Paris Migration Economics

We investigate the origins and implications of zero-sum thinking – the belief that gains for one individual or group tend to come at the cost of others. Using a new survey of a sample of 20,400 U.S. residents, we measure zero-sum thinking, political preferences, policy views, and a rich array of ancestral information spanning four generations. We find that a more zero-sum mindset is strongly associated with more support for government redistribution, race- and gender-based affirmative action, and more restrictive immigration policies. Zero-sum thinking can be traced back to the experiences of both the individual and their ancestors, encompassing factors such as the degree of intergenerational upward mobility they experienced, whether they immigrated to the United States or lived in a location with more immigrants, and whether they were enslaved or lived in a location with more enslavement

This paper investigates the impact of minority representation in English local councils on minority naturalization rates between 2002 and 2020. Using a regression discontinuity design, we compare wards where minority candidates narrowly won or lost to majority candidates. Our findings indicate that the election of a minority councilor significantly increases the naturalization rate of minorities by 2.3 percentage points, with Labour minority candidates having a stronger effect. The impact is larger in areas with lower minority populations and appears driven by a `role model’ effect. These results highlight the important role of minority representation in promoting integration.

Data on individuals of immigrant origin are used in the epidemiological approach in comparative development for understanding cultural persistence, the determinants of cultural norms, and the effects of genetic traits. A widespread presumption is that this approach is exposed to attenuation bias. We describe how the increasing reliance on foreign ancestries to identify respondents’ origin can invalidate this presumption. Selfselection into reporting a foreign ancestry and unobserved heterogeneity in the time elapsed since ancestral migration can overestimate the effect of interest. A simple theoretical framework describes the joint influence of these two factors on the estimates obtained from a canonical specification. We provide illustrative examples of the empirical relevance of our concerns drawing on two influential papers in the literature: Fernández and Fogli (2006) and Giuliano and Nunn (2021).

Social cohesion suffers when people perceive that they live among others who differ from them, even if such people live in homogeneous neighborhoods. This paper shows that (1) two individuals who live in equally diverse local contexts need not perceive the same amount of diversity in that same context, nor think of the boundaries of their local community in the same way, and (2) when comparing two individuals who live in equally diverse local contexts, the one who thinks she lives with more minorities tends, on average, to see lower social cohesion and less community efficacy among her neighbors. This descriptive finding does not show that perceptions cause social cohesion, but our careful research design produces a finding that separates the experience of objective social context from that of subjective context without causal inference. Revealing that perceptions of social reality matter above and beyond the experience of objective context adds evidence to a theory of context effects that involves perceptions as well as experience.

We look at the impact of the recent Trump reelection on the location choices of potential Mexican migrants. Using migration aspiration data, we show that the Trump presidency in 2016 increased disapproval rates of the US leadership, which in turn re- duced the attractiveness of the US. Using a Cross-Nested Logit model, we nd that the new reelection will create heterogeneous immigration pressures from Mexico across foreign locations. Canada and some Western European countries will face higher im- migration pressures. This reelection will lower the skill content of Mexican potential immigrants in the US and induce an opposite eect in destinations perceived as close substitutes.

“Japa” is a Yoruba word that means “to run away” or “to flee” and has become a term used to describe a recent trend of young, highly educated Nigerians leaving the country in search of better opportunities. Can providing better opportunities for creating dynamic businesses at home reduce this flow? Efforts to examine the impact of business development programs at home on migration have proven difficult due to the relatively limited effect of many microenterprise support programs, the fact that they are not targeted at the most dynamic individuals at risk of high-skilled migration, and that studies typically do not track participants for long enough after such programs to measure migration impacts. This paper looks at long-term impacts of the YouWin! Business plan competition to overcome these challenges. YouWin! Was a nationwide business plan competition that launched in Nigeria in late 2011. A large sample of 1,841 potential entrepreneurs who made it to the semi-finalist stage were randomly selected as competition winners (n=729) or as a control group (n=1,112). The winners received grants averaging US$50,000 each. Follow-up surveys found that the winners were much more likely to set up and be operating firms with 10 or more workers over the next three years, innovating more, and earning higher sales and profits. This study returns to these applicants in 2023-24, 11 to 12 years after the grants were awarded, to measure the long-term impacts of this program on business growth and on international and internal migration. Tracking individuals over such a long period was very difficult, and we employ a combination of survey data, LinkedIn and other online media, and tax administrative data to identify the current business operating status and locations of individuals, and then explore the channels through which long-term impacts on business and migration decisions occur.

This paper analyzes whether inter-ethnic contact in childhood affects the hiring behavior of managers. To identify the causal effect of exposure, we exploit quasi-random variation in the share of immigrant students across cohorts within Danish schools. Using administrative employer-employee data, we find that more immigrant peers of the same gender in school lead Danish managers to hire more immigrants later in life. We do not find any evidence that this relationship is driven by managers’ educational outcomes or earnings, nor that the share of immigrants affects the managers’ residential choices.

For most of human history, until the fertility transition, technological progress translated into larger populations, preventing sustained improvements in living standards. We argue that migration offered an escape valve from these Malthusian dynamics, particularly after the European discovery and colonization of the Americas. We document a strong relationship between fertility and migration across countries, regions, individuals, and periods, in a variety of datasets and specifications, and with different identification strategies. During the Age of Mass Migration, persistently high fertility across much of Europe created a large reservoir of surplus labor that could find better opportunities in the New World. These migrations, by relieving demographic pressures, accelerated the transition to modern growth

Households in Sahelian countries mostly rely on subsistence agriculture and livelihood means are generally dependent on the quality of a single rainy season (June to October). Income streams are thus often marked with a high degree of seasonality – especially in the rural sector – and areexposed to shocks with the occasional occurrence of poor rainy season conditions. Such variations in the level of productivity across space and over time could presumably induce some adjustments in short-term labour reallocation dynamics, whereby individuals temporarily relocate to places where they are more productive. However, little is known about the scale and precise nature of temporary migration decisions as a viable strategy in the face of climate stresses. This can be partly attributed to the difficulty of measuring subtler human movements with traditional survey methods and the resulting glaring lack of detailed data on short-term movements. In this study, we exploit a multi-year mobile phone dataset in Senegal that allows us to obtain a uniquely granular temporary migration matrix. By observing short-term movements of millions of individuals across more than 900 locations that experience various levels of precipitations over three years, we are able to provide new insights on the temporary reallocation of labour across space in the context of local climate variability

This project evaluates the impacts of international educational migration. We partner with Malengo, an NGO that supports Ugandan students in pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Germany. Admission to the Malengo program combines the returns to higher education with the returns to international migration to a high-income country, providing students with a transformative opportunity to increase their incomes. At the same time, students may substantially increase their families’ incomes in Uganda by sending remittances and inspiring further educational attainment. We conduct a randomized controlled trial, leveraging Malengo’s randomized admission among shortlisted applicants. In addition, we implement a randomized campaign that informs secondary school students in Uganda about the Malengo program. Preliminary evidence on the short-term effects suggests that applicants who are admitted to the Malengo program increase their monthly income by more than $800 already within their first years of study in Germany. Admission to the Malengo program also improves the subjective wellbeing of applicants and their families and leads to higher aspirations among siblings and friends of applicants. Furthermore, the school information campaign on the Malengo program increases migration intentions and aspirations of secondary school students, but does not affect their test scores.