Research
Working papers
Unpacking the political impact of low-skilled immigration [draft available upon request] [presentation at the Economics of Migration Seminar]
There is evidence that particular types of immigration induce electoral shifts to the right-wing. With that in mind, we ask: is this purely a short run effect or is there persistence or attenuation through time? Also, to what extent is the effect mediated by changes in the living conditions of natives? This paper aims to unpack the underlying economic mechanisms through which low-skilled immigration shifted votes towards republicans in the United States between 1992 and 2016. Building upon a dynamic shift-share strategy for identification, we are able to disentangle between short and longer-term adjustment dynamics. We show that unemployment among low-skilled natives and local welfare expenditure per capita increase in the short run as a result of low-skilled immigration, but those effects fade through time, while voting is shifted towards republicans in the short run, but does not attenuate. We then use causal mediation analysis to measure the joint contribution of these channels to explain changes in voting. We estimate this explanation potential to be 60% in the short run. In the medium run, if only economic channels were at play, we would expect attenuation in voting shifts to be higher, suggesting that there are possibly other non-economic factors generating persistence in the right-wing shift.
Immigration, firm dynamics and labor market outcomes of native workers in Brazil [draft available upon request]
How increased labor supply of immigrants affect firm performance and native labor market outcomes? While most of the migration literature focuses on native individual outcomes aggregated at some geographical level, hiring an immigrant is a firm-level decision that might change firm’s dynamics and might affect natives within firms or across firms operating in the same labor market. In this paper, we use a matched employer-employee dataset from 2000 to 2017 to analyse firm and native worker outcomes aggregated at the regional level. Our empirical strategy combines past settlements of immigrants and push factors (e.g. environmental disasters and political instability) at the country of origin, which are plausibly uncorrelated with local labor market outcomes in Brazil. We find evidence that immigration had a negative effect on the number of firms hiring formally in a region and also on native labor market outcomes (decrease in wages and increase in layoffs). We shed light on the mechanisms by analyzing establishment-level and worker-level outcomes within and across firms. We find evidence contrary to within-establishment adjustment hypotheses.
Work in progress
Cultivating Progress: The Impacts of Credit for Agricultural Investment in Brazil (joint with Luciano Machado, André Sant'Anna and Priscila Souza)
Influence Cycles: Religious Connections, Business Dynamics and Political Power in Brazil (joint with Samuel Bazzi, Francisco Costa and Claudio Labanca)
The local effects of a refugee wave: evidence from Brazil
Publications in Portuguese
Migration and crisis: the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on migrant workers in Brazil. Revista Sociedade e Estado, forthcoming (joint with Tânia Tonhati, Leonardo Cavalcanti and Tadeu Oliveira).
Índice de Desenvolvimento Humano e Pegada Ecológica: uma proposta de integração. [link] Revista Ibero-Americana de Economia Ecológica, v.35, n.2, p. 55-75, 2022.
Os efeitos da pandemia de COVID-19 sobre a imigração e o refúgio para o Brasil: uma primeira aproximação a partir dos registros administrativos. [link] Périplos: Revista de Pesquisa sobre Migrações, v.4, p. 11-35, 2020 (joint with Leonardo Cavalcanti).
A inserção dos imigrantes no mercado de trabalho informal: o que nos dizem as pesquisas domiciliares? [link] Périplos: Revista de Pesquisa sobre Migrações, v.4, p. 65-94, 2020 (joint with Tadeu Oliveira).
Expatriados, imigrantes e refugiados no Brasil: trajetórias e estratégias de integração econômica e social. [link] Mosaico, v. 8, n.13 (Imigração e Identidades), p. 161-179, 2017 (joint with Marco Ruediger, Margareth da Luz, Maria Isabel Couto, Janaina Fernandes, Bárbara Barbosa and Marcelo Rotenberg).