Integrating Migrants: Experimental Evidence on Cross-Border Spillovers. With Catia Batista, Jules Gazeaud and Julia Seither.
Abstract. International migration can promote development in both origin and destination countries. We hypothesize that migrant integration in destination countries is an important constraint on these gains. Using a randomized controlled trial, we study the effects of a low-cost, scalable digital intervention designed to reduce information frictions among Cape Verdean immigrants in Portugal. Access to the intervention improves migrants’ labor market outcomes, legal status, social integration with native-born individuals, and aspirations. These integration gains generate international spillovers, increasing political participation and leading to more egalitarian gender norms in the migrants’ origin-country. Leveraging variation in official destination country electoral data, we show that political participation transmits through increased exposure of better-integrated migrants to prevalent local norms at destination. These international turnout spillovers are weaker in localities with higher far-right support, consistent with a less migrant welcoming political climate attenuating norm diffusion.
Signaling within the firm. With Ludovica Ciasullo.
Abstract. Promotions are a major driver of wage growth. We study how firms learn who to promote, when ability is hard to observe. Workers can exert costly effort in order to signal higher potential. Using Portuguese administrative data, we explore the role of a particular form of effort, overtime, in shaping careers in retail and hospitality. We develop a principal-agent model showing how overtime hours serve as a signaling device within firms. We test the model using a 2012 reform that quasi-exogenously reduced the overtime pay premium for some workers. Consistent with the model, overtime hours fall post-treatment, promotion rates drop, and promoted workers are better selected. These findings are inconsistent with alternative leading theories of internal labor markets.
Baby Steps? Motherhood and Occupational Change. With Jiwon Lee.
The Gendered Effects of Standardized Admissions. With Martina Cuneo.
Migrant Integration: The Role of Immigrant Replenishment. With Yashaswini Shekhawat.
Matching to Opportunity.
Cousins from Overseas: How the existing workforce adapts to a massive forced return migration shock. With Susana Peralta and João Pereira dos Santos, 2025. European Economic Review.
Abstract. The 1975 eruption of Civil Wars in Portuguese-speaking Africa sparked the return of half a million retornados to Portugal. We use census data from 1960 and 1981 to study the impacts of this massive influx of workers on the existing workforce. We observe gendered effects in natives’ labour market outcomes: male and female natives leave dependent employment. We find robust evidence of females moving to inactivity, and suggestive evidence that males move into self-employment. The effects are driven by the repatriates who are Portuguese-born. The identification strategy exploits the repatriates’ municipality of birth and a large-scale resettlement program relying on hotel capacity.