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).
Working Papers
The Fiscal Impact of Migrants: Immigration Policy and Self-selection - JM paper (draft available soon)
This paper explores the fiscal impact of immigrants in Europe, integrating immigration policy and migrant self-selection within a unified analytical framework implementing a general equilibrium analysis. Given the debate on whether immigrants are net contributors or burdens to public finances, this study utilizes a structural model and EU-SILC data to provide insights into how immigration policies shape migrant self-selection and, consequently, their fiscal contributions to host countries. Through simulations, it investigates the dependency of fiscal impacts in destination countries on immigration policy, highlighting the significant role host countries play in determining self-selection and fiscal outcomes. This approach underscores the nuanced interplay between policy decisions and economic realities, offering a more refined perspective on the fiscal implications of immigration.
Reassessing Immigration’s Impact with Redistributive Tax Policies - (draft available soon)
with M. Battisti and G. Peri
In this paper we quantify the effects of immigration on wages, employment, fiscal outcomes, and native welfare in a general equilibrium model with search and matching frictions and government redistribution. Immigration affects labor supply and productivity, firms’ job-creation incentives, and and interacts with fiscal systems that differ in both size and progressivity. The model features skill heterogeneity, capital accumulation, and high-skill–augmenting technology, allowing immigration to operate through multiple interacting channels.The framework is calibrated to 17 OECD economies using harmonized data for the 2015–2019 period on wages, unemployment, immigrant–native gaps, skill composition, and fiscal aggregates. We conduct comparative statics exercises that vary both the size and the skill composition of immigration flows. Welfare effects are highly heterogeneous across countries and scenarios, reflecting differences in job-creation responses, production complementarities, and fiscal adjustment. We show that tax progressivity and government size play distinct roles: progressivity redistributes the fiscal consequences of immigration across skill groups, while government size mainly scales aggregate fiscal effects. Overall, the results highlight that the welfare impact of immigration cannot be inferred from skill composition alone, but depends critically on labor market frictions, production structure, and design of taxation and redistribution.
Household Dynamics and Labor Reallocation within Migrant Sending Households - (draft available soon)
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.