Using recently-available data from the New Immigrant Survey, we find that previous self-employment experience in an immigrant's country of origin is an important determinant of their self-employment status in the U.S., increasing the probability of being self-employed by about 7 percent. Our...

I report the measurement error in self-reported earnings for a developing country. Administrative data from the Federated States of Micronesia's (FSM) Social Security office are matched to the FSM Census data for the wage sector employed. I find that the error in annual self-reported earnings is...

Existing research examining the self-selection of immigrants suffers from a lack of information on the immigrants' labor force activities in the home country, quotas limiting who is allowed to enter the destination country, and non-economic factors such as internal civil strife in the home...

Ethnic conflicts and their links to international human trafficking have recently received a surge in international attention. It appears that ethnic conflicts exacerbate the internal displacement of individuals from networks of family and community, and their access to economic and social...

We investigate the effect of skin tone on employment probabilities in a longitudinal data set. Using an objective measure of skin tone from a light-spectrometer and a self-reported measure of race we find that over time the effect of skin tone on employment has diminished. These results hold...

This paper presents an empirical examination of economic and institutional development. Utilizing a novel data set on American Indian tribal nations, we investigate how constitutional design affects economic development, while holding the broader legal and political environment fixed....

We explore three hitherto poorly understood characteristics of the human trafficking market – the cross-border ease of mobility of traffickers, the relative bargaining strength of traffickers and final buyers, and the elasticity of buyers' demand. In a model of two-way bargaining, the exact...

Using a novel panel data set of recent immigrants to the U.S. (2005–2007) from individual-level linked U.S. Census Bureau survey data and Internal Revenue Service administrative records, we identify the determinants of return migration and earnings assimilation. We show that by 10 years after...