My Current Research

Job Market Paper

Immigration Policies and Human Capital: The Impact on Undocumented College Attendance

I estimate the impact of Universal E-Verify laws on the college attendance of undocumented Hispanics in the United States. To do so, I implement a series of event studies that account for staggered adoption over time, and I use a random forest algorithm as my primary approach for predicting undocumented status. My results indicate that Universal E-Verify laws lower the college attendance of undocumented Hispanics ages 18–24 by about 3.7 percentage points. This is a substantial effect: only 15.7 percent of undocumented Hispanics ages 18–24 in treated states were enrolled in college following the passage of the laws. This effect is robust to using logical imputation on non-citizen Hispanics to proxy for undocumented immigrants, using a logit model instead of random forest, testing for migration spillover effects on bordering states, and considering potentially confounding impacts of other state-level policies. I develop a theoretical model that explains the mechanisms through which Universal E-Verify affects college education, and I test this model’s implications. I find suggestive evidence that the effect is driven by a negative labor market shock on undocumented adults ages 25–54, which likely leads to worse schooling for their children and renders college less attainable. These findings indicate that employment restrictions targeting working-age undocumented adults hinder the human capital development of undocumented youth.

Working Papers

Market Structures, Prejudice, and the Residual Wage Gap between Refugees and Natives

I exploit regional variation in Germany to estimate the impact of labor market structures and prejudice on both the overall and residual wage and employment gaps between refugees and natives. I first demonstrate that persistent wage and employment gaps exist for more highly educated refugees after controlling for demographic differences. Highly educated refugees receive substantially lower returns to their accumulated human capital outside of Germany than highly educated natives, indicating that vocational training requirements and language barriers may form a significant obstacle to entry into highly skilled professions. Furthermore, there exists significant variation by region, implying that certain local conditions are favorable or unfavorable for refugees. Using survey responses on social attitudes toward refugees, I do not find evidence that higher regional prejudice increases the wage gap. However, overall wage gaps and residual wage gaps are lower in regions with more binding minimum wages, while employment gaps are unaffected. I also find suggestive evidence that the overall wage gap is lower in regions with higher union coverage. Residual wage gaps may also be higher in regions with stronger vocational degree requirements for highly skilled workers. These results indicate that labor markets characterized by greater wage compression and fewer vocational training requirements are conducive to reducing refugee–native disparities.

Do Vocational Language Courses Improve Refugee Integration? Evidence from Germany

I estimate the dynamic impact of the German Vocational Language Course program (Berufssprachkurse or BSK, and formerly known as the ESF-BAMF course) on the employment and language skills of refugees in Germany. I further investigate whether the returns to the course are impacted by anti-refugee prejudice, and I also test for spillover effects within refugee households. Finally, propensity scores are used to generate overlap weights and estimate effects on the overlap population of refugees with similar treatment propensities. In the end, my event study results imply that the BSK increases fluency in German by 0.10 to 0.15 standard deviations compared to refugees who took only the basic language course. Furthermore, I find that participation is associated with substantial increases in employment probability that may become stronger several years after taking the course. There is also suggestive evidence that increased prejudice may reduce the marginal return to BSK. While there are only limited indications of within-household spillovers to German fluency, I do find evidence that refugees become less likely to be employed if someone else in the household partakes in BSK. These results imply that vocational language courses have remained an effective tool in improving refugee language acquisition and employment despite the large and sudden increase in asylum seekers from 2015 to 2018.

Gender Gaps: International Evidence on the Role of Family Policy

Ongoing project with Francine Blau, Lawrence Kahn, Leonardo Peñaloza-Pacheco, Freddy Bachmann, and Helen Burkhardt.