Job Market Paper

"Marital Segregation and the Economic Outcomes of Immigrants" [draft] [slides]

Abstract: Immigrants tend to marry within their own ethnic group, yet immigrants who marry natives tend to have better economic outcomes. In this paper, I examine how such patterns arise from equilibrium decisions in a marriage market with transfers. Using complete count US census data from the first half of the twentieth century, I document patterns of selection into intermarriage and marital sorting consistent with an equilibrium model of marriage. Controlling for the observed characteristics of both spouses, as suggested by the equilibrium, reduces the income difference between immigrants who intermarried and those who intramarried by more than eighty percent. Exploiting variation in gender imbalances across space and national communities, I find that an increase in the share of immigrant women relative to immigrant men, which lowers the competition for coethnic women, had a negative effect on the income of intramarried immigrant men. My findings suggest caution with interpretations that argue an effect of intermarriage to natives on assimilation.

Work in Progress

"Immigration and Mixed Marriages" (with PA Chiappori) [email for draft]

"Marital Choices under Uncertainty: An Economic Analysis of Gretna Green Weddings" - in data-collection phase [slides]

Abstract: This paper examines how uncertainty in marital choices affects the formation, assortativeness, and the dissolution of couples. In a simple dynamic model of marital choices with costly marriage and uncertainty about the realizations of the gains from marriage, marginal couples are more diverse and less stable. To test these predictions, I present an economic analysis of "Gretna Green" weddings, marriages of nonresidents traveling across state borders for celebration. I use newly digitized statistics of marriages, divorces, and annulments of marriage and complete count US census data from the first half of the twentieth century to investigate how exogenous state- and time-level variation in US marriage laws affected the formation and the outcomes of couples. My research design leverages novel within-state, county-level variation in the cost of traveling to the border of a state with relatively more lenient marriage laws. My analysis suggests takeaways for the design of policies affecting individuals' behavior in the marriage market.

"Immigration, Ethnic Homogamy, and Income Inequality in the United States" (with Simon Weber)

Abstract: We study homogamy among immigrants in the United States before and after the introduction of two provisions that radically transformed US immigration law: the National Origins Act of 1924 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Using US data from 1880 to 2017, we investigate the effects of demographic changes in the ethnic composition of the immigrant population on marital patterns following two approaches: a purely statistical design and an approach modeling couples' formation as a matching game that allows us to capture structural changes in the marriage market. Motivated by our findings, we perform a decomposition analysis to quantify the contribution of ethnic homogamy to the distribution of income.

"Intermarriage and Assimilation: Some Cautionary Remarks" [email for draft]

Notes

"Supervised Learning Methods for Historical Record Linkage" [email for draft]

Publications

Arcelus, Almudena, Noemi Nocera, and Mihran Yenikomshian. "Mitigating Antitrust Concerns When Competitors Share Data Using Blockchain Technology." Harvard Journal of Law and Technology 34 Digest. March 2021. [draft]