This paper studies the effects of threat on convergence to local culture and on economic assimilation of refugees, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in their allocation across German regions between 2013 and 2016. We combine novel survey data on cultural preferences and economic outcomes...

Upon arrival to a new country, many immigrants face job downgrading, a phenomenon describing workers being in jobs far below where they would be assigned based on their skills. Downgrading leads to immigrants receiving lower returns to the same skills than natives. The level of downgrading could...

This paper investigates the effects of local exposure to refugees on electoral outcomes in the 2016 state election in Germany. Based on quasi-random variation in the allocation of refugees across municipalities and unique data on refugee populations and their type of accommodation, I find that...

In the 2015 refugee crisis, nearly one million refugees came to Germany, raising concern that crimes against natives would rise. Using novel county-level data, we study this question empirically in first-difference and 2SLS regressions. Our results do not support the view that Germans were...

Using novel registry data on the population of asylum seekers in Germany for the period from 2010 to 2016, and quasi-experimental variation induced by German allocation policies, we identify causal effects of the size and composition of local co-national networks on formal labor market access of...

A sizeable literature analyses how immigration affects attitudes towards migrants and discusses differences between socio-economic groups and their potential correlation with perceived concerns about labour market competition. Against the background of the large-scale influx of refugees into...

It is now well known that exogenous immigration shocks tend to have benign effects on native employment outcomes, thanks to various secondary adjustment processes made possible by flexible markets. One adjustment process that has received scant attention is that immigrants, as consumers of the...

In this paper we estimate the causal effect of lowering the public income transfers administered to newly arrived refugee immigrants in Denmark - the so-called starthelp - using a competing risk mixed proportional hazard framework. The two competing risks are exit to job and exit out of the...

International migration is maybe the single most effective way to alleviate poverty at a global level. When a given host country allows more immigrants in, this creates costs and benefits for that particular country as well as a positive externality for all those (individuals and governments)...

As in the U.S. and Canada, migration is a controversial issue in Europe. This paper explores the possibility that immigration policy may affect the labor market assimilation of immigrants and hence natives' sentiments towards immigrants. It first reviews the assimilation literature in economics...