Lars Ludolph - Research

Publications

The Value of Formal Host-Country Education for the Labour Market Position of Refugees: Evidence from Austria

(Economics of Education Review, 2023)

Refugees hosted across the developed world often work in low-quality jobs, regardless of education previously attained in their country of origin. In this paper, I analyse the long-term value of formal host-country education for refugees using the example of forcibly displaced Bosnians who arrived in Austria during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. Deploying 22 years of Austrian microcensus data, I exploit the age at the time of forced migration as an instrument for the probability of receiving host-country instead of origin country education to recover local average treatment effects of education attained in Austria vis-à-vis Bosnia on labour market outcomes for young refugees aged around schooling thresholds. These estimates show that attaining a formal degree in the host-country significantly reduces the probability of work below educational attainment and low-skill employment over the entire observation period. Income differences between Austrian and Bosnian degree holders are visible after more than two decades of stay in Austria. The discount on Bosnian education declines over time for men, but not for women.

[Link to open access publication]

Barriers to humanitarian migration, victimization and integration outcomes: Evidence from Germany

with Teresa Freitas-Monteiro

(World Development, 2025)

Asylum seekers who migrate from developing countries to Europe frequently experience victimization events during their journey. The consequences of these events for their economic integration into destination countries are not yet well explored. In this paper, we analyze how victimization during asylum seekers’ journeys affects their labor market integration in Germany by using survey data collected in the aftermath of the 2015 refugee crisis. Our data allow us to account for the exact timing and geography of migration, such that samples of physically victimized and nonvictimized refugees are balanced along a wide range of characteristics. We find that, compared to nonvictimized refugees, refugees who were physically victimized during their journey to Germany favor joining the labor force and taking up low-income employment rather than investing in host country human capital. To explain these findings, we explore a range of potential mechanisms and find suggestive evidence that experiencing physical victimization in vulnerable situations is not only associated with a decline in mental health but also with a ‘‘loss of future orientation’’ among physically victimized refugees, leading them to discount future payoffs more heavily.

[Link to open access publication]

Working papers

Immigration and redistributive spending: Evidence from English local authorities (with Nikolaj Broberg)

The inflow of migrants can impact public spending through its effect on local preferences for redistribution and through changes in demand for local services brought about by migrants' distinct characteristics. In this paper, we analyse the effects of the migration wave from Central and Eastern European countries following their EU accession in 2004 on local level redistribution in England, specifically disentangling these two channels. We apply a difference-in-differences estimation strategy and find that migrants did not have an effect on local authorities' total service provision per capita. Once we zoom in on the different expenditure items, we find that local authorities experiencing relatively larger migration inflows saw their spending on means-tested social care services decrease in relative terms, while spending on education services increased. Analysing changes in local Council compositions and internal migration flows in response to the arrival of outsiders, we find no evidence that spending shifts are driven by a change in the local willingness to redistribute income. Rather, our results suggest that, due to migrants' young age at the time of arrival, migration following the 2004 EU enlargement alleviated some of the pressure social care spending in England faces.

[Link to working paper]

Global food prices and migration in Sub-Saharan Africa (with Barbora Sedova)

In this paper, we study the effect of exogenous global crop price changes on migration from agricultural and non-agricultural households in Sub-Saharan Africa. We show that, similar to the effect of positive local weather shocks, the effect of a locally-relevant global crop price increase on household out-migration depends on the initial household wealth. Higher international producer prices relax the budget constraint of poor agricultural households and facilitate migration. The order of magnitude of a standardised price effect is approximately one third of the standardised effect of a comparable local weather shock. Unlike positive weather shocks, which mostly facilitate internal rural-urban migration, positive income shocks through rising producer prices only increase migration to neighbouring African countries, likely due to the simultaneous decrease in real income in nearby urban areas.

[Link to working paper - updated version available soon!]

Research in progress

Inequality and security in the aftermath of internal population displacement shocks: evidence from Nigeria (with Barbora Sedova and Marta Talevi)

This paper studies the security implications of internal displacement shocks for host communities. It focuses on changes in wealth within host communities induced by the inﬂow of internally displaced persons (IDPs) as a potential mechanism that triggers local conflicts. The sudden insurgency of the jihadist terrorist organization Boko Haram, which led to the internal displacement of over 2.5 million persons in northeastern Nigeria, is used as a quasi-natural experiment. Applying both a two-way fixed effects analysis and an instrumental variable strategy based on historical ethnic ties between the areas of displacement and receiving areas, the results show that the presence of IDPs is associated with a decrease in aggregate wealth and an increase in inequality within host communities, between 2010 and 2019. These effects are accompanied by an increased risk of conflict onset in the short and long run. The inequality–conflict link is likely to be caused by grievances among low-wealth segments of the host community towards new arrivals rather than by changes in social cohesion within host communities, which increased in response to the inﬂow of IDPs. The analysis further indicates that an improvement in IDPs’ living conditions is accompanied by a decrease in violence and improved relations between hosts and IDPs. Taken together, findings from this study call for a two-pronged immediate relief and recovery approach that alleviates adverse economic effects on vulnerable segments of host communities and increases IDPs’ welfare in displacement settings.

[Link to World Bank Policy Research Working Paper]