This paper contributes to the literature on the Covid-19 effects on workers and labor markets by focusing on the experience of migrant key workers in EU countries. Our analysis, based on survey data on more than 3 million workers, explores three main aspects. First, we document the...

This paper provides an introduction and overview of my research on the Economics of Language. The approach is that language skills among immigrants and native-born linguistic minorities are a form of human capital. There are costs and benefits associated with this characteristic embodied in the...

A vast literature has investigated the relationship between trust and aggregate economic performance. We investigate the relationship between individual trust and individual economic performance. We find that individual income is hump-shaped in a measure of intensity of trust beliefs available...

The standard approach of analyzing gaps in social and labor market outcomes of different ethnic groups relies on analysis of statistical data about the affected groups. In this paper we go beyond this approach by measuring the views of expert stakeholders involved in minority integration. This...

This paper studies the respective influence of intergenerational transmission and the environment in shaping individual trust. Focusing on second generation immigrants in Australia and the United States, we exploit the variation in the home and in the host country to separate the effect of the...

Means-tested Social Assistance (SA) benefits play an important role as social protection floors supporting households in financial difficulties. This paper presents evidence on the patterns of SA benefit receipt in a selection of OECD and EU countries. It provides an overview of the role of SA...

In this qualitative sociological and quantitative economic policy paper, we start out from the assumption of a very recent European Commission Background paper on the "Efficiency and effectiveness of social spending", which says the effectiveness of social spending can be defined by the degree...

This paper explores a new theoretical and empirical approach to the assessment of human well-being, relevant to current challenges of social fragmentation in the presence of globalization and technological advance. We present two indexes of well-being - solidarity (S) and agency (A) - to be...

This paper studies the causal effect of English proficiency on residential location outcomes and the socioeconomic class of immigrants in England and Wales, exploiting a natural experiment. Based on the phenomenon that young children learn a new language more easily than older children, we...