Denmark's Start Aid welfare reform reduced benefits to refugee immigrants by around 50 percent for those granted residency after the reform date. The reform led to a sharp short run increase in labor earnings and employment, but it also induced a strong female labor force withdrawal, and a large...

This paper analyzes the effects of Denmark's Start Aid welfare reform that targets refugees. Implemented in 2002, it enables us to study not only the reform's immediate effects, but also its longer-term consequences, and its repeal a decade later. The reform-induced large transfer cuts led to an...

This paper examines how immigration affects native wages by exploiting an unexpected episode of immigrant influx. The episode happened in Hong Kong, when its government unexpectedly relaxed the restriction on immigration from mainland China in 1993, resulting in a seven-fold increase in the net...