Eleonora Romano
Hello! I am a last year PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Bologna.
My research focuses on migration, labor markets and macroeconomics:
I use structural estimation and general equilibrium models to study how migration and policy interact with labor markets and welfare systems.
I visited UC Davis in 2024 (Sept-Dec) and Yale University in 2025 (Jan-Jun).
📧 eleonora.romano9@unibo.it
📧 (Currently at OECD, CFE-LESI) eleonora.romano@oecd.org
📍 Department of Economics, University of Bologna – Piazza Scaravilli 2, Bologna, Italy
Working Papers
The Fiscal Impact of Migrants: Immigration Policy and Self-selection - JM paper (draft)
This paper examines the fiscal impact of immigrants in Europe, integrating immigration policy and migrant self-selection within a unified analytical framework. Using EU-SILC data and a general equilibrium model that combines a multinomial logit migration choice structure with a CES production technology, the study analyzes how policy-induced changes in migration costs affect the skill composition of migrant inflows and, through labor-market adjustments, public finances in destination countries. Counterfactual simulations show that immigration policies primarily affect fiscal outcomes through a wage channel: policies that attract migrants of a given skill type increase labor supply in that segment, compress wages and reduce tax contributions from the targeted group. As a result, fiscal effects often arise from the non-targeted skill group rather than from the migrants the policy aims to attract. The analysis further documents substantial heterogeneity across countries, driven by differences in production structures that shape how changes in skill composition translate into wages, output, and fiscal balances. Finally, policy interventions generate cross-border spillovers through migrant reallocation, implying that unilateral or partially coordinated migration policies can shift fiscal gains and losses across countries rather than increase them overall.
Reassessing Immigration’s Impact with Redistributive Tax Policies - (draft)
with M. Battisti and G. Peri
This paper estimates immigration’s effects on native welfare in a general-equilibrium search-and-matching model with two skill groups, capital accumulation, productivity spillovers, and progressive taxation. While immigration affects labor supply, job creation, capital accumulation and productivity in ways consistent with the literature consensus in these areas, the more novel part is the interaction with public finances and tax systems characterized by their size and progressivity. We calibrate the model steady state to 17 OECD economies using 2015–2019 data on wages, unemployment, immigrant–native gaps, skill composition and fiscal aggregates. We then simulate a one–percentage-point increase in immigrant stocks under alternative skill compositions. Skill-neutral inflows generate near-zero average welfare effects, while inflows biased toward high-skilled workers raise native welfare in almost all countries. Inflows biased toward low-skilled workers tend to reduce native welfare in many, though not all, cases, with outcomes varying across countries. The fiscal and labor market fundamentals play a central role in shaping these results: tax progressivity reallocates the fiscal incidence of immigration across skill groups, while government size mainly scales aggregate effects. We further simulate inflows using the skill composition of actual 2019–2024 immigration flows, which are substantially more skill-intensive than the resident population in most countries. These realistic shocks generate positive welfare effects for natives in nearly all economies, with pre-tax labour income and capital income as the main channels for low-skilled natives, while high-skilled natives benefit primarily through reduced tax burdens.
Household Dynamics and Labor Reallocation within Migrant Sending Households - (draft)
with G. Dangwal and J. Romero
Migration, and the household separation it entails, provides an important window into household decision making. Using high-frequency panel data from India, this paper examines how migration reshapes household behavior over time. Motivated by a collective household model with testable theoretical implications, the empirical strategy combines a difference-in-differences event study with a shift-share instrument exploiting variation in global commodity prices. We find that migration reduces wage and production income at origin. Remittances cushion but do not fully offset the shortfall, leaving per-capita resources broadly unchanged. Spousal labor supply increases during separation, displacing unpaid work, while other household members enter the labor force at the expense of schooling. These changes largely reverse after return, suggesting a temporary reallocation of time. Assets contract during separation; vehicles and durables rebound after return, but agricultural assets show little or no recovery, indicating short term shocks that induce lasting shifts in asset portfolios.