Abstract We examine how professional networks shape immigrants’ job search and labour market assimilation. Analysing displaced workers in Sweden, we show that connections to firms through conationals are especially important for immigrants’ job finding. As networks expand to include more natives, the value of such connections rises towards that seen for displaced natives. Origin homophily also predicts whether a connection provides a referral—increasing earnings and lowering turnover—rather than vacancy information. Networks account for 20 per cent of the growth in immigrants’ re-employment over their first decade after arrival; immigrants’ networks are as productive as natives’ after fifteen years.
Abstract In this paper we examine the link between cognitive ability, risk preferences and the errors that people make. We build a unique dataset that contains almost 260,000 decisions made under risk in a variety of tasks by approximately 13,000 individuals, with each person having completed a test designed explicitly to measure their cognitive ability. Our analysis suggests that intelligence has (1) no impact on risk preferences and (2) a robust link to errors. Our results have implications for the development of theories that seek to explain the impact of cognitive ability on decision making.
This paper examines how network ties between local social leaders influenced the diffusion of mass protests in an autocracy. We focus on the Protestant Church and the Peaceful Revolution in East Germany. To quantify the role of leader networks in protest diffusion, we compile biographical records of over 1,600 Protestant pastors and construct network ties based on shared employment histories. Our findings reveal that network connections led to an increase in protest diffusion by 7.1 percentage points in a given week. Evidence from quasi-random connections, placebo networks, and an IV strategy supports a causal interpretation of these results.
We extend the immigration surplus results of Borjas (1995). In a closed competitive constant-returns economy, we show that an influx of migrants (holding their skill mix fixed) must increase the total real income of natives, for any number of factor inputs, any pattern of substitutability or complementarity between them, and any number of intermediate or final goods – with larger gains if natives and migrants differ more in skill mix. If natives supply labour elastically across skill types, their welfare gains are diminished, even if they respond by moving to higher-paying jobs. We illustrate our results using a US calibration.
The data and codes for this paper are available on the Journal website. They were checked for their ability to reproduce the results presented in the paper. The author was granted an exemption to publish parts of their data because access to these data is restricted. However, the author provided the Journal with temporary access to some of the data, and a simulated or synthetic dataset for the others, which allowed the Journal to run their codes. The synthetic/simulated data and the codes for the parts subject to exemption are also available on the Journal website. They were checked for their ability to generate the tables and figures presented in the paper, however the synthetic/simulated data are not designed to reproduce the same results. The replication package for this paper is available at the following address: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22959053.
