Mounir Karadja

Assistant Professor of Economics, Uppsala University

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I am an assistant professor at Uppsala University's Department of Economics and an affiliate of the Uppsala Immigration Lab. My research interests are economic development and political economics, with a particular focus on migration.

My office is located in room E431 in Ekonomikum.

We are organizing the 3rd edition of the Workshop in Economic History in Uppsala on May 22-23, 2025. Call for papers here.

PUBLICATIONS

Mass Migration and Technological Change

with David Andersson and Erik Prawitz

Journal of the European Economic Association (2022)

Abstract: This paper studies the effect of emigration on technological change in sending locations after one of the largest migration events in human history, the mass migration from Europe to the United States in the 19th century. To establish causality, we adoptan instrumental variable strategy that combines local growing-season frost shocks with proximity to emigration ports. Using detailed data on patents, we find that emigration led to an increase in innovative activity in sending localities. Using data on capital and labor inputs in agriculture and industry, we find evidence of an increased capital intensity related to new technologies in both sectors. We argue that these results are consistent with theories of induced (labor-saving) innovation due to high labor costs following emigration.

Exit, Voice, and Political Change: Evidence from Swedish Mass Migration to the United States
with Erik Prawitz
Journal of Political Economy (2019)

Abstract: We study the political effects of mass emigration to the United States in the nineteenth century using data from Sweden. To instrument for total emigration over several decades, we exploit severe local frost shocks that sparked an initial wave of emigration, interacted with within-country travel costs. Our estimates show that emigration substantially increased the local demand for political change, as measured by labor movement membership, strike participation, and voting. Emigration also led to de facto political change, increasing welfare expenditures as well as the likelihood of adopting more inclusive political institutions.

Online appendix
Journal version
Winner of the Oliver E. Williamson Best Conference Paper Award (SIOE, 2016)
Media: The Economist, World Bank blog summary, Swedish summary (pdf), NSD.

Richer (and Holier) Than Thou? The Effect of Relative Income Improvements on Demand for Redistribution
with Johanna Möllerström and David Seim
Review of Economics and Statistics (2017)

Abstract: We use a tailor-made survey on a Swedish sample to investigate how individuals’ relative income affects their demand for redistribution. We first document that a majority misperceive their position in the income distribution and believe that they are poorer, relative to others, than they actually are. We then inform a subsample about their true relative income and find that individuals who are richer than they initially thought demand less redistribution. This result is driven by individuals with prior right-of- center political preferences who view taxes as distortive and believe that effort, rather than luck, drives individual economic success.

WORK IN PROGRESS

New version! Cities and the Rise of Working Women (CEPR Discussion Paper 18927)
with Thor Berger and Erik Prawitz

Transnational Trauma: Mental Health Effects of War on Expatriates
with Akib Khan, Linna Martén, and Jimena Romero Pinto

Social Networks and Immigrant Integration: Experimental Evidence from Sweden [endline completed]
with Olle Hammar and Akib Khan
Journal of Development Economics (Accepted, pre-results review)

Immigrants and the Market for Taxi Drivers
with Anton Sundberg

Water and the Urban Mortality Decline: Micro-level evidence from Stockholm
with Thor Berger, Erik Prawitz and Martin Önnerfors

Community Sponsorship for Refugee Integration: A Randomized Evaluation [in the field] with Olle Hammar and Akib Khan

Labor Market Mentoring for Female Immigrants
with Olle Hammar, Akib Khan, and Madeleine Lindblad

OTHER

Some tips and resources for research