Assistant professor at the Department of Economics at Bocconi University, from October full professor on the Chair for Labor Economics and Political Economy at the University of Heidelberg.
Associate Editor at the European Economic Review.
Affiliations with CEPR (Labour Economics and Political Economy), EUDN, LEAP and VfS (Labor and Population Economics), RFBerlin/CReAM and IZA@LISER.
email: josephsimon.goerlach@unibocconi.it, goerlach.econ@gmail.com
Working Papers:
This paper examines preferences over caregiver and care recipient characteristics in home-based long-term care using unique internal data from a matching agency that records households' and workers' ex-ante preferences, realized matches, wages, and job durations. I estimate a structural matching model to quantify each party's valuation of match attributes as a function of preferences, and their impact on employment stability. Linking the data to population registers shows that demand is rising fastest where preferences over workers' origin are stronger, while gender preferences are projected to weaken. Simulations predict welfare changes under varying care worker compositions and suggest that losses from a shift toward distant immigrant workers are modest.
Accounting for multiple responses to weather shocks drastically changes policy implications for climate-change adaptation. Kenyan households react to temperature shocks by sending migrants, by transiting to less climate-sensitive occupations, and by changing livestock species. Common interventions significantly affect these coping strategies. Randomised income transfers cushion consumption losses and decrease adaptation pressure, such as migration. Better infrastructure, instead, eases occupational transitions, reducing alternative adjustments, including migration and livestock composition. A model of joint migration, occupation, and livestock choices reveals important dynamics. Whilst transition to non-agricultural occupations initially serves as a substitute for migration, it acts as a steppingstone for later migration.
“Asymmetric Shocks and Heterogeneous Worker Mobility”, with Riccardo Franceschin (Volkswagen Foundation funded).
If workers differ in geographic mobility, complementarity in production reduces the shock absorption capacity of migration and leads to more polarizing welfare effects of shocks. We quantify these effects by calibrating a dynamic equilibrium model in which workers differ in skill and migration preference. Migration, on average, compensates for one fifth of the welfare loss following a negative shock in one country, with gains accruing largely to high-skilled workers. Low-skilled workers benefit marginally and sometimes earn lower real wages than without migration. We use the quantified model to examine other integration margins and targeted migration policies.
Despite recent advances, no general methods for computing bargaining power in non-cooperative games exist. We propose a number of axioms such a measure should satisfy and show that they characterise a unique function. The principle underlying this measure is that the influence of a player can be assessed according to how much changes in this player's preferences affect equilibrium outcomes. Considering specific classes of games, our approach nests existing measures of power. We present applications to cartel formation, the non-cooperative model of the household, legislative bargaining as well as to Nash-in-Nash bargaining.
Publications:
“Climate-induced migration should be studied in a broader context of adaptation and mitigation.” Nature Climate Change 16, 255–260 (2026) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02545-1, with Cristina Cattaneo, Soheil Shayegh, Christoph Albert, Maria Alsina-Pujols, Hélène Benveniste, Marion Borderon, Bruno Conte, Christoph Deuster, Toon Haer, Roman Hoffmann, Raya Muttarak, Michele Ronco, Jacob Schewe, Arkadiusz Wiśniowski.
"Temporary Migration for Long-term Investment." Journal of Development Economics 174 (2025): pp 103360, with Laurent Bossavie, Çağlar Özden and He Wang. Mentioned in The Economist.
“Terrorism and Education: Evidence from Instrumental-Variables Estimators.” Journal of Applied Econometrics 39.5 (2024): pp 906-925, with Marco Alfano.
“Capital Markets, Temporary Migration and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Bangladesh.” World Development 176 (2024): pp 106505, with Laurent Bossavie, Çağlar Özden and He Wang. Appendix
“The Selection of Return Migrants: Some Evidence and a Model-based Analysis.” In: Robert Sauer: World Scientific Encyclopedia of Global Migration (Volume 3, Chapter 4), World Scientific Publishers (2024), with Filippo Palomba.
“Terrorism, media coverage and education: Evidence from al-Shabaab attacks in Kenya.” Journal of the European Economic Association 21.2 (2023): pp 727-763, with Marco Alfano. Appendix
“Borrowing Constraints and the Dynamics of Return and Repeat Migration.” Journal of Labor Economics 41.1 (2023): pp 205-243. Appendix
“The Dynamics of Return Migration, Human Capital Accumulation, and Wage Assimilation.” Review of Economic Studies 89.6 (2022): pp 2841–2871, with Jérôme Adda and Christian Dustmann. Appendix
“Spillovers and Strategic Interaction in Immigration Policies.” Journal of Economic Geography 21.2 (2021): pp 287-315, with Nicolas Motz.
“Estimating Immigrant Earnings Profiles when Migrations Are Temporary.” Labour Economics 41 (2016): pp 1-8, with Christian Dustmann.
“The Economics of Temporary Migrations.” Journal of Economic Literature 54.1 (2016): pp 98-136, with Christian Dustmann.
“Selective Out-Migration and the Estimation of Immigrants’ Earnings Profiles.” In: Barry R. Chiswick and Paul W. Miller (editors), Handbook of the Economics of International Migration 1A, North Holland (2015): pp 489-533, with Christian Dustmann.
“Western Representations of Fascist Influences on Islamist Thought.” In: Jörg Feuchter, Friedhelm Hoffmann and Bee Yun (editors), Cultural Transfers in Dispute - Representations in Asia, Europe and the Arab World, Campus (2011): pp 149-166.
Work in Progress:
“Bargaining Power in EU Law-Making”, with Nicolas Motz.
“Displacement and Food Prices in Sudan”, with Marco Alfano.
“Spatial Political Sorting at the Neighborhood Level”, with Felix Iglhaut.
"Remote Work and Location Choice", with Cevat Aksoy, Mathias Dolls and Çağlar Özden.
Beyond academia:
Dai campi inariditi agli insediamenti urbani precari: come le rotte della migrazione climatica ridisegnano le campagne e le città - Corriere della Sera (31/01/2026).
Migration in Europe: Perspectives from Italy and Germany, panel discussion organized by the Institute for European Policymaking and the German Consulate in Milan (24/11/2025).
From migrant worker to owner: When temporary migration is used to start one's own business - VoxEU (08/03/2024), with Laurent Bossavie, Çağlar Özden and He Wang. Re-published on editor's initiative on VoxDev (09/04/2024).
Predicting terror attacks using insurgent networks and revenue streams - VoxDev (20/02/2024).
Discussion of David Card's Rodolfo Debenedetti Lecture "Economic Research and Public Policy: Immigration and Minimum Wages'' (29/05/2023).
Migration as a Step Towards Opening a Business - #LEAPTalks/Bocconi Knowledge (30/06/2023). Italian version.
Immigrants need certainties - Interview for Via Sarfatti 25 (28/04/2023).
Al-Shabaab: sensational media reports about Kenyan terror attacks keep kids out of school - The Conversation (24/11/2022), with Marco Alfano.
Access to media amplifies negative effects of terrorism on school enrolment in Kenya - EurekAlert! (02/11/2022), with Marco Alfano.
“Temporary migration entails benefits, but also costs, for sending and receiving countries.” IZA World of Labor 2022: 503, with Katarina Kuske.
How certainty helps immigrants integrate and contribute more to the local economy - The Conversation (20/06/2022). Translated to Portuguese for Interesse Nacional.
Media coverage of terrorism / La cobertura mediática del terrorismo / Couverture médiatique du terrorisme - globaldev.blog (16/11/2020), with Marco Alfano.
Immigration: time to shift the debate - viaSarfatti25 Videos (15/03/2018).
Alla buona integrazione servono tempi certi - viaSarfatti25 Numero 5 - anno XII (Maggio 2017), p 33.
What do we know about migration? Informing the debate Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration: Policy briefing (2014), with Marco Alfano, Michele Battisti, Charles Clarke, Thomas Cornelissen, Christian Dustmann, Francesco Fasani, Tommaso Frattini, Luigi Minale, Anna Okatenko, Ian Preston and Jonathan Wadsworth.
Teaching
I currently teach courses in Structural Econometrics (PhD) and Microeconomics (BSc).
In the past, I also taught a PhD course on Dynamic Panel Data Analysis (slides) and undergraduate courses in Econometrics.