Immigration and Wages: Evidence from Construction

To identify relative wage impacts of immigration, we make use of licensing requirements in the Norwegian construction sector that give rise to exogenous variation in immigrant employment shares across trades. Individual panel data reveal substantially lower wage growth for workers in trades with rising immigrant employment than for other workers. Selective attrition from the sector masks the causal wage impact unless accounted for by individual fixed effects. For low and semi-skilled workers, effects of new immigration are comparable for natives and older immigrant cohorts, consistent with perfect substitutability between native and immigrant labor within trade. Finally, we present evidence that immigration reduces price inflation, as price increases over the sample period were significantly lower in activities with growth in the immigrant share than in activities with no or small change in immigrant employment.

Immigration and Wages: Evidence from Construction

To identify relative wage impacts of immigration, we make use of certification and licensing requirements in the Norwegian construction sector that give rise to exogenous variation in immigrant employment shares across trades. Individual panel data reveal substantially lower wage growth for workers in trades with rising immigrant employment than for other workers. Selective attrition from the sector masks the causal wage impact unless accounted for by individual fixed effects. For low and semi-skilled workers, effects of new immigration are comparable for natives and older immigrant cohorts, consistent with perfect substitutability between native and immigrant labor within trade. Finally, we present evidence that immigration reduces price inflation, as price increases over the sample period were significantly lower in activities with growth in the immigrant share than in activities with no or small change in immigrant employment.

Marital sorting, household labour supply, and intergenerational mobility across countries

We present comparable evidence on intergenerational earnings mobility for Denmark, Finland, Norway, the UK and the US, with a focus on the role of gender and marital status. We confirm that earnings mobility in the Nordic countries is typically greater than in the US and in the UK, but find that, in contrast to all other groups, for married women mobility is approximately uniform across countries when estimates are based on women's own earnings. Defining offspring outcomes in terms of family earnings, on the other hand, leads to estimates of intergenerational mobility in the Nordic countries which exceed those for the US and the UK for both men and women, single and married. Unlike in the Nordic countries, we find that married women with children and with husbands from affluent backgrounds tend to exhibit reduced labor supply in the US and the UK. In these countries, it is the combination of assortative mating and labor supply responses which weakens the association between married women's own earnings and their parents' earnings

When minority labor migrants meet the Welfare State

The lifecycle employment profiles of minority labor migrants who came to Norway in the early 1970s diverge significantly from those of native comparison persons. During the early years, employment in the migrant group was nearly complete and exceeded that of natives. But, about ten years upon arrival, immigrant employment started a sharp and steady decline, and by 2000 their employment rate was 50 percent, compared to 87 percent for the native comparison group. We find that immigrant employment is particularly sensitive to the business cycle, and that the economic downturns of the 1980s and 1990s accelerated their exit from the labor market. We trace part of the decline to the migrants initially being overrepresented in shrinking industries and occupations. But we also identify considerable disincentives embedded in the social security system that contribute to poor lifecycle employment performance of immigrants with many dependent family members

The Effect of Schooling on Earnings: Evidence on the role of family background from a large sample of Norwegian twins

A large representative sample of Norwegian twins is used to estimate the causal effect of schooling on earnings in Norway, separately for men and women. The within-twin-pair estimates reveal that standard cross section (OLS) estimates of the schooling effect on male hourly earnings are biased upwards. For women, no such bias is found. However, family background appears to affect both educational attainment and post-schooling labour supply of women, implying that the standard estimate of the effect of schooling on female annual earnings is upward biased.

Pennies from Heaven? Using Exogeneous Tax Variation to Identify Effects of School Resources on Pupil Achievements

Despite important policy implications associated with the allocation of education resources, evidence on the effectiveness of school inputs remains inconclusive. In part, this is due to endogenous allocation; families sort themselves non-randomly into school districts and school districts allocate money based in order to compensate (or reinforce) differences in child abilities, which leaves estimates of school input effects likely to be biased. Using variation in education expenditures induced by the location of natural resources in Norway we examine the effect of school resources on pupil outcomes. We find that higher school expenditures, triggered by higher revenues from local taxes on hydropower plants, have a significantly positive effect on pupil performance at age 16. The positive IV estimates contrast with the standard cross-sectional estimates that reveal no effects of extra resources.pupil achievement, school resources

Immigrant Wage Profiles Within and Between Establishments

Life cycle wages of immigrants from developing countries fall short of catching up with wages of natives. This disparity reflects both lower wages at entry and lower wage growth. Using linked employer-employee data, we show that 40 percent of the native-immigrant wage gap is explained by differential sorting across establishments. Our findings point to differences in job mobility and intermittent spells of unemployment as major sources of the discrepancy in lifetime wages. The inferior wage growth of immigrants primarily results from failure to advance to higher paying establishments over time. This pattern is consistent with statistical discrimination in hiring but not with monopsonistic discrimination due to informational frictions.

Educating Children of Immigrants: Closing the Gap in Norwegian Schools

Children of immigrant parents constitute a growing share of school cohorts in many OECD countries, and their educational performance is vital for successful social and economic integration. This paper examines educational outcomes of first and second generation non- OECD immigrants in Norway. We show that children of immigrants, and particularly those born outside Norway, are much more likely to leave school early than native children. Importantly, this gap shrunk sharply over the past two decades and second generation immigrants are now rapidly catching up with the educational performance of natives. For childhood immigrants, upper secondary completion rates decline with age at arrival, with a particularly steep gradient after age seven. Finally, we find that immigrant-native attainment gaps disappear when we condition on grade points from compulsory school.immigrant children, educational attainment, school performance

When Minority Labor Migrants Meet the Welfare State

The lifecycle employment profiles of minority labor migrants who came to Norway in the early 1970s diverge significantly from those of native comparison persons. During the early years, employment in the migrant group was nearly complete and exceeded that of natives. But, about ten years upon arrival, immigrant employment started a sharp and steady decline, and by 2000 their employment rate was 50 percent, compared to 87 percent for the native comparison group. We find that immigrant employment is particularly sensitive to the business cycle, and that the economic downturns of the 1980s and 1990s accelerated their exit from the labor market. We trace part of the decline to the migrants initially being overrepresented in shrinking industries and occupations. But we also identify considerable disincentives embedded in the social security system that contribute to poor lifecycle employment performance of immigrants with many dependent family members.

Pennies from Heaven? Using Exogeneous Tax Variation to Identify Effects of School Resources on Pupil Achievements

Despite important policy implications associated with the allocation of education resources, evidence on the effectiveness of school inputs remains inconclusive. In part, this is due to endogenous allocation; families sort themselves non-randomly into school districts and school districts allocate money based in order to compensate (or reinforce) differences in child abilities, which leaves estimates of school input effects likely to be biased. Using variation in education expenditures induced by the location of natural resources in Norway we examine the effect of school resources on pupil outcomes. We find that higher school expenditures, triggered by higher revenues from local taxes on hydropower plants, have a significantly positive effect on pupil performance at age 16. The positive IV estimates contrast with the standard cross-sectional estimates that reveal no effects of extra resources.pupil achievement, school resources