In progress:

Immigration and the skill premium

(with Daniela Maggioni and Federico Trionfetti)

We investigate the impact of immigration of low skilled workers on the skill premium. We expect to find a positive relationship due to the increase in the relative supply of unskilled labour. Using data for the Italian economy between 2008-2013 we find no significant impact. We rationalize this puzzle by introducing matching, screening, and firm-level wages in a two-sector, two-goods closed economy. In this model, immigration causes a reduction in the relative cost of matching with unskilled labour. As a consequence, firms reduce their skill-intensity as well as the relative severity of screening skilled workers. The latter effect follows from the fact that the benefits of the screening activity accrue to a relatively smaller number of workers. The relative ability of skilled workers then declines and may compensate and offset the increase in the skill premium induced by the decrease in the skill ratio. By estimating a proxy for relative ability of the skilled, we indeed find evidence that migration flows from low and middle income countries into Italian regions have caused a reduction in the relative ability of skilled workers within sectors.

A firm level perspective on the trade effects of terrorist

attacks

(with Seda Koymen Ozer and Daniela Maggioni)

We inspect the impact of terrorist attacks on firm exports by focusing on the relevant context of the Turkish economy in the 2003-2014 period. By merging firm level information on export flows by product and destination with data on terrorist attacks in Turkish NUTS3 provinces fromtheGlobal TerrorismDatabase,we investigate the effect of terrorist attacks on firmlevel exports and we find a non-negligible immediate - same and previous semester - effect of attacks which is robust to several sensitivity checks. When we delve into the baseline evidence, we find that the effect is mainly driven by firms with small inventories and producing goods that are highly sensitive to consumers’ preference for timely production. This evidence, joint with the immediateness of the effect, suggests that Turkish firms involved in lean production and retail could be the most severely affected. The lack of evidence of any recovery in the aftermath of the attack suggests that the effect of terrorism on firm export activity can be severely damaging.

Google Scholar               Research Gate                 Ideas-Repec                    Institutional Home Page