We use a newly available measure of linguistic distance developed by the German Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to explain heterogeneity in language skills of immigrants. This measure is based on an automatical algorithm comparing pronunciation and vocabulary of language...

In this article, we investigate the differences in smoking behavior between male Turkish immigrants and male Germans, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). More specifically, we use a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method for count data models, and isolate differences in the...

In this paper, we decompose body mass index (BMI) differences between Turkish immigrants and Germans in West Germany for women and men. We focus on isolating the part of BMI differences that can be explained by differences in observed socioeconomic status from the part attributable to...

This study examines the returns to foreign and local language skills of immigrants in the Spanish labor market. Different sources of endogeneity are addressed by deriving a set of novel instruments for language proficiency through a measure of linguistic dissimilarity. Using cross-sectional data...

This study quantifies the disadvantage in the formation of literacy skills of immigrants that arises from the linguistic distance between mother tongue and host country language. Combining unique cross-country data on literacy scores with information on the linguistic distance between languages,...

Using PIRLS 2001 and PISA 2003 data for Germany, this paper examines whether immigrants attending primary and secondary school are graded worse in math than comparable natives. Controlling for differences in math skills, class fixed effects regressions and results of a matching approach suggest...

Using a novel dataset provided by the Connecticut Department of Health (CTDoH), this manuscript shows the necessity for and added utility from analyzing disaggregated COVID-19 outcome data for applied research. Connecticut is currently ranked the fourth highest state in death rates per 100,000...

Running RIF regressions to decompose wage differences along the distribution, this is the first study documenting that worker-level variation in tasks has played a key role in the widening of the German Native-Foreign Wage Gap. Comparing variation in Individual- vs Occupation-level task measures...

Citizenship is the most important right a host country can bestow on its immigrant population. Yet, little is known which citizenship policies work and who actually benefits from them. To answer these questions, we estimate the marginal returns to citizenship on children’s school performance...

We investigate the effect of the refugee inflow between 2014 and 2017 on voting for the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the national parliamentary election in 2017 in Germany. Drawing on unique small-scale data enables us to distinguish between the contact theory, captured by...