How Important is Access to Jobs? Old Question - Improved Answer.

We study the impact of job proximity on individual employment and earnings. The analysis exploits a Swedish refugee dispersal policy to obtain exogenous variation in individual locations. Using very detailed data on the exact location of all residences and workplaces in Sweden, we find that having been placed in a location with poor job access in 1990-91 adversely affected employment in 1999. Doubling the number of jobs in the initial location in 1990-91 is associated with 2.9 percentage points higher employment probability in 1999. Considering that the 1999 employment rate was 43 percent among the refugees, this is a considerable effect. The analysis suggests that residential sorting leads to underestimation of the impact of job access.Job access, endogenous location, natural experiment

Age at Migration and Social Integration

The paper studies childhood migrants and examines how age at migration affects their ensuing integration at the residential market, the labor market, and the marriage market. We use population-wide Swedish data and compare outcomes as adults among siblings arriving at different ages in order to ensure that the results can be given a causal interpretation. The results show that the children who arrived at a higher age had substantially lower shares of natives among their neighbors, coworkers and spouses as adults. The effects are mostly driven by higher exposure to immigrants of similar ethnic origin, in particular at the marriage market. We also find some effects on educational attainment, employment rates and wages, although these effects are much more limited in magnitude. We also analyze children of migrants and show that parents' time in the host country before child birth matters, which implies that the outcomes of the social integration process are inherited. Inherited integration has a particularly strong impact on the marriage patterns of females.immigration, integration, segregation, age at migration, siblings

Open Borders, Transport Links and Local Labor Markets

We study the labor market impact of opening borders to low wage countries. The analysis exploits time and regional variation provided by the 2004 EU enlargement in combination with transport links to Sweden from the new member states. The results suggest an adverse impact on earnings of present workers in the order of 1 percent in areas close to pre-existing ferry lines. The effects are present in most segments of the labor market but tend to be greater in groups with weaker positions. The impact is also clearer in industries which have received more workers from the new member states, and for which across-the-border work is likely to be more common. There is no robust evidence on an impact on employment or wages. At least part of the effects is likely due to channels other than the ones typically considered in the literature

Seeking similarity: How immigrants and natives manage at the labor market

We show that immigrant managers are substantially more likely to hire immigrants than are native managers. The finding holds when comparing establishments in the same 5-digit industry and location, when comparing different establishments within the same firm, when analyzing establishments that change management over time, and when accounting for within- establishment trends in recruitment patterns. The effects are largest for small and owner-managed establishments in the for-profit sector. Separations are more frequent when workers and managers have dissimilar origin, but only before workers become protected by EPL. We also find that native managers are unbiased in their recruitments of former coworkers, suggesting that information deficiencies are important. We find no effects on entry wages. Our findings suggest that a low frequency of immigrant managers may contribute to the observed disadvantages of immigrant workers.Minority workers, Labor mobility, Workplace segregation

Seeking Similarity: How Immigrants and Natives Manage at the Labor Market

We show that immigrant managers are substantially more likely to hire immigrants than are native managers. The finding holds when comparing establishments in the same 5-digit industry and location, when comparing different establishments within the same firm, when analyzing establishments that change management over time, and when accounting for within-establishment trends in recruitment patterns. The effects are largest for small and owner-managed establishments in the for-profit sector. Separations are more frequent when workers and managers have dissimilar origin, but only before workers become protected by EPL. We also find that native managers are unbiased in their recruitments of former co-workers, suggesting that information deficiencies are important. We find no effects on entry wages. Our findings suggest that a low frequency of immigrant managers may contribute to the observed disadvantages of immigrant workers.minority workers, labor mobility, workplace segregation

Peers, Neighborhoods and Immigrant Student Achievement: Evidence from a Placement Policy

Immigrants typically perform worse than other students in the OECD countries. We examine to what extent this is due to the population characteristics of the neighborhoods that immigrants grow up in. We address this issue using a governmental refugee placement policy which provides exogenous variation in the initial place of residence in Sweden. The main result is that, for a given share of immigrants in a neighborhood, immigrant school performance is increasing in the number of highly educated adults sharing the subject’s ethnicity. A standard deviation increase in the fraction of highly educated adults in the assigned neighborhood increases compulsory school GPA by 0.9 percentile ranks. This magnitude corresponds to a tenth of the gap in student performance between refugee immigrant and native-born children. We also provide tentative evidence that the overall share of immigrants in the neighborhood has a negative effect on GPA.peer effects, ethnic enclaves, immigration, school performance

Education and Criminal Behavior: Insights from an Expansion of Upper Secondary School

We study the impact on criminal activity from a large scale Swedish reform of vocational upper secondary education, extending programs from two to three years and adding more general theoretical content. The reform directly concerns age groups where criminal activity is high and students who are highly overrepresented among criminal offenders. The nature of the reform and the rich administrative data allow us to shed light on several behavioral mechanisms. Our results show that the prolonged and more general education lead to a reduction in property crime, but no significant decrease in violent crime. The effect is mainly concentrated to the third year after enrollment, which suggests that being in school reduces the opportunities and/or inclinations to commit crime

Limbo or Leverage? Asylum waiting and refugee integration

We study the impact of asylum waiting, exploiting a rapid increase in processing times for asylum seekers to Sweden. Longer waiting slows down integration. Accumulated earnings during the first four years after application are 2.3 percent lower per added month of waiting. The impact is due to delay rather than negative effects of waiting per se. There is no evidence of detrimental effects on psychiatric or other forms of health. From the date of asylum, those who have waited longer perform better in the labor market and are more likely to start advanced language training and labor market programs