Research

This paper documents the effects of new communication technologies on immigrants’ socio-economic integration, spatial and job segregation, and networking behavior. Combining data on home-country Internet expansion shocks with data on immigrants’ linguistic skill, naturalization, location choice, and employment in the US, I find that home-country Internet slows down immigrants’ social and economic integration. The effect is driven by lower-skilled and younger immigrants. On the other hand, home-country Internet decreases spatial and job segregation with co-nationals, and increases immigrants’ subjective well-being. For the mechanisms, I use the American Time Use Survey data to show that home-country Internet changes networking behavior of immigrants. I also explore the role of (i) return intentions, (ii) international phone calls, and (iii) Facebook usage. The evidence is consistent with a simple Roy model, augmented with a choice between destination- and origin-country ties. Overall, this paper shows how new ICTs transform the links between immigration, diversity, and social cohesion.

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 explores the effects of home-country Internet expansion on immigrants' subjective well-being, health, and time use. Combining multiple rounds of data from the European Social Survey (ESS), Time Use Surveys, with data on 3G and overall Internet expansion (ITU and Collins Batholomew), I document that immigrants' well-being responds strongly positively to home-country Internet expansion. The effects are driven by the 1st-gen immigrants, and by those with stronger networks at the origins and less social integration at destination. Evidence from the time use data suggests that reallocating time to online interactions with distant families and friends is part of the mechanism. 

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, 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. 

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.

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)