The paper argues that economic integration causes problems for the labor market of high-wage countries due to cross-border labor mobility and the accompanying increase in labor supply. Empirical evidence is provided from an analysis of regional labor market effects of German re-unification. In...

A recent Spanish tax reform granted regions the authority to set income tax rates, resulting in substantial tax differentials. We use individual-level information from Social Security records over a period of one decade. Conditional on moving, taxes have a significant effect on location choice....

Do electoral incentives affect immigration policies? I study this question in the setting of Italian municipalities making decisions about the reception of refugees. The localized control of the reception policy (SPRAR), combined with the exogenous timing of policy decisions and staggered...

This paper investigates how migration and location choice decisions depend on a large set of location characteristics, with particular focus on measuring the importance and nature of the non-monetary cost of moving. We employ a stated-preference approach to elicit respondents' choice...

We exploit a series of public-sector entity relocations in South Korea as an exogenous source of variation in public sector employment to estimate the local employment multiplier. We find that the introduction of one public sector employment position increases private sector employment by one...

We use aggregated data from Facebook to study the structure of social networks across European regions. Social connectedness declines strongly in geographic distance and at country borders. Historical borders and unions - such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Czechoslovakia, and East/West Germany...

This paper estimates a theory-guided gravity equation of regional patient flows. In our model, a patient’s choice to consult a physician in a particular region depends on a measure of spatial accessibility that accounts for the exact locations of both patients and physicians. Introducing this...

Exploiting variation created by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), we document the effects of immigrant legalization on mobility investments and economic outcomes. DACA increased both geographic and job mobility of young immigrants, leading them to high paying labor markets and...

Distance related variables typically vary in a cross-section dimension but less so in a time dimension across cities, regions, or countries. The enlargement of the EU or the introduction of the euro, however, can be looked upon as integration shocks that are informative of the consequences of...

We show that migrating extremists shape political landscapes toward their ideology in the long run. We exploit the unexpected division of the state of Upper Austria into a US and a Soviet occupation zone after WWII. Zoning prompts large-scale Nazi migration to US occupied regions. Regions that...