This study examines the causal effects ofwelfare benefits on internal migration decisions. Using a quasi-experimentalmigration reform across 283 Chinese cities from 2002 to 2015, combined with a difference-in-differences setup, Ishowthat improvedwelfarebenefitssubstantially increasemigration....

Distinguishing between short-run and long-run outcomes we provide new insight into the relationship between education and migration. We examine the specific link between the acquisition of high levels of human capital in the form of university education in Turkey and migration to Germany. We...

Using a representative sample of rural migrants in cities, this paper investigates where the migrants in urban China come from, paying close attention to intra-provincial vs. inter-provincial migrants, and examining the differences in their personal attributes. We find that migrants who have...

Bride price customs are widespread in many developing countries. While the economic literature has widely investigated the implications of such transfers on women's welfare, little is known about their consequences on men's premarital behavior. In this paper, we exploit a quasi-natural...

Theory suggests that cultural similarity increases migration flows between countries. This paper brings best practices from the trade gravity literature to migration to test this prediction. In my preferred specification, I use lags of time-varying similarity variables in a panel of...

The role of ethnic immigrant networks in facilitating international trade is a well-established phenomenon in the literature. However, it is less clear whether this relationship extends to illegal trade and unauthorized immigrants. In this paper, we tackle this question by focusing on the case...

Greek-letter student social groups, better known as fraternities and sororities, are a ubiquitous feature on many American higher education campuses. These organizations, especially fraternities, have a reputation for encouraging unruly and improper behavior among both members and non-members....

Recent years have seen a rise in mass shooting incidents in the United States. While direct victims and their families undoubtedly suffer the most serious consequence of mass shootings, little is known on whether mass shootings have negative impacts beyond those immediately exposed to the...

In this paper, I assess the causal effects of judicial administration on a sample of Italian criminal firms in the period 2004-2016, to shed light on the dynamic path of the firm's performance from pre-seizure to the post-entry judicial administration phase. By using exogenous enforcement law...

This paper studies the origins and consequences of the Russian mafia (vory-v-zakone). Using a unique web scraped dataset containing detailed biographies of more than 5,000 mafia leaders, I first show that the Russian mafia originated in the Soviet Gulag archipelago, and could be found near the...