Publications
Publications
Asylum Policies and International Tensions (with Ludovic Panon). European Economic Review 151 (2023), 104322.
Featured in a column on VoxEU.
Abstract: This article examines how international relation dynamics shape asylum policies. Using data on asylum applications in the European Union (EU) and international events from 1999 to 2017, we document that EU Member States admit relatively more refugees when diplomatic relations with the country of origin deteriorate. This result holds after controlling for push and pull factors as well as bilateral determinants of refugee migration. Our results highlight the importance of non-humanitarian factors in the grant of political asylum.
Roads, Internal Migration and the Spatial Sorting of US High-Skill Workers. Journal of Urban Economics 146 (2025), 103735.
This article studies the effects of a major transport infrastructure project, the construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway System (IHS), on the location choices and welfare of high-skill and low-skill workers. In its first part, the article provides reduced-form evidence that the IHS altered the skill composition of metropolitan areas. Event study and instrumental variable regressions show that better-connected cities experienced higher growth in their adult population and share of college-educated residents. Additional results highlight the role played by lower travel times, inter-state migration, and agglomeration economies. The second part of the article rationalizes these patterns using a quantitative spatial model with costly trade, heterogeneous migration costs, and agglomeration economies. Counterfactual experiments show that increasing travel times to their pre-IHS values would lower the expected utility of high-skill workers by an average of 6.1% and that of low-skill workers by 6.4%. These effects exhibit significant variation across cities and, within cities, across skill groups. The findings in this article highlight how transport infrastructure shapes the distribution of skills and the spatial patterns of welfare inequality.
A Political Disconnect? Evidence from Votes on EU Trade Agreements (with Paola Conconi, Federico Gallina, and Mattia Nardotto)
Abstract: It has been argued that public engagement in democracies has declined in the last decades due to a growing disconnect between citizens and their representatives. The European Union is a case in point, if not the most prominent example of an institution seen as suffering from a “democratic deficit”. Even the directly elected members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are often accused of being disconnected from the interests of European citizens. However, little is actually known about whether European legislators respond to their voters’ interests when making critical policy choices. We address this question by studying the determinants of MEPs’ votes on the approval of EU trade agreements. Against widespread Eurosceptic arguments, we find that these votes reflect the trade policy interests of MEPs’ constituencies. The results are robust to controlling for a rich set of variables and fixed effects to account for potential confounding factors, and using different sets of votes and econometric methodologies. An instrumental variable approach supports a causal interpretation of our findings.
Asylum Policies and International Trade: Evidence from the EU (with Ludovic Panon)
Abstract: This article examines how international relation dynamics shape asylum policies. Using data on asylum applications in the European Union (EU) and international events from 1999 to 2017, we document that EU Member States admit relatively more refugees when diplomatic relations with the country of origin deteriorate. This result holds after controlling for push and pull factors as well as bilateral determinants of refugee migration. Our results highlight the importance of non-humanitarian factors in the grant of political asylum.
Markets and Regional Development in the Long-Run: Evidence from Medieval England and Wales
This article studies persistence in regional patterns of development in England and Wales from the middle ages to today. To this aim, I use the Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs to create a database of local markets established from c. 700 to c. 1600. I find that locations with a market that survived into the sixteenth century grew at faster rates in the late medieval period. Locations with an unsuccessful market, on the other hand, appear to have stagnated. Using nighttime light intensity as a measure for contemporary economic development, I show that places with a successful medieval market emit more light relative to other locations, the effect being similar across urban and rural areas. Overall, I find a high degree of persistence in the regional distribution of economic activity over several centuries.