We investigate the effects of forced migration on sending economies using the post-WW2 expulsion of German minorities from Hungary as a natural experiment. We combine historical and contemporary data sources to show that the forced migrations led to lasting reductions in economic activity. Plausible mechanisms driving this result appear to be sectoral change (shift towards agriculture) and skills differences between Germans and the settlers that replaced them. Our analysis reveals that forced migration can cause lasting regional inequalities in sending economies.
This paper estimates the effect of immigration into an occupation on the wages of natives working in other, better paid occupations. Using Annual Population Survey data from the UK we rank occupations by real hourly wage and find that increases in the migrant/native ratio raise average wages of natives working in the next higher paid occupation by around 0.13 percent. We find that these effects operate through migrants’ higher educational attainments raising workplace productivity more broadly and supporting specialization in tasks. Our findings have important implications for policy and public discourse. They suggest that debates over the economic impacts of migration often ignore the potential spill-over benefits that a migrant can bring to the outcomes for native workers elsewhere in the wage distribution, particularly in lower wage occupations.
This paper investigates how sibling gender composition affects women’s educational attainment and occupational choice. Using the China Household Income Project survey data, we estimate the impact, for first-born women, of having a second-born brother relative to those with a second-born sister. Given supportive evidence from the literature and our data, we identify a period (1963 to 1978) where the gender of the second child given the first child’s gender is as good as random as it is not yet affected by selective abortion or other drivers of gender imbalance. The results show that having a second-born brother is beneficial to first-born women’s educational attainment. However, other elements such as gender norms appear reinforced by having a brother: in the labour market, first-born women with a second-born brother are less likely to choose a male-dominated occupation, which on average carries a higher wage.
The Impact of Tuition Fee Increases on Graduate Outcomes: Evidence from English and Scottish Higher Education Institutions (with Zhenlan Yao and Yu Zhu)
Revise and Resubmit
Leveraging policy divergence between English and Scottish higher education institutions (HEIs), we employ a quasi-experimental design to examine how the 2012 tuition fee cap increase for English home students affected graduate outcomes. Analysing individual-level administrative data from 114 Universities UK institutions, we utilise difference-in-differences with two-way fixed effects, triple difference, and quantile regression approaches. Results show positive policy effects on graduate earnings, with average treatment effects of 2.1% and 1.6% for male and female graduates respectively. Quantile regression reveals substantial heterogeneity across the graduate outcomes distribution, while our subgroup analyses demonstrate varying impacts across subject categories, demographics, and widening participation indicators. While less advantaged individuals show gains, policy benefits predominantly concentrate among high performers within subgroups across the graduate outcomes distribution. Our individual and institution-subject level analyses reveal that combined-subject (COMB) programmes demonstrated particularly strong positive treatment effects compared with traditional programmes on post-reform graduate outcomes across multiple quantiles, suggesting curriculum designs integrating diverse disciplines with workplace training offer a promising pathway for enhancing prospective earnings while providing a potential solution for supporting institutional sustainability. Despite overall positive effects, in the context of higher education financial policy reform, targeted institutional support, career guidance, and widening participation measures remain crucial for students from underrepresented backgrounds who face heightened financial stakes and limited access to occupational resources and information.