Mounir Karadja

Associate Senior Lecturer of Economics, Uppsala University

I am an associate senior lecturer at Uppsala University's Department of Economics and director of the Uppsala Immigration Lab. I am also a J-PAL Europe invited researcher and RFBerlin Resarch Fellow. My research interests are economic development and political economics, with a particular focus on migration.

News

Financial Times interview about my work on immigrant taxi drivers and the implications of robotaxis.
I co-organize the Workshop in Economic History in Uppsala. Past programs: 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026.

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! Beyond the Battlefield: The Impact of War on Expatriates' Health and Livelihoods [submitted]
with Akib Khan and Linna Martén

Presented at NBER Summer Institute (July 2026), Barcelona Summer Forum (June 2026), Econometric Society World Congress (August 2025), CREST Ecole Polytechnique (May 2025), ASWEDE Conference (November 2024), Copenhagen Migration and Culture Workshop (August 2024).

NEW! Cities and the Rise of Working Women
with Thor Berger and Erik Prawitz
Revised and resubmitted, Economic Journal

Online Appendix

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

Media: Financial Times

Revise and resubmit, Empirical Economics

The Swedish Model: New Data and Methods to Understand the Impact of Collective Bargaining on Workers, Firms, and Innovation
with Agneta Berge, Jakob Molinder, Erik Prawitz, and William Skoglund

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

Language Skills and Refugee Integration [in the field]
with Ambre Chaumeron, Martín Fernández, Akib Khan, and Mariajosé Silva-Vargas

OTHER

Some tips and resources for research