Research papers

Real Exchange Rates and the Earnings of Immigrants (with Christian Dustmann and Hyejin Ku)  [Accepted at the Economic Journal]

We relate the reservation wages of newly arrived immigrants to the real price differences or real exchange rate (RER) between the host and source regions. Analyzing longitudinal administrative data that tracks immigrants’ first labor market spells as well as their subsequent career trajectories, we provide concrete evidence that immigrants arriving at high RERs initially settle for lower paying jobs. In subsequent periods, however, they rapidly catch up to those who arrive at lower RERs, primarily through occupational upgrading. Our findings have important consequences for the assessment and interpretation of immigrants’ career profiles and impacts on the labor market.

Do More Tourists Promote Local Employment? (with Libertad González) [R&R at the Journal of Human Resources]

We analyze the short-term impact of tourist flows on local labour markets. We propose a novel identification strategy that uses shocks to competing international tourist destinations to instrument for tourist inflows across Spanish regions. We show that negative shocks in alternative international destinations have a strong positive effect on tourism flows to Spain. We follow an instrumental variables strategy and find that an exogenous increase in tourist inflows leads to more employment in the tourism industry for prime-age workers in the short term but does not increase total employment in local economies. Total employment actually falls for very young and older workers, as well as for prime-age women. The increase in employment in tourism is compensated by a fall in (low-skilled) employment in other sectors, especially construction and manufacturing.

Barcelona GSE Working Paper: 1208  (2020)

Gender, Careers and Peers' Gender Mix  (with Elena Ashtari Tafti and Mimosa Distefano ) [JMP]

We exploit Italian Social Security data to examine the impact of gender mix among a worker's initial peers on their career path. By leveraging variation in gender composition within firms, occupations, and time of labor market entry, we find that young female workers who start their careers surrounded by more female peers have less successful labor market trajectories than those who start in a more balanced peer group, as marked by factors such as lower earnings and slower promotions. Male labor market entrants are largely unaffected by their peers' gender mix. We show that this effect can be attributed to gender-specific network dynamics. Having a higher proportion of women in one's initial professional network increases the probability of female workers securing employment post-displacement. However, the jobs obtained through female networks tend to be of lower quality. These findings shed light on the complex interplay of gender, networks, and career success. 

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 888282.

Trade and Occupational Upgrading of Immigrants: Evidence from US-Mexico Trade Liberalization [submitted]

This paper uses US-Mexico trade liberalization to identify labor market returns to the Mexico-specific soft skills in the US. Exploiting NAFTA-driven trade intensification, triple difference techniques and a highly demanding empirical model, I show that managerial employment became considerably more prevalent among Mexicans in industries more exposed to trade with Mexico. The effect was highly persistent and concentrated among high-skilled Mexicans. The analysis of the established versus recent immigrants points towards complementarity between origin and destination-specific skills. Although appreciation of language skills cannot account for these effects, knowledge of Mexican institutions and networks might have been an important factor.

Unpacking the birth order effects (with Wifag Adnan, Konstantinos Chountas and Aikaterini Kyriazidou)

This paper reexamines birth order effects and highlights the impact of sibling spillovers. Common models for estimating birth order effects may be misspecified when spillovers exist. Our proposed unified empirical framework considers both birth order effects and sibling spillovers while addressing unobserved family-level heterogeneity. Using data from Germany and Egypt, we identify strong negative birth order effects on years of schooling and negative sibling spillovers. Neglecting sibling interactions substantially overstates birth order effects. Moreover, sibling spillovers suggest that the multiplier effect from sibling interactions diminishes with family size. These findings introduce an additional channel through which family size affects child outcomes.

Work in progress

Gender Composition of Management and Labor Market Careers  (with Elena Ashtari Tafti and Mimosa Distefano ) [new draft coming soon]

We use administrative linked employer-employee data to analyse the impact of the firm’s management gender composition on the short-, medium- and long-term career and family-related outcomes and decisions of female and male labor market entrants. Starting labor market career in a firm with more female managers positively impacts employment probability and job-to-job mobility among male and female labor market entrants. The effect is particularly strong among male entrants and weaker among women. The underlying mechanisms driving the effect differ across genders. For male workers, the impact of gender composition stems from mid-range management in male-dominated sectors, suggeting the role of mentoring and management quality. For women, it is gender composition of high-level management that matters most across all sectors, pointing towads role model mechanism. 

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 888282.

Gendered Leadership: The Effect of Female CEOs on Firm Performance  (with Mimosa Distefano, Michele Giannola and Libertad González)

Exploiting the Italian administrative data and employing an event study approach, we investigate the ramifications of appointing a woman as a top manager in a firm on various performance indicators, including employment, wages, and within-firm inequality. Our findings indicate that firms transitioning from male to female top managers experience a deceleration in employment growth and a temporary decline in wages, although they tend to recover quickly. Notably, within-firm wage inequality decreases during this transition. Similar patterns emerge when analysing the effects of appointing the first-ever female CEOs compared to their male counterparts.

Networks and Young Immigrants' Integration

Networks can both cause and effect of poor integration. I develop a theoretical framework illustrating how imperfect information between employers and immigrant workers can lead to network formation, labour market fragmentation, and slower immigrant integration. The type of employment obtained through a network can significantly affects immigrants' integration. Exploiting the Mariel boatlift as a natural experiment, impacting the Cuban network in the US, I analyze its effects on young second-generation Cubans and pre-boatlift Cuban arrivals. Results suggest a large influx of low-skilled Cubans negatively impacted young Cubans' investment in human capital, with a minor effect on employment outcomes, indicating larger networks may compensate for lower human capital levels. 

Effects of Economic Shocks on Family Labor Supply, Fertility, and Child Outcomes  (with Libertad González )

We study the impact of gender-biased income shocks on family labor supply, fertility decisions, investment in children, and child development. Exploiting the collapse of the construction sector during the Great Recession in Spain, we show that male-specific unemployment shocks positively affect female labor market participation, while reducing fertility. 

Underbidding of Immigrants and the Minimum Wage  (with Christian Dustmann, Attila Lindner, Uta Schoenberg and Matthias Umkehrer)