ERC Starting Grant

The recent forced migration crisis has reached an impressive magnitude: by 2016, 68.5 million individuals had been forcibly displaced by violence, conflict and natural disasters. This crisis is vastly concentrated in developing countries, which host 85% of the world’s displaced population. Nevertheless, we still know relatively little about the economic consequences of forced migration in these countries.

This research agenda seeks to fill this gap. It is organized in complementary parts that analyse the two dimensions of forced migration – internal displacement and international migration (refugees) – which constitute very different economic phenomena. The first part develops a structural model to analyse the long-run impacts of refugee inflows in developing countries. The model is estimated and used to investigate the effects of the Syrian refugees in Turkey, the largest host country in the world. I am able to answer questions that are relevant for developing but also developed host countries. What are the distributional effects of refugee shocks? What are the welfare effects across regions? What are the effects of providing refugees with a legal status?

The second part combines reduced-form and structural methods to investigate the effects of severe climate shocks on internal displacement and its impacts on economic development. I take advantage of unique data availability in Brazil to estimate the reduced-form effects of internal displacement on a broad array of outcomes at destination. I then move to develop a novel quantitative spatial model that captures the equilibrium effects in origin and destination regions, while accounting for congestion and agglomeration externalities and labour market frictions. I estimate the model and use it to assess the long-run, micro and macro effects of internal displacement in Brazil. This part lies on the under-explored intersection of climate and development economics, which has a large potential to open new avenues for future research. 

The following papers have been produced within the project Forced Migration and Development, funded by the ERC Starting Grant. I will make the drafts available as soon as they can be circulated and continuously update the drafts until their final, published version is available.

Labour Market and redistributive consequences of the Syrian refugees in Turkey (with Loayza, N. and Utsumi, T.). To appear in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy.

Firms, Informality and the Labor Market Effects of Mass Migration: Evidence from Syrian Refugees in Turkey (with Loayza, N. and Utsumi, T.). [Draft coming soon!]

Rural Migrants and Urban Informality: Evidence from Brazil (with Clement Imbert). May, 2023 (R&R Econometrica)

Unpacking Neighborhood Effects: Experimental evidence from a large scale housing program in Brazil (with Doria, C. A.  and Gonzaga, G.). May, 2023. Available as IZA DP. (submitted)