come. |
| Keywords: | immigration, productivity, population growth, non-permanent residents, capital stock, Canada, labour productivity |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sls:resrep:2407 |
| By: | Stern, Charlotta (The Ratio Institute); Allstrin, Susanna (The Ratio Institute) |
| Abstract: | Many high-income labour markets combine persistent skills shortages with the underemployment of foreign-born academics, whose qualifications and experience tend to yield a lower return after migration. Work-based internships are a common policy response, expected to help migrants rebuild context-specific human capital, improve host-country language, and access the informal networks through which much hiring occurs. Yet the evidence base is almost entirely supply-side: it examines what internships do for interns, while the organisations that must agree to host them remain largely unstudied. What makes a placement work from the employer's point of view is therefore poorly understood. Drawing on human capital theory, we address this gap through semi-structured interviews with managers and supervisors at 24 Swedish organisations that had hosted one or more foreign-born academic interns through the national programme Korta vägen ("the academic fast track"). Using inductive thematic analysis, we identify factors operating at three levels — individual, organisational, and institutional — that shape how well an intern's human capital can be put to use. Education quality is less salient to hosts than the literature would predict; language matters chiefly as a vehicle for social integration; cultural friction is workable when expectations are made explicit; and institutional rules around credentials and licensing constrain placement quality in regulated professions. Hosts also report substantial, sometimes unanticipated, organisational gains. We argue that demand-side evidence requires human capital theory to be broadened to incorporate language, culture, and social capital if it is to explain matching. |
| Keywords: | human capital; labour market integration; foreign-born academics; work-based internships; demand side; thematic analysis; Sweden |
| JEL: | J15 J24 J61 J62 M53 |
| Date: | 2026–08–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0392 |
| By: | Jesus Cañas; Miguel Flores |
| Abstract: | More than $65 billion annually flows through Mexico’s remittance corridor, the largest such pathway in the Western Hemisphere. Yet, the distribution of these flows across regions and the implications for financial inclusion—or alternatively, perpetuating inequality—remain poorly understood. This paper exploits bilateral remittance flows between U.S. and Mexican states during 2013–25 to construct and validate a multi-source origin–destination framework linking Banco de México’s U.S.-state outflows with Mexican state-level receipts. We develop allocation matrices from consular registrations, household surveys, and transaction records and validate them against official state-level inflows. Validation against official Mexican state-level receipts yields a clear hierarchy, suggesting that matrices based on consular records explain more than four-fifths of cross-sectional variance in official receipts, outperforming survey-based and transaction-based alternatives, as the matrices preserve the concentrated geography of the settled diaspora. Using the preferred specification, we recover the bilateral structure of the U.S.–Mexico remittance system and analyze its evolution during a period that includes the COVID-19 shock. At the national level, growth in remittance inflows is largely explained by scale effects. However, at the regional level, the South-Southeast is the only region where remittance growth exceeds scale predictions. Shifts in migrant composition drive this divergence, particularly an increasing share of migrants from Southern-origin states in the United States, as well as the rising importance of specific origin states such as Oaxaca. These results highlight the importance of accounting for bilateral flow structures when studying remittances. By preserving spatial concentration, our framework provides new insights into how external shocks transmit unevenly across regions and how remittances shape subnational development trajectories in Mexico. |
| Keywords: | remittances; bilateral imputation; subnational flows; Mexico; migration corridors; Matrículas Consulares; ENADID; matrix entropy; COVID-19 |
| JEL: | F24 J61 O15 O17 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–08–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:feddwp:103619 |
| By: | Quoc-Anh Do; Sebastian Ellingsen; Gedeon Lim |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the long-run impacts of diasporas on local economic development. We do so in the context of one of the most economically influential diasporas: the ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. Our instrumental variables strategy exploits 15th-century landing sites on Java that shaped subsequent Chinese settlement but lost maritime access due to 17th-century silting. We find that a 1p.p. higher Chinese share in 1930 leads to 9.4% higher household consumption and 26% higher population today. These effects attenuate sharply during the 1997-1998 crisis, then recover. We find strong effects on firm sales driven by improved financing through local private networks but not through exports. We provide suggestive evidence for the key role of historical ethnic-trading networks within Java. Our findings suggest that despite their small size, ethnic minorities with durable complementarities can play an out-sized, positive role in local economic development. |
| Keywords: | diaspora, ethnic minority, immigration, ethnic segregation, conflict, discrimination, private finance, networks |
| JEL: | F63 N35 J15 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12893 |
| By: | Julia Bredtmann; Sebastian Otten; Christina Vonnahme |
| Abstract: | We analyze whether teachers discriminate against ethnic minority students with regard to grading. Using comprehensive data on students in German primary and secondary schools, we compare students' scores on standardized, anonymously graded achievement tests with non-anonymous teacher ratings within a difference-in-differences framework. Although minority students tend to score lower on the standardized test than majority students, this achievement gap is significantly reduced when graded by the teacher. This finding cannot be fully explained by differences in socioeconomic background, language-related differences in standardized test performance, or the sorting of students into educational contexts with different grading standards. Overall, our findings suggest that teachers have a positive evaluation bias toward ethnic minority students. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, Discrimination, Grading bias |
| JEL: | F22 I24 J15 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26207 |
| By: | Kamalbek Karymshakov (Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University); Kijin Kim (Asian Development Bank); Dina Azhgaliyeva (Asian Development Bank); Dastan Aseinov (Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University) |
| Abstract: | Household resilience to extreme weather events depends critically on financial access, yet the role of remittances in shaping expenditure responses to such events remains insufficiently understood. This study examines how remittances are associated with household expenditure patterns under precipitation extremes in the Kyrgyz Republic, using nationally representative panel household survey data (2019–2023). Exploiting exogenous variation in remittance flows generated by historical migration networks and exchange rate movements, the analysis identifies a context-dependent buffering role of remittances. Remittances may help sustain household expenditure during periods of extreme weather, with the strongest protective effects observed among rural and high-altitude communities. However, rural households receiving remittances during excess rainfall episodes appear to reduce their expenditure shares on education and health. The middle-income households exhibit the strongest remittance-climate buffering patterns, while the poorest households show limited ability to leverage remittances for meaningful expenditure reallocation—likely reflecting the insufficiency of remittances relative to the scale of climate-induced losses. |
| Keywords: | remittances;climate risks;Central Asia;Kyrgyz Republic;highland communities;precipitation;drought;weather extremes |
| JEL: | F24 Q54 D14 C23 |
| Date: | 2026–08–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbewp:023539 |