Essays on Immigration

Abstract

The first chapter explores the role of income in the decision of native-born individuals to enroll in college when the local labor market is affected by inflows of immigrant labor. I develop a unified theory of the decision to acquire schooling taking into account that immigration influences both the returns to education and income available

to finance this decision. In addition I theoretically show how household income affects the impact of immigration on natives' college enrollment decisions. Using U.S. Census microdata from 1970 to 2000, I empirically investigate these predictions. I correct for possible non-random selection of immigrants into labor and geographic markets. I find evidence of a positive relationship between relatively unskilled migration and native college enrollment for individuals who come from poorer households and of a negative one for individuals from richer households. The results vary by age and race as they are most pronounced for young natives and African-American and

Caucasian natives. In the second chapter using a unique household level dataset that allows us to draw comparisons between 30 transition economies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia my co-authors and I assess potential gains from various types of mobility to those who are currently immobile. We also identify proportion of current immobility

that can be explained by lack of economic incentives. This proportion varies significantly across the regions but can be as high as 92 percent for countries in the former Yugoslavia region. To further strengthen our results and identify the direction of the potential selection bias we employ an instrumental variable that exploits unique nature of privatization of real estate in transition countries. We find evidence of possible negative self-selection into mobility for in countries that belong to the region of extended Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Lastly, having data on household expenditures we adjust the income for cost of living to control for increases in nominal versus real income. When latter measure is used gains to certain types of mobility, in particular relocation to urban areas, are significantly deflated.