Working Papers
Ethnic-Occupational Niches: Evidence from the Age of Mass Migration [Draft]
Abstract: Nearly half of immigrants in the United States, historically and today, work in occupations in which their ethnic or immigrant group is highly overrepresented— so-called ethnic-occupational niches. I study the drivers and consequences of these niches during the Age of Mass Migration to the United States, combining rich individual-level censuses (1850-1950) with newly digitized data on immigrants’ pre-migration occupations. Both immigrant skill background and social networks of fellow countrymen predict entry into niches, but networks play a larger role. A novel instrument for exposure to one's countrymen in the niche confirms a causal effect of networks on occupational choice. These network effects generate spillovers that can distort the allocation of talent. Being in a niche early in one's career is associated with wage gains for those who later changed occupations, and a wage penalty for those who remain. Ethnic-occupational niches during this period closely resemble their contemporary counterparts in their prevalence, distribution, and the importance of social networks in driving them.
Works in Progress
The Gender of Names (with Katarina Fedorov, Martin Fiszbein and Sam Bazzi) [Slides]
Abstract: Changing gender norms have shaped the US economy over the last two centuries, but assessing their evolution is difficult due to the paucity of data. In this paper, we use first names as a novel proxy of gender norms. Certain names sound pleasing and soft to the ear and are therefore perceived as feminine-sounding (Barry and Harper 1995), and we implement this intuition on hundreds of millions of baby names from the United States spanning more than two centuries. We find that baby names for both sexes have become substantially more feminine-sounding in the last 75 years. Using historical full-count census data and modern survey data, we further validate the correlation between BH scores and gender norms. Notably, we find a strong positive relationship between male BH scores and progressive gender attitudes. Overall, our findings suggest that names can be a valuable tool for measuring gender norms.
Our Crowd? Intra-Ethnic Frictions in Immigrant Assimilation (with Ross Mattheis and Sara Benetti)
Abstract: Integration of immigrants is a key topic in the global economy today. New waves of co-ethnic immigrants both make assimilation less valuable, since the group becomes larger, but also increase the incentive for incumbents to differentiate themselves from recent arrivals when threatened by discrimination from natives. Can frictions between waves of migrants shape the economic choices of incumbents? We answer these questions in the context of two waves of Jewish migrants to the United States—the first predominately German, arriving between 1840 and 1880, and the latter arriving primarily from the Russian Empire between 1880 and WWI—that differed dramatically along cultural dimensions. Taking advantage of records from a Jewish genealogical website, we develop a novel methodology to more accurately identify Jews in the US census. Then, we digitize and geolocate data on Jewish institutions across the US between 1890 and 1927. Combining these sources, the evolution of Jewish life after the arrival of the second wave of migrants can be assessed. Preliminary results suggest incumbents increasingly Americanizing their names while decreasing other margins of assimilation.