International Immigration and Labour Regulation. Scandinavian Journal of Economics (2025), Early View Publication
With Adam Levai
Abstract: This paper empirically examines how labor regulation responds to immigration. We build a novel workers' protection measure based on 36 labor law variables that capture labor regulation over a sample of 70 developed and developing countries from 1970 to 2010. Exploiting a dynamic panel setting using both internal and external instruments, we establish a new result: immigrants' norms and experience of labor regulation influence the evolution of host countries labor law regulation. This effect is particularly strong for two components of workers' protection: worker representation laws and employment forms laws. Our main results are consistent with suggestive evidence on the transmission of preferences from migrants to natives and local political parties (horizontal transmission). Finally, we find that the size of the immigrant population per se has a small and negligible impact on host country labor market regulation.
Analyzing Political Preferences of Second-generation Immigrants across the Rural–Urban Divide. Journal of Urban Economics (2025), 146: 103740
With Simone Moriconi and Giovanni Peri
Abstract: This paper analyzes the political preferences of immigrants’ offspring in relation to the rural–urban divide of political preferences in European countries. Using data on individual voting behavior and political preferences in 22 European countries between 2001 and 2017, we analyze whether second-generation immigrants have different preferences on a left–right political spectrum, relative to other natives. We show that they have a significant left-wing preference after controlling for a large set of individual characteristics and origin fixed effects. In spite of their concentration in urban areas, where native residents are also more left-leaning than the average, this difference is not a result of their location, as the difference is particularly strong in non-urban areas. Second-generation immigrants are also more likely to be politically active, to participate in demonstrations or petitions and to exhibit stronger preferences for inequality-reducing government intervention, internationalism and multiculturalism. Growing up with an immigrant father experiencing challenges in his labor market integration seems to be the stronger predictor of the left-wing preference of second-generation.
Networks Abroad and Culture: Global Individual-level Evidence. Journal of Population Economics (2025), 38(1): 1-42
Abstract: This paper analyzes whether natives with a network abroad have a distinctive cultural stance compared to similar individuals without such connections within the same region. Using individual-level data on connectedness from the Gallup World poll across 2256 within-country regions over 148 countries, it characterizes individuals’ cultural stance based on three traits: pro-social behavior, religiosity, and gender-egalitarian attitudes. The paper shows that natives who have a connection abroad are characterized by stronger pro-social behavior, religiosity, and gender-egalitarian attitudes. To address potential biases arising from omitted variables, it controls for an extensive array of individual characteristics and region-by-year fixed effects. The results are robust to employing comprehensive measures of connectedness, employing matching techniques, and assessing selection biases related to unobservable factors. Finally, by leveraging both country and individual-level heterogeneity, the analysis indicates that the pro-social behavior stance of connected individuals is fairly consistent across different contexts and individuals, while the findings on religiosity and gender-egalitarian attitudes are more sensitive to local and individual factors. The paper therefore shows that factors enhancing or dampening this relation are cultural trait specific.
Skill of the Immigrants and Vote of the Natives: Immigration and Nationalism in European Elections 2007-2016. European Economic Review (2022), 141: 103986
With Simone Moriconi and Giovanni Peri
Online Appenix: available here
Media Coverage: NBER Digest and Washington Post
Abstract: We analyze the impact of local immigration on natives’ preferences for ``nationalism'' as measured in parties' programs by the Manifesto Project Database in European election data between 2007 and 2016. Using a 2SLS strategy with a shift-share IV based on immigrant shares by origin in 2005 and inflows by education-origin groups, we estimate that larger inflows of highly-educated immigrants were associated with a decrease in the ``nationalistic'' vote of natives, while less-educated immigrants produced an opposite-direction shift towards nationalistic parties. The aggregate results derive from individual shifts toward nationalism in response to less-skilled immigration, and from greater participation of young voters and more pro-European attitudes in response to high-skilled immigration.
With Dany Bahar and Hillel Rapoport
Abstract: We empirically investigate the relationship between a country’s economic complexity and the diversity in the birthplaces of its immigrants. Our cross-country analysis suggests that countries with higher birthplace diversity by one standard deviation are more economically complex by 0.1 to 0.18 standard deviations above the mean. This holds particularly for diversity among highly educated migrants and for countries at intermediate levels of economic complexity. We address endogeneity concerns by instrumenting diversity through predicted stocks from a pseudo-gravity model as well as from a standard shift-share approach. Finally, we provide evidence suggesting that birthplace diversity boosts economic complexity by increasing the diversification of the host country’s export basket.
Do Emigrants Self-Select Along Cultural Traits? Evidence from the MENA Countries. International Migration Review (2020), 54(2): 388-422
With Frédéric Docquier and Aysit Tansel
Abstract: This article empirically investigates whether emigrants from MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries self-select along two cultural traits: religiosity and gender-egalitarian attitudes. Using Gallup World Poll data on individual opinions and beliefs and migration aspirations, we find that individuals who intend to emigrate to high-income countries exhibit significantly lower levels of religiosity than the rest of the population. They also share more gender-egalitarian views, although this effect holds only among the young (aged 15 to 30), among single women, and in countries with a Sunni minority. For countries most affected by the Arab Spring, the intensity of cultural selection has decreased since 2011. Still, the aggregate effects of cultural selection should not be overestimated. Self-selection along cultural traits has statistically significant but limited effects on the cultural distance between people (i.e., between migrants and natives at destination or between non-migrants in origin and destination countries). Emigration could even reverse the selection effect and lead to cultural convergence if migrants abroad transfer more progressive norms and beliefs to their home country, a mechanism that deserves more attention in future research.
Birthplace diversity and economic growth: evidence from the US states in the Post-World War II period. Journal of Economic Geography (2020), 20(2): 321-354
With Frédéric Docquier, Jérôme Valette and Chrysovalantis Vasilakis
Online Appendix: available here
Abstract: This paper empirically investigates the impact of birthplace diversity on economic growth. We use panel data on US states over the 1960–2010 period. This rich data set allows us to better deal with endogeneity issues and to conduct a large set of robustness checks. Our results suggest that diversity among college-educated immigrants positively affects economic growth. We provide converging evidence pointing at the existence of skill complementarities between workers trained in different countries. These synergies result in better labor market outcomes for native workers and in higher productivity in the R&D sector. The gains from diversity are maximized when immigrants originate from economically or culturally distant countries (but not both), and when they acquired part of their secondary education abroad and their college education in the USA. Overall, a 10% increase in high-skilled diversity raises GDP per capita by about 6%. On the contrary, low-skilled diversity has insignificant effects.
Immigration and Voting for Redistribution: Evidence from European Elections. Labour Economics (2019), 61, 101765
With Simone Moriconi and Giovanni Peri
Abstract: In this paper we document the impact of immigration on political support for welfare state expansion, using national election data of twelve European countries between 2007 and 2016. We match individual information on party voting with a classification of the political agenda of 126 parties during 28 elections. We first investigate the impact of local immigration on individual voting behavior, keeping the political platform of parties fixed. We then shift focus from voters to political parties, and investigate how immigration affects the political agenda of European parties. To attenuate omitted variable and selection bias concerns, we implement an instrumental variable approach that exploits cross-regional variation of immigrant settlements in 2005, along with the skill and nationality composition of recent immigrant flows. We find that larger inflows of highly educated immigrants are associated with European citizens shifting their votes toward parties that favor expansion of the welfare state. On the other hand, inflows of less educated immigrants induce European parties to endorse platforms less favourable to social welfare.
Populism and the Skill-content of Globalization. CEPR Discussion Paper No. 18822 (2024). With Frédéric Docquier, Stefano Iandolo, Hillel Rapoport and Gonzague Vannoorenberghe. Additional Material: available here.
Digging Up Trenches: Populism, Selective Mobility & the Political Polarization of Italian Municipalities. CEPR Discussion Paper No. 18778 (2024) With Luca Bellodi, Frédéric Docquier, Stefano Iandolo and Massimo Morelli.
Do you want to migrate to the United States? Migration intentions and Cultural Traits in Latin America. DEA DP 21.01 (2021)
What do we teach in Macroeconomics? Evidence of a theoretical divide. LIDAM Discussion Paper 2021/23 (2021). With François Courtoy and Michel De Vroey Invited for the HOPE 2025 Conference, Duke University, on “History of Economic Pedagogy”
1) Cambia, ¿todo cambia? Intergenerational Mobility, Migration and Protest in Developing Countries. With Maria Marino, Paolo Li Donni, and Xavi Ramos.
2) Immigration, Identity Choices and Cultural Heterogeneity. With Yasmine Elkhateeb and Jérôme Valette
3) Immigration and Technological Adoption: Evidence from the EU Agricultural Sector. With Annalisa Frigo and Daniele Verdini
4) Skill-Specific Drivers of Internal Mobility: Evidence from Italian Municipalities. With Angela Bergantino, Antonello Clemente, and Stefano Iandolo
1) Migration, Politics and Culture. Presses Universitaires de Louvain (PUL) N° 818 (2020)