Job Market Paper:
International Immigration and Labor Regulation (with Riccardo Turati)
[working paper, 2024] (R&R The Scandinavian Journal of Economics)
[working paper, 2024] (R&R The Scandinavian Journal of Economics)
The existing literature investigating the labor market impact of immigration assumes, implicitly or explicitly, that the law or labor regulation is exogenous to immigration. To test this assumption, we build a novel workers' protection measure based on 36 labor law variables that capture labor regulation over a sample of 70 developed and developing countries from 1970 to 2010. Exploiting a dynamic panel setting using both internal and external instruments, we establish a new result: immigrants' norms and experience of labor regulation influence the evolution of host countries labor law regulation. This effect is particularly strong for two components of workers' protection: worker representation laws and employment forms laws. Our main results are consistent with suggestive evidence on the transmission of preferences from migrants to their offspring (vertical transmission), and from migrants to natives or local political parties (horizontal transmission). Finally, we find that the size of the immigrant population per se has a small and negligible impact on host country labor market regulation.
Working Papers:
1) Access to Justice and Economic Development: Evidence from an International Panel Database (with Arnaud Deseau and Michèle Schmiegelow)
[working paper, 2019] [latest version, 2024]
(Conditionally Accepted with Minor Revisions, European Economic Review)
[working paper, 2019] [latest version, 2024]
(Conditionally Accepted with Minor Revisions, European Economic Review)
This paper evaluates the importance of access to justice (ATJ) for economic growth. We have created a new database on the number of judges per 100,000 inhabitants by collecting data from various public institutions and academic publications. We use these data as a country-level indicator to capture the structural evolution of ATJ from 1970 to 2019 for a wide range of developed and developing countries. Using an instrumental variable approach in a dynamic panel setting to deal with endogeneity, we show that ATJ is a positive and significant determinant of economic growth. The substantial aggregate effect of ATJ on growth does not depend on countries legal origin, customary law, rule of law or democracy levels. However, we find evidence that the economic returns of increasing ATJ are higher for poorer countries. In terms of mechanisms, our results suggest that ATJ promotes growth via higher government accountability and improved institutional quality.
2) Temporary Border Controls and the Stock Market: Evidence from the Schengen Area (with Jean-François Maystadt)
[working paper, 2023] (submitted)
[working paper, 2023] (submitted)
This paper evaluates the impact of temporary border controls on the stock market. We construct a new dataset on the reintroduction of border controls by collecting data from official documents. We use these data in two complementary research designs. First, we conduct a quasi-experimental event study using the first refugee-induced border control, which occurred in Germany in September 2015. Second, we conduct a Schengen area analysis covering all border controls between 2006 and 2016, using both a difference-in-difference and a synthetic control method. In both analyses, we find a small negative and short-lived effect on daily stock returns, as well as an increase in their short-lived volatility. These effects are driven by medium and large firms, which are more likely to be involved in cross-border activities. Overall, we find that these border controls initially mildly worsen market expectations, but the market does not overreact by interpreting them as a sign of a possible collapse of the Schengen Agreement.
Work in Progress:
Segregation of Immigrants and Voting Outcomes: Evidence from the City of Milan
Determinants of Populism (with Frédéric Docquier and Riccardo Turati)
Do the Poorest Individuals and Households benefit from Foreign Aid in Africa? Evidence from Spatial Data
Pre-doctoral Publications:
Internet infrastructure and its usage in Poland and other European Union member states (with Śledziewska K. and Zięba D.), Information Systems In Management (ISIM) Journal, (2016/1) pp. 119-130.
Use of E-government in Poland in comparison to other European Union member states (with Śledziewska K. and Zięba D.) Information Systems In Management (ISIM) Journal, (2016/1) pp. 131-143.
Policy Publications:
Benin Country Economic Memorandum 2.0 (with Picarelli et al.), WorldBank (2022)