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The Economics of Migration and Diversity
Before taking the magnifying glass, I would like to paint a picture of both phenomena today. The understanding of the economics of migration and diversity is fundamental to ground the research questions answered in this dissertation.
The Economics of Migration
Today, international migration is defined as temporary or permanent movements of people across countries, for a range of different reasons. In this section, as well as more generally in this thesis, we will focus on permanent migration, as opposed to temporary migration (for example, seasonal migration, or migration for study ex-change, etc.). Furthermore, this thesis speaks mainly about voluntary as opposed to forced migration – hence we focus this section on voluntary migration as well. Three questions will help paint a picture of international migration today. 1) « What is the size and skill composition of modern international migration? » 2) « Who migrates? Forced vs. voluntary migration, and self-selection into migration. » 3) « Who benefits from migration? Migration and global welfare. » This dissertation aims at contribut-ing to answering questions 2) and 3), more in detail explained below.
What is the size and skill composition of modern international migration?
Ozden et al. (2011) ask the question Where on Earth is Everybody? and try to picture the evolution of international migration from 1960 to 2000. Constructing square matrices for five completed census rounds, they find that the migrant stock rose from 92 million to 165 million. According to World Bank data, the migrant stock kept pursuing its steady rise, to 266 million people in 2018. South-North migration, i.e. migrants from developing countries to high-income countries, and South-South migration, account for the bulk of international migrants. The share of immigrants increased from 2.8 percent in 2000 to 3.5 percent in 2018, driven mostly by income gaps and employment gaps across countries, economic and so-cial inequality, more broadly differences in the standard of living and institutional quality across countries, as well as climate change. The World Bank report « Lever-aging economic migration for development » finds another major driver of current, and particularly future, migration: demographic imbalances. Whereas high-income countries struggle with an aging society and low birth rates, many developing coun-tries still face the opposite societal phenomenon. Experts from the World Bank expect these imbalances to highly influence pressure for voluntary international mi-gration. Another significant push factor for both voluntary and forced migration is the threat of climate change, which affects in particular countries that are vulnerable to consequences of extreme climate.
Looking now at the skill composition of this significant stock of migrants, the first model to introduce is the Roy model, which, when applied in the context of migra-tion economics (e.g. Borjas, 1987; Grogger et al., 2011; McKenzie and Rapoport, 2010), shows that the differences in income between home and destination country determine self-selection into migration. The higher the difference in earnings be-tween high and low skilled workers in destination countries, the more skilled the migrant mix becomes. Grogger et al. (2011) furthermore find that English-speaking countries tend to attract higher-skilled immigrants, that emigration is greater to-wards destinations that share a common language with the source countries, and that such migrants are more skilled. Migrants perceive higher rewards to skill in des-tination countries where they can speak a language they know. Contiguity increases migration in scale, but for relatively lower skills. Colonial relationships increase the scale of migration as well, but also emigrants from former colonies are less skilled. Another impact factor to the skill mix appears to be asylum policies which may limit opportunities for more skilled migrants. As for Europe, die Schengen accord appears to have little effect on the scale of migration, except positive selection of migrants in terms of skills. McKenzie and Rapoport (2010) show furthermore, that migration networks are also a significant driver of the migration skill mix: higher skilled, smaller size migration networks attract higher skilled migrants, while big-ger, lower skilled migration networks attract lower skilled migrants. In turn, higher skilled migrants develop a higher skilled migration network, and vice versa. This point leads us directly to our next question.
Who migrates? Forced vs. voluntary migration, self-selection into migration.
We distinguish between forced and voluntary migration. Whereas forced migration follows an exogenous shock (a political shock, a war, an extreme climate condition), and is often accompanied by specific immigration policies (e.g. asylum policies), voluntary migration is determined by self-selection into migration. Based on the Roy model I briefly introduced in question 1), a large body of literature has been looking at the question of self-selection into migration: who migrates and why? The relevance of this question is oftentimes related to the question of brain drain, or skilled emigration. Hence, a substantial body of research focuses on the skill com-position when looking at self-selection into migration.
Self-selection is driven primarily by wage differentials net of migration costs. Borjas (1987) finds that individuals migrating from countries with high earnings inequality to countries with low earnings inequality will tend to be negatively self-selected. Thus, looking at Mexico and the US and their Gini index of income, negative self-selection would be predicted. However, what also has to be considered is that the cost of migration is not fixed, and not equal for everybody. Borjas (1991) determines the migration cost a function of direct costs, forgone income costs, and psychic costs, which varies for each individual. Second, the migration cost is not proportional to wages; it might be less costly for more educated individuals to migrate. This, then, would predict positive self-selection of migrants. Finally, the migration cost is also party determined at the community level. Thus, the pattern of self-selection should also depend on how costly migration is for a given community. Here we refer, on one hand, to the community in the origin country, but also to the migration in the destination country: what we call « migration networks ». McKenzie and Rapoport (2010) argue that migration networks lower the costs of migrating (e.g. they can provide information on job opportunities, labor market conditions, border crossing, they can even help relaxing credit constraints etc.). The authors find that in com-munities with small migration networks, the probability of migration is increasing in education up to reasonably high levels of schooling, resulting in positive selection of migrants. This is consistent with high costs of migration being the determining factor of who migrates in these communities. Opposite results are reported for com-munities with large networks, where migration costs are lower.
In the third chapter of this dissertation, we return to this literature on self-selection into migration, and discuss another potentially important, yet unstudied, compo-nent of the emigration decision: the role of cultural preferences.
Who benefits from migration? Migration and global welfare.
Following questions 1) and 2), where we discuss the size and skill composition of mi-grants, the question of global welfare naturally arises. A present phenomenon in the public debate is the brain drain, according to which highly skilled individuals from developing countries migrate to high-income countries, leaving a low-skilled popula-tion behind, which, in turn, harms economic development. In the above question we discuss self-selection into migration and see that highly skilled migrants are indeed attracted by a higher wage-by-skill premium in destination countries. Beine et al. (2001) distinguish between ex-ante brain drain (migration prospects increase investments in education at home), and ex-post brain drain (actual migra-tion) and find that brain drain can be beneficial, if ex-ante brain drain dominates. In 2008, the authors carry out a cross-sectional analysis and find that, there are, on average more losers than winners and the losers tend to lose more than the win-ners gain. We see that the brain drain phenomenon is indeed observed, worrying economists and policy makers. Recent research focusing on remittances and return migration shows, that, as Clemens and Pritchett (2008) summarize well: migration is an efficient means of escaping poverty. Rapoport and Docquier (2006), docu-ment that overall, remittances have a positive effect on the long-run performance in the origin countries, at the micro and macro level. This long-run positive effect of remittances is, hence, present for the migrants’ families, but also for entire developing economies – arguably remittances represent a more important source of external funding than ODA (Ordinary Development Aid) (e.g. Benmamoun and Lehnert, 2013; Bourguignon, 2006; Adams and Page, 2003; Meyers, 2002; Govern-ment Accountability Office (GAO), 2005; Jennings and Clarke, 2005). Migration literature focusing on the growth effects of emigration through remittances, educa-tion choices (endogenous human capital – leading to brain gain), return migration, and the effect of migration networks/diasporas, finds positive effects of migration on trade (Rauch, 1991, Iranzo and Peri, 2009) and/or FDI (Kugler and Rapoport, 2007, Docquier and Lodigiani, 2010), technology diffusion (Kerr, 2008), transmis-sion of social norms/values such as fertility or female political empowerment , as well as democracy (Docquier et al., 2011; Batista and Vicente, 2011; Barsbai et al., 2017; Bertoli and Marchetta 2015). As opposed to looking at long-run effects, Gib-son et al. (2011), look at the short-run effects of migration on household members remaining at home, and paint a less optimistic picture of the effect of emigration on the left-behind family. The authors find that family members might initially be worse off, however the authors also emphasize that in the long run, remittances may compensate (or even over-compensate) for the short-run loss. The authors hint at a point also emphasized by Clemens and Pritchett (2008), that the gains from the family members migrating with the initial emigrant might by far exceed the benefits through remittances.
Looking beyond the effects of migration, most recently, Hausmann and Nedelkoska (2018), find that return migrants to Albania had significantly positive effects on the employment levels and wages of non-migrants.
After discussing effects of migration on origin countries, let us take a brief look at destination countries. In this context, I briefly introduce the findings of Alesina et al. (2016) discussion on birthplace diversity. Whereas birthplace diversity, hence diversity through migration, might, one one hand, lead to skill complementarity, it might, on the other hand, lead to inefficiencies due to mistrust and lack of social cohesion. The authors construct a novel index of birthplace diversity, decomposed into the size and variety of the foreign born population, for 195 countries in 1990 and 2000. They they find a robust positive correlation between birthplace diversity and income and productivity. A one standard deviation expansion in the diversity of skilled immigrants leads to long-run increases in income between 1.2 to 1.5. Ba-har and Rapoport (2018), as well as Hausmann (2016) point out migration as an important channel for tacit knowledge (« knowhow ») diffusion and with it, the en-hancement of economic development. Hausmann describes this process as « moving brains to deploy know-how », in an op-ed, while writing about the importance of moving people rather than information.
We see that the question of migration and global welfare is not straightforward to answer – it depends on the context and measurement. What is recognized from an academic as well as policy point of view (see World Bank projections regard-ing demographic imbalances), is, that human mobility has a unexplored potential of considerable importance to spur economic development across countries in the world, for developing, emerging and high-income countries.
One crucial factor when discussing the welfare effects of migration, is the success-ful economic and social integration of immigrants, which strongly affects personal welfare, destination country welfare and origin country welfare through remittances. Chapter two of this thesis evaluates one major factor that impacts the immigrants’ efficient integration in the host country’s labor market: the language barrier.
The Economics of Diversity
Next, I give an overview on the economics of diversity, in general, and with a focus on cultural diversity. When speaking about diversity in the context of economic outcomes, we generally refer to diversity as a trait of a population. Any given pop-ulation can be diverse in many ways: gender, age composition, language, religion, ethnicity and so on. The interplay between economics and the diverse characteris-tics of a population is non negligible. On one hand, economic policies tend to affect different parts of the population differently. In economics, we call this analysis of the heterogeneity of effects by specific characteristics. In the work that represents the first chapter of this thesis, for example, we find that language training for im-migrants has a different effect for men than for women, for elder people relative to younger people, for different groups of immigrants (labor migrants, family migrants and refugees), and for immigrants whose native language is more or less linguisti-cally distant to the destination country’s main language.
While the analysis of the heterogeneity of effects is a well-established and common part of any economic analysis, the reverse question gives rise to a relatively recent strand of literature: How does diversity affect economics outcomes?
Relying on a range of different types of diversity (e.g. ethnic, religious, linguistic, ge-netic, birthplace or cultural diversity), the current body of research finds theoretical and empirical results that point in opposite directions. On one hand, the combina-tion of diversity in skills, experience and ideas across groups and individuals (their knowhow), tend to lead to positive economic outcomes: increasing productivity and spurring innovation. On the other hand, higher degrees of diversity can also lead to negative economic outcomes, caused by misunderstanding and hostility across diverse groups or individuals, who each believe that their way of doing things is the only right way: decreasing productivity and increasing conflicts.
Even though the findings on whether diversity is « good » or « bad » for the economy diverge, scholars agree upon the fact, that 1) it is difficult to measure diversity, 2) outcomes differ according to the measurement of diversity.
Common measures of diversity are ethnic fractionalization (Easterly and Levine 1997; Alesina et al. 2003; Fearon 2003, Alesina and Zhuravskaya, 2011; Alesina et al., 2016), linguistic diversity (Desmet et al., 2012), genetic diversity (Ashraf and Galor, 2013) birthplace diversity (Alesina, Harnoss and Rapoport, 2016), and other measures of social diversity (Bisin and Verdier, 2000 and 2001; and Bisin et al. 2011; Fouka, 2020; Laitin, 1998; Carvalho and Koyama, 2017; Fryer Jr et al., 2004; Rubinstein et al. , 2013; Biavaschi et al., 2017).
Research relying on measures of ethnic fractionalization, by the aforementioned au-thors, finds a negative effect between ethnic/linguistic diversity and a number of outcome variables: economic growth, quality of government, inequality, and, and an increase in conflicts. Looking at genetic diversity, Ashraf and Galor (2013), find an inverted u-shape relationship between diversity and development. In the discussion around migration economics, we have already briefly discussed birthplace diversity – a measure which repaints the picture about diversity and economic outcomes. First, the authors show that ethno-linguistic, genetic and birthplace diversity are mostly uncorrelated with each other. Second, they differ economically in that ethno-linguistic diversity has negative or insignificant results, while birthplace diversity has a robust positive effect on income even in the long run, and controlling for a large set of control variables. Economic analyses at the firm level largely confirm the macro results: negative effects for ethnic diversity, positive effects for birthplace diversity (Hjort, 2004; Brunow et al. 2015; Parrotta et al., 2014; Ozgen et al., 2013; Boeheim et al., 2012).
Cultural diversity
Research related to the economics of cultural diversity is relatively young. On strand of the literature focuses on the determinants of culture (Alesina and Giuliano, 2015; Giuliano and Nunn, 2017; Bazzi et al., 2017; Galor and Savitskiy, 2018, Eder and Halla, 2020), and the other strand on the role of culture in economic development (Landes, 1998; Guiso et al., 2006; Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln, 2007; Aghion et al., 2010; Spolaore and Wacziarg, 2009, 2013; Desmet et al., 2017). In their 2015 paper, Alesina and Giuliano look into the relationship between culture and institu-tions, following Putnam et al. 1993 who ask whether there is a causal link between culture and institutions, and how they interact. The authors find that both culture and institutions play a major role in economic development and that they work in a complementary way, including feedback effects on one another. A number of studies by the aforementioned authors confirm the results that intergenerationally transmitted traits like culture and common history play an important role in eco-nomic development, and that these traits are deeply persistent and follow historic roots. On the other hand, history also shows many significant episodes of cultural change. Giuliano and Nunn (2017) try to find an answer to the question of when a culture persists and when it changes, and find that populations whose ancestors lived in more stable environments have more persistent traditions today. In the same direction, chapter four of this thesis aims at finding an answer to the question as to whether cultural identity changes following an extreme event of information bias, in particular, misleading information.
Most recently, Bazzi et al. (2017) look into the integration process of immigrants, and how slowly the ethnic attachment to their origin country converges towards a new mixed identity, while Rapoport et al. (2017), are the first to develop a frame-work to determine the effects of migration on cultural change. In particular, they aim to answer whether migration spurs cultural convergence or divergence. Both theoretically and empirically, they find evidence for bilateral cultural convergence. The authors also discuss the direction of convergence, and whether social mixing or social remittances are the major driver for convergence. Whereas Rapoport et al. (2017) explain cultural change as a result of increased human mobility, in chapter three of this thesis we argue that cultural factors are also an important parameter in the emigration decision.
Robert Putnam, in his 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture2, discusses the challenges and opportunities of a global society whose diversity is rapidly increasing. Putnam argues « […] the central challenge for modern, diversifying societies is to create a new, broader sense of ‘we’. » (Putnam, 2007, p. 139) Following Robert Putnam’s work, as well as the novel concept of the « sense of us » introduced by Ricardo Hausmann (2018), whether diversity is an opportunity or a threat, appears to ultimately come down to whether we perceive others as we or they. Hausmann, in his 2018 lecture at the London School of Economics and Political Science, « Development, Knowhow and Us », argues that the secret for development is technology adoption, which in 2 Note: The Johan Skytte Prize is oftentimes referred to as the Nobel Prize for Political Science. turn depends on the spread of collective knowhow, and the openness to others: the « sense of us ». In other words, following Mahatma Gandhi, « our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization ».
Contribution and Outline of the dissertation
After painting a brief picture of the two large bodies of literature, which would each deserve its own review in the length of this thesis, in this section I will walk the reader through the contribution and structure of this thesis. It would be impossible to describe the findings of the three chapters presented consequently, without intro-ducing simultaneously the projects that frame the research questions.
The effect of language training on immigrants’ economic integration: Empirical evidence from France
The second chapter of this dissertation is joint work with Hillel Rapoport and Bi-agio Speciale, and aims at contributing to the literature on migration and welfare, more precisely on the economic integration of immigrants in the destination coun-try. In many destination countries, immigrants still represent the most vulnerable part of the population, whereas one major obstacle to successful integration is the language barrier. On the 1st of January 2007, the French Government introduced an integration program that aims at improving the economic and social success of immigrants. All migrants older than 16 and coming from Non-EU countries have to sign a « Welcome and Integration Contract » (« Contrat d’accueil et d’integration » (CAI)). This contract imposes a civil training (e.g. on French institutions and values of the Republic), a language training, an information session on life in France and a statement of professional competence. The successful completion of these elements is essential for the renewal of the residency permit. In July 2016, the Government has introduced the « Contrat d’intégration républicaine », a modified version of the « CAI ».
The unique framework of the language training organized by the French Ministry of the Interior allows to assess one major factor that impacts the immigrants’ effi-cient integration in the host country’s labor market: the language barrier. Chiswick (1991) and Borjas (1994) were among the first scholars to recognize the language barrier as one of the major hurdles in the immigrant’s integration. Since then, im-proving the language skills has been acknowledged to play an important role in the assimilation and integration process. The econometric analysis of the relationship between language training and economic integration is challenging, and traditional econometric tools could underestimate the true effect of the training if there are unobservable differences in skill levels. Hence, our study relies on a local random-ized experiment in the form of a Regression Discontinuity Design to correct for the selection-into-language-training due to unobservables, such as ability.
The data my co-authors, Hillel Rapoport and Biagio Speciale, and I use comes from the « Enquête longitudinale sur l’intégration des primo-arrivants (ELIPA) », created by the French Ministry of the Interior. This database follows more than 6000 in-dividuals, who received their residency permit in 2009, over three periods of time (2010, 2011 and 2013) in order to trace their integration paths. We evaluate the impact of the number of hours of language training (between 60 and 400) on several different variables related to the integration.
This paper is related to several branches of literature on the relationship between language skills and labor market performance, see among others Chiswick (1991), Chiswick and Miller (1995), Dustmann and van Soest (2001), Hayfron (2001), and Bleakley and Chin (2004). We complement this branch of the literature by exploring how language training plans proposed by the government affect labor market inte-gration, not only through their potential effect on objective measures of language skills, but through several different mechanisms as well. We also innovate using a RD design, which has the properties of a local randomized experiment.
We find that the number of hours of training significantly increases labor force par-ticipation. We explore different mechanisms that explain the effect we find. We find little evidence for a signaling effect of the diploma received after the end of the language classes, for an increase in the size of the network and for an information effect related to access to welfare benefits. With regard to the main mechanism, the mere language channel, we find relatively little improvement; a slight improvement is observed for immigrants whose native language is not too distant from French. We find negative behavioral effects that may derive from disappointment from the integration plan. Finally, the information on job search strategies that individuals derive from the time spent with their classmates and teachers during the classes appear to be an important channel that helps immigrants to integrate in the French labor market. We believe that the insights we gain on the information mechanism amplify our understanding of language classes as a means of facilitating integration. This knowledge of the information channel is applicable beyond France, as long as the classes imply active interaction between immigrants and teachers for a suffi-ciently long time length.
This project showed me first-hand the importance of rigorously evaluating economic policies. Although a policy involving language classes may seem a relatively straight forward and efficient policy with great impact, there are many possible pitfalls to it, which we will discuss more in detail in the second chapter of this thesis: « The effect of language training on immigrants’ economic integration: Empirical evidence from France ».
This research project was, after presenting the results to the Ministry of the Interior, translated into an academic paper which allowed me to attain my first publication: in fact, the work was published in the European Economic Review 113, 2019.
Culture and Emigration: Evidence from the Hitler – Mussolini Mi-gration Option Agreement.
Chapters three and four are part of a larger project that aims at enriching, in sev-eral different ways, the literature on the interplay between culture, institutions, and economic development. We rely on a historic migration choice experiment that al-lows us to explore, on one hand, the formation of cultural identity, and on the other hand, the economic outcomes of cultural identity. In this dissertation I focus on the analysis of the impact of cultural identity on the emigration decision, and on the formation of cultural identity following extreme events. In my future postdoc project I aim at looking at the long-run effect that this migration episode had on the communities in question. Culture has long been recognized by its major role in the creation of institutions, and on the wealth and well being of societies. In today’s globalized world, characterized by free trade, FDI and increasing migration flows, culture assumes a decisive part of economic integration into the world markets. Recent migration literature points out the importance of the cultural aspects of migration on societal norms, and political institutions. Batista and Vincente (2011) look at political outcomes in the country of origin. Chauvet and Mercier (2014) analyze how return migrants impact elections in Mali. Docquier et al. (2016), focus on the impact of emigration on democracy, whereas Barsbai et al. (2016) consider the effect of labor migration on the diffusion of democracy leaning on the example of the Former Soviet Union. There exists, thus, a growing body of literature around the interplay between culture, migration, and institutions.
I look at the case of South Tyrol (now the northernmost province of Italy, and until WW I the southernmost province of Austria), whose Institutional Autonomy is an illuminating example in the search for solutions to problems in culturally divided communities. More precisely, I focus on a key event in the history of South Tyrol, the scars of which were to be felt by the population for decades to come. The so called « South Tyrol Option Agreement » of 1939 was designed with the hope that « migration might succeed where assimilation had failed » as part of an attempt to italianize the province (Alcock, 2001). On June 23rd, 1939 Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany signed an agreement in Berlin that gave the South Tyrolean population an option: to leave their homeland (move to the German Empire) and keep their cul-ture, or to stay in their homeland and abandon their culture (accept full assimilation into Italian culture and language). The evaluation of the drivers of the emigration decision is the main research question of chapter three. The formation of cultural identity following a wave of misleading information about the consequences of this agreement, is the question I try to answer in chapter four.
This project involved not only desk research, but even more so the close work and coordination with our stakeholders (e.g. the National Archives of Bolzano, our re-search assistants, the financial stakeholders). It involved several months of scanning and data entry that I conducted manually with the help of research assistants to digitize the two percent sample I work with in this thesis. This project benefitted greatly from the financial grants of the Labex OSE at PSE, the Free University of Bolzano and the Institut Convergences Migrations. Furthermore, thanks to this project I was awarded the Austrian Young Scholar Award « Eduard Wallnöfer Preis » in December 2017.
Chapter three of this dissertation aims at enriching, on one hand, the literature on self-selection into migration, and on the other hand the literature around cultural identity and its influence on human behavior. More precisely, I examine the self-selection into migration during a historical migration choice experiment between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. This historical episode allows me to have unique insight in the decision making process when selecting into migration, with focus on economic and cultural components of the decision.
Nowadays, with increased migration pressure, the question about why individuals move away from home is pertinent. There exists a strand of literature that aims at finding answers to this question (e.g. Borjas, 1987; Bauer et al., 2005; McKenzie and Rapoport, 2010; Fernandez-Huertes Moraga, 2011), which mention economic push-factors (e.g. differences in income) and migration networks among other im-portant drivers for selection into migration.
Differences in earnings are not the only component that lead individuals to take a migration decision. Other factors, like the feeling of safety and a future in both the home and the destination country, forgone opportunities in both countries, family and friends networks at home and abroad, as well as a cultural component can be major influences as well. It is not evident to quantify the magnitude of the impact of each of these components on the emigration decision. The real world large scale migration experiment I examine tries to disentangle the cultural preference compo-nents and quantify their magnitude.
The second strand of literature I aim at contributing to is the recent literature around cultural identity and its influence on preferences and human behavior. Cul-tural identity is tricky to capture, yet has been shown to influence preferences and behavior significantly (see e.g. Akerlof and Kranton, 2000; Hoff and Pandey, 2006; Benjamin, Choi and Fisher, 2016; Bisin et al., 2016; Fouka, 2020). In this analysis I rely on three potential indicators of cultural ties to Germany: opter i’s first name to account for inherited cultural preferences, opter i’s migration history to Austria or Germany account for personally acquired cultural preferences and opter i’s parents country of citizenship and current residency. In addition, I look into a specification on a sub sample of opters with children, using an alternative measure for cultural preferences: manifested cultural preferences through the ethnic naming of newborn children.
I find evidence for cultural ties to play a major role in the migration decision: the stronger the ties to Germany, the more likely it is for ’opters’ to leave. The most important of the economic components appears to be the strategic decision catching the opportunity of buying land from the neighbors. Looking at the heterogeneity of effects I see that the effects vary by family structure and age group, hinting to-wards the adoption of slightly different decision making strategies. Using data on the farming profession, on police records and illnesses, as well as officer fixed effects, I can rule out alternative explanations for emigrating, based on some historical ev-idence that suggests that part of the leaving decision was somewhat forced by the participating governments. Finally, I discuss empirically and theoretically the em-igration probability as a function of an economic migration cost, and a migration gain through a social externality derived from the interaction of an agent with other agents from the same cultural type. I find that an agent’s emigration threshold varies according to the intensity of cultural attachment and the migration cost.
Table of contents :
1 Introduction en Français
1 Introduction Générale
2 L’Economie des Migrations et de la Diversité
2.1 L’Economie des Migrations
2.2 L’Economie de la Diversité
3 Contributions et Plan de la thèse
1 Introduction in English
1 General Introduction
2 The Economics of Migration and Diversity
2.1 The Economics of Migration
2.2 The Economics of Diversity
3 Contribution and Outline of the dissertation
2 The Effect of Language Training on Immigrants’ Economic Integration: mpirical Evidence from France
1 Introduction
2 The French « Contrat d’Accueil et d’Intégration » (CAI)
3 Data
3.1 ELIPA
3.2 Data on Test Results and Outcome Variables
3.3 Descriptive Statistics
4 Regression discontinuity design (RDD)
4.1 Fuzzy RDD
4.2 Two approaches: local linear regressions and parametric estimates using the whole sample
4.3 Validity of the RD design
5 Results
5.1 Mechanisms
6 Concluding remarks
7 Appendix
7.1 A.1 Selection into or out of training: Robustness checks for possible manipulation of the assignment variable
3 Culture and Emigration: Evidence from the Hitler-Mussolini Migration Option Agreement.
1 Introduction
2 Historical context
2.1 Migration decision: The procedure
3 Data
4 Empirical Strategy
5 Results
5.1 Heterogeneity of effects
5.2 Alternative explanations: Selection-into-migration by the Governments
5.3 Empirical determination of the emigration threshold
6 Conclusion
7 Appendix
7.1 A1: Theoretical frame for the determination of the emigration threshold
4 Fake News and Cultural Identity: Evidence from South Tyrol in 1939
1 Introduction
2 Historical Background
2.1 Fake news « Sicilian Legend »: July 3, 1939
3 Data
3.1 Nibelungen Index
4 Methodology
4.1 Validity of the methodology
5 Main results
5.1 Channels: Change in preferences or change in incentives?
5.2 Heterogeneity of effects
5.3 Persistence of the effect
5.4 Robustness Tests
6 Conclusion
7 Appendix
5 Résumé
Summary
