Publications
“Effects of Emigration on Labor Markets in Migrant Origin Areas: Evidence from Internal Migration in Indonesia,” with David Buller
Forthcoming in the Journal of Development Economics
Featured on VoxDev
Abstract: We study the effects of internal migration in Indonesia on labor market outcomes of non-migrants in origin areas. To address endogeneity of the decision to migrate, we instrument emigration rates with shift-share labor demand shocks in destination areas interacted with historical migration patterns. Using detailed longitudinal data from over 36,000 individuals, whom we observe over a 27-year period, we find that a one percentage point increase in the emigration rate leads to a 3.42% increase in hourly income for those who stay in origin areas. Given the high degree of informality in Indonesia, we then look separately at effects for formal- and informal-sector workers. In line with a dual-sector labor market model, we find that employment effects are concentrated in the formal sector and income effects are most pronounced in the informal sector. Even though emigrants tend to be higher-educated, lower-educated non-migrants benefit the most as they switch to formal sector work and benefit from higher earnings in the informal sector.
“What’s in the Name? Volunteer and Employment Opportunities in Egypt,” with Brian Feld and Abdelrahman Nagy
Accepted for Pre-Results Review in the Journal of Development Economics
Abstract: Female labor force participation in Egypt is among the lowest in the world, due, in part, to social norms that restrict what activities women can do outside of their homes. While in our study area only 17% believe that women should be allowed to work as an employee, 52% are supportive of women working as a volunteer even though volunteers receive financial compensation. In this project, we will visit 7,500 households and encourage women to apply for work opportunities that are either referred to as “employment” or as “volunteering” but otherwise have the same job characteristics, including compensation, hours and contract. In addition to randomizing the name of the work opportunity across 500 geographically distant agglomerations, we will randomize at the household level whether we target women only or whether we also involve other household members in order to better understand household decision making and how to alleviate constraints to women’s work out of the home. After comparing application behavior across these four treatment arms, we will randomize work opportunities among applicants. This will allow us to estimate the impact of working on the female applicants and their families, and compare work performance and satisfaction across treatment arms.
“Moving in Academia: Who Moves and What Happens After?” with Melany Gualavisi and Rebecca Thornton
American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 2024, 114,232-237
Replication data
Video presentation
Abstract: We study labor mobility among academic economists in the United States. Analyzing CV data from over 6,000 economists at Research 1 institutions, we document that female assistant and associate professors are 8 percentage points less likely to move with promotion than their male counterparts. Women are also more likely than men to relocate to lower-ranked institutions. Event study graphs reveal that men working in departments that receive a new faculty member see their publication output increase by more than twice as much as that of women in these departments. Our findings highlight significant gender differences in who moves and what happens after.
“Long-term and Intergenerational Effects of Education: Evidence from School Construction in Indonesia,” with Richard Akresh and Daniel Halim
Economic Journal, 2023, 133(650),582-612
Online Appendix, Interactive Cost-Benefit Analysis,
Featured on VoxDev, on VoxEU, and on GlobalDev (in Spanish and French)
Video presentation
Abstract: We study long-term and intergenerational effects of the 1970’s Indonesian school construction program. Exploiting variation across birth cohorts and districts in number of schools built suggests that 43 years later men are more likely to work formally, outside agriculture, and migrate, and men and women have better marriage market outcomes. Households with exposed women have higher living standards and pay more taxes. Mother’s program exposure leads to increased schooling for her children, with larger effects in secondary and tertiary education. Cost-benefit analyses indicate school construction leads to higher tax revenues and improved living standards offsetting construction costs within 18-54 years.
“Fully Promoted: The Distribution and Determinants of Full Professorship in the Economics Profession,” with Rebecca Thornton
American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 2023, 113,467-472
Replication data
Video presentation
Abstract: In this paper, we document the distribution and determinants of full professorship in the economics profession. Using department-level data from the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, we show that while the share of female full professors has increased over time, doctoral departments still only have 2 female full professors on average, and liberal arts departments 1.14. Moreover, 25 percent of doctoral departments and 32 percent of liberal arts departments don’t have any female full professors. Using individual-level data from Academic Analytics combined with survival analysis, we find that women are 18 percent less likely to be promoted to full professor, after controlling for institution and individual characteristics.
“Reevaluating Agricultural Productivity Gaps with Longitudinal Microdata,” with Joan Hamory, Nicholas Li and Edward Miguel
Journal of the European Economic Association, 2021, 19(3),1522–1555
Online Appendix
Abstract: Recent research has pointed to large gaps in labor productivity between the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors in low-income countries, as well as between workers in rural and urban areas. Most estimates are based on national accounts or repeated cross-sections of microsurvey data, and as a result typically struggle to account for individual selection between sectors. This paper uses long-run individual-level panel data from two low-income countries (Indonesia and Kenya) to explore these gaps. Accounting for individual fixed effects leads to much smaller estimated productivity gains from moving into the non-agricultural sector (or urban areas), reducing estimated gaps by roughly 67%–92%. Furthermore, gaps do not emerge up to 5 years after a move between sectors. We evaluate whether these findings imply a re-assessment of the conventional wisdom regarding sectoral gaps, discuss how to reconcile them with existing cross-sectional estimates, and consider implications for the desirability of sectoral reallocation of labor.
“Who Belongs? The Determinants and Effects of Selective Membership in the Economics Profession,” with Rebecca Thornton
American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 2021, 111,117-122
Replication data
Video presentation
Abstract: We examine the determinants of membership into the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using data from all tenured and tenure-track economists at R1 universities in the United States. We construct an annual panel of employment, research productivity, NBER membership, and connectedness to NBER members. Using survival analysis, we show that conditional on controls, the hazard of becoming an NBER member is lower for men. Membership is highly dependent on top-five publications rather than total publications or citations, particularly so for women. Networks play a crucial role in determining NBER membership—especially having same-sex colleagues and advisors who are NBER members.
“Labor Market Changes in Response to Immigration: Evidence from Internal Migration Driven by Weather Shocks,” with Jeremy Magruder
Economic Journal, 2018,128(613),2032-2065
Online Appendix
Abstract: We study the labour market impact of internal migration in Indonesia by instrumenting migrant flows with rainfall shocks at the origin area. Estimates reveal that a one percentage point increase in the share of migrants decreases income by 0.97% and reduces employment by 0.24 percentage points. These effects are different across sectors: employment reductions are concentrated in the formal sector, while income reduction occurs in the informal sector. Negative consequences are most pronounced for low-skilled natives, even though migrants are systematically highly skilled. We suggest that the two-sector nature of the labour market may explain this pattern.
Working Papers
“Selection and Heterogeneity in the Returns to Migration,” with Eduardo Cenci and Emilia Tjernstrom
Abstract: We aim to reconcile divergent estimates of the returns to rural-urban migration in developing countries by explicitly accounting for heterogeneity and self-selection. We use longitudinal data from four countries—Indonesia, South Africa, China, and Tanzania—where we observe the location choices and labor outcomes of tens of thousands of adults over multiple periods. We model self-selection into migration in a multi-period Roy model that incorporates worker heterogeneity in both absolute and comparative advantage and estimate a correlated random coefficient model that considers both types of heterogeneity. This model lets us extrapolate the returns identified from switcher sub-populations to non-switchers—a group of particular interest to policymakers deciding whether to encourage migration as a development strategy. Our results show considerable heterogeneity in the returns to migration and a clear relationship between absolute and comparative advantage across countries: those with the lowest productivity in rural areas stand most to gain from migrating. This suggests that migration is a pro-poor strategy but that barriers to migration may prevent workers from realizing their potential. Individuals appear to be inefficiently sorted across space; therefore, encouraging migration could lead to large returns.
“Migration Choice under Risk and Liquidity Constraints”
Abstract: There are many reasons why people migrate, and different motivations may lead to different types of migration. I study the choice to migrate within a developing country, where people may face substantial risk and liquidity constraints. On the one hand, migration can be used as an ex-post risk-coping strategy after sudden negative income shocks. On the other hand, migration can be seen an as investment, but liquidity constraints may prevent households from paying up-front migration costs, in which case positive income shocks may increase migration. I model these diverging migratory responses to shocks in a dynamic migration choice model that I test using a 28-year panel of internal migration decisions by more than 45,000 individuals in Indonesia. I document evidence that migration increases after contemporaneous negative income shocks as well as after an accumulation of preceding positive shocks. Consistent with the model, migration after negative shocks is more often characterized by temporary moves to nearby, rural destinations, while migration as an investment strategy is more likely to involve urban destinations and take place over longer durations and distances.
“The Effects of Internal Migration on Crime and Violence: Evidence from Indonesia,” with Brian Feld
Abstract: We estimate the causal effect of internal migration on crime in Indonesia by combining detailed migration data with reports of crime and violence from over 2 million local newspaper articles, and from individual victimization reports from nationally representative surveys. To address endogeneity in the choice to migrate, we instrument the share of migrants in a destination with rainfall shocks at the migrant origin locations. We find that a 1 percent increase in the proportion of migrants in the population leads to a 3.9 percent increase in the number of economically-motivated crimes reported by local media. This is consistent with the existing literature on the effect of international migration to developed countries, but larger in magnitude. However, when using data on individual victimization from household surveys, we instead find that an increase in the share of migrants leads to a reduction in the probability that a person is a crime victim at the destination. The reduction in crime victimhood is particularly large for migrants and for women. We explore various reasons for these competing results, including reporting bias in newspapers as a source of increased crime coverage in areas with an influx of migrants, even though the number of crime victims decreases.
“Kin Transfers as Safety Nets in Response to Idiosyncratic and Correlated Shocks,” with Sylvan Herskowitz and Cristhian Pulido
Featured on CGIAR blog, IFPRI working paper (2021)
Abstract: While formal insurance is widespread in much of the developed world, households in lower-income countries continue to rely heavily on informal risk-sharing networks when faced with unexpected shocks. Kin networks of non-coresident family members may play an important role by providing each other with informal social protection, sharing resources in response to correlated production shocks (rainfall) or idiosyncratic household shocks (sickness and death). Using detailed panel data from Indonesia, we examine how inter-household transfers within a household’s kin network respond to different types of shocks and whether they are able to reduce household vulnerability. We find that households are exposed to meaningful risk from variations in local rainfall in the form of both income and household consumption. Rainfall substantially increases both transfers sent and received by households, suggesting that household and local supply effects dominate demand effects resulting from rainfall fluctuation. Finally, we find modest evidence that transfers reduce vulnerability of consumption to rainfall fluctuations by up to 11\%, but do not find strong evidence on the efficacy of formal social protection programs.
