Research

The global spread of the Internet and the rising salience of immigration are two of the biggest trends of the last decades. And yet, the effects of new digital technologies on immigrants - their social integration, spatial segregation, and economic outcomes - remain unknown. This paper addresses this gap: it shows how home-country Internet expansion affects immigrants' socio-economic integration in the US. Using DID and event-study methods, I find that home-country Internet expansion lowers immigrants' linguistic proficiency, naturalization rates, and economic integration. The effect is driven by younger and less educated immigrants. However, home-country Internet also decreases spatial and occupational segregation, and increases subjective well-being of immigrants. The time use data suggests that the Internet changing immigrants' networking is part of the story. I also show the role of return intentions and Facebook usage, among other factors. These findings align with a Roy model of migration, augmented with a choice between host- vs. home-country ties. Overall, this paper shows how digital technologies transform the immigration, diversity, and social cohesion nexus.

Presented at seminars: Brown, CERGE-EI, LISER, New Economic School, Rockwool Foundation, UC-Davis, U Copenhagen. At conferences/workshops: NBER (Migration), EEA-ESEM 2024, CESifo Venice Summer Institute on "The Economics of Social Media" 2024, ASREC-2022 (London), Migration Workshop and Migration and Family Workshop in Paris-2023, "Understanding Voluntary and Forced Migration" Conference (Lille 2024), Migration Summer School (Mexico city), Economics of Migration webinar, and PhD-EVS webinar. 

Scheduled: ASSA meeting 2025 (San Francisco, Jan 3-5 2025), CEMIR Migration Workshop (Munich, Oct 22-23), Workshop on Culture, Institutions, and Development (Lund, Oct 24-25)

This paper documents the effects of home-country Internet expansion on immigrants’ health and subjective well-being (SWB). Combining data on SWB and health from the European Social Survey (ESS) with data on 3G and overall Internet expansion (ITU and Collins Batholomew), I find that immigrants’ SWB and health increase following home-country Internet expansion. This result is observed in both the TWFE, and event study frameworks. The effects are stronger for (i) first-generation immigrants, (ii) those less socially integrated at destination, and (iii) those with stronger family ties to the origins. Thus, while recent evidence points towards negative effects of the Internet and social media on user well-being, the effects are very different for immigrants.

Industrial policies, such as infrastructure investments and export tariffs, affect the allocation of labor and incomes across sectors, attracting substantial lobbying efforts by special interest groups. Yet, the link between structural change and lobbying remains underexplored. Using more than 150 years of data on parliamentary petitions in USA and Britain, we measure historical lobbying and document several stylized facts. First, lobbying over industrial policies follows a hump-shaped path in the course of structural change, while agricultural lobbying steadily declines. Second, big capitalists (manufacturers, merchants) are most active in lobbying for industrialization. Third, industrial concentration increases progressive lobbying, while concentrated landownership slows it down. We explain these patterns in a simple model of structural change augmented with a heterogeneous agents lobbying game. Model simulations match the dynamics of structural change, inequality, and lobbying for industrialization in the British data.

Presented at: Brown, UC-Irvine, Warwick, Monash (AYEW), PSE summer school, HSE (Moscow), New Economic School, Paris Dauphine (Public Governance), CEMI-RAS, EEA-ESEM 2020, Contests: Theory and Evidence (Munich-2021), 16th ACEGD (Dehli-2021), 2023 SDU Workshop on “Growth, History and Development”, GSIPE Workshop, EPCS-2024, HPE Virtual Conference 2024, Economic History Association 2024 (Sacramento). 

How do political preferences and voting behaviors respond to information coming from abroad? Focusing on the international migration network, I document that opinion changes at the origins spill over to 1st- and 2nd-generation immigrants abroad. Local diasporas, social media, and family ties to the origins facilitate the transmission, while social integration at destination weakens it. Using the variation in the magnitude, timing, and type of origin-country exposure to the European Refugee Crisis of 2015, I show that salient events trigger learning from the origins. Welcoming asylum policies at the origins decrease opposition to non-Europeans and far-right voting abroad. Transitory refugee flows through the origins send abroad the backlash. Data from Google Trends and Facebook suggests elevated attention to events at the origins and communication with like-minded groups as mechanisms. Similar spillovers following the passage of same-sex marriage laws show the phenomenon generalizes beyond refugee attitudes.  

Presented at: Brown, Harvard (Government), Monash (AYEW), UCL (CReAM), PSE (Migration), IESEG, Warwick (CAGE), Queen Mary U of London, U Copenhagen, Southern Denmark University, LISER, Bocconi (PE), FU Berlin, NES, HSE (Moscow), EBRD, PhD-EVS Webinar, Economics of Migration Webinar, 3rd International Conference on European Studies 2021, Royal Economic Society-2022, ASREC Conference (Chapman University), Conference on International Borders (UPenn-2022), CESifo Area Conference on Global Economy (Munich), 3rd King's College London and EBRD Workshop on the Economics and Politics of Migration, SIOE-2022, Immigration in OECD countries 2022, EEA-ESEM 2023.

Evangelical Christianity is one of the most widespread and fast-growing religious denominations in the world and the United States, with more than 22 percent of the U.S. population identifying with it. In this paper, we estimate the economic consequences of the spread of Evangelical Christianity in the U.S. using a variation induced by the early alumni network of the biggest Evangelical educational institution, Liberty University. Because, unlike other religious institutions during the 1970s, Liberty University aimed at training its graduates for secular careers, the geographical distribution of the early graduates is unrelated to the pre-existing religiosity of counties where they end up after graduation. We find a strong negative effect of Evangelical Christianity on female labor force participation and education and a positive effect on fertility. Changing gender norms appear to be the main mechanism behind this result. Moreover, we find a positive effect on capital accumulation, but little or no effect on median incomes. Our results contribute to the understanding of the effect of religion on economic development.

Presented at: Brown, Cardiff Business School, ASREC, 3rd Gender and Economics Workshop (Luxembourg)

This paper shows how infectious diseases affect inter-group attitudes and behaviors. I use fine-level data on actual, as well as predicted, exposure to Ebola during the 2014-2016 West African epidemic to demonstrate the effect of epidemics on (i) self-reported strength of ethnic identity, (ii) the prevalence of `ethnic' voting, and (iii) the share of inter-ethnic marriages. On average, a higher exposure to Ebola makes people more in-group oriented. However, this masks an important heterogeneity: in ethnically homogeneous communities, Ebola significantly elevates ethnic identity. In more diverse and less segregated communities, exposure to Ebola increases a sense of national identity. I argue theoretically and provide suggestive evidence that these results are driven by the combination of two effects: avoidance behavior directed at strangers during the epidemic, and an increased reliance on local safety nets.

Presented at: Brown, Harvard (Government), HSE-Moscow, New Economic School, ASREC, NEUDC, Royal Economic Society,  EEA-ESEM, BCDE, and 100 Years of Economic Development (Cornell)