Francesc Ortega

Immigration and housing booms: Evidence from Spain

We estimate empirically the effect of immigration on house prices and residential construction activity in Spain over the period 1998-2008. This decade is characterized by both a spectacular housing market boom and a stunning immigration wave. We exploit the variation in immigration across Spanish provinces and construct an instrument based on the historical location patterns of immigrants by country of origin. The evidence points to a sizeable causal effect of immigration on both prices and quantities in the housing market. Between 1998 and 2008, the average Spanish province received an immigrant inflow equal to 17% of the initial working-age population. We estimate that this inflow increased house prices by about 52% and is responsible for 37% of the total construction of new housing units during the period. These figures imply that immigration can account for roughly one third of the housing boom, both in terms of prices and new construction.

Immigration, Family Responsibilities and the Labor Supply of Skilled Native Women

This paper investigates the effects of Spain’s large recent immigration wave on the labor supply of highly skilled native women. We hypothesize that female immigration led to an increase in the supply of affordable household services, such as housekeeping and child or elderly care. As a result, i) native females with high earnings potential were able to increase their labor supply, and ii) the effects were larger on skilled women whose labor supply was heavily constrained by family responsibilities. Our evidence indicates that over the last decade immigration led to an important expansion in the size of the household services sector and to an increase in the labor supply of women in high-earning occupations (of about 2 hours per week). We also find that immigration allowed skilled native women to return to work sooner after childbirth, to stay in the workforce longer when having elderly dependents in the household, and to postpone retirement. Methodologically, we show that the availability of even limited Registry data makes it feasible to conduct the analysis using quarterly household survey data, as opposed to having to rely on the decennial Census.

Immigration, Citizenship, and the Size of Government

Abstract I study the political sustainability of the welfare state in an environment where immigration is the main demographic force and where governments choose immigration policy. Voters anticipate their childrens prospects of economic mobility and the future political consequences of todays policies. The skill distribution evolves due to intergenerational skill upgrading and immigration. I consider three regimes: permanent migration with citizenship granted by jus soli, permanent migration with jus sanguinis, and temporary migration. The main finding is that under permanent migration and jus soli there exists equilibria where redistribution is sustained indefinitely, despite constant skill upgrading. This is not the case in the other regimes. The crucial insight is that unskilled voters trade-off the lower wages from larger unskilled immigration with the increased political support for redistribution provided by the children of the current immigrants. These mechanisms are relevant for the ongoing debates over comprehensive immigration reform in the U.S, and elsewhere.

The Aggregate Effects of Trade and Migration: Evidence from OECD Countries

Two large but separate bodies of literature analyze the economic effects of international trade and immigration. Given that several factors are important determinants of both trade and migration flows, the previous studies are vulnerable to a potentially serious omitted-variables bias, questioning the validity of existing estimates of the effects of trade and immigration on income. This paper provides estimates of the effects of trade and immigration on income in a unified framework. We also provide a useful decomposition of the channels at work in terms of the employment rate, the capital intensity, and total factor productivity of the receiving economy. We assemble panel data on immigration flows, output, employment and capital stocks for thirty OECD countries over the period 1980-2007. In order to identify the causal effects of trade and immigration on economic outcomes we adopt and extend the gravity-based approach in Frankel and Romer (1999). Our predictors for trade and immigration flows are based on geography and the demographic trends of each country’s trade and migration partners. We find that immigration has a large, positive effect on the employment rate of the receiving country. However, it leaves income per capita unaffected because of an offsetting negative effect on TFP. In contrast, trade flows appear to increase income per capita, mainly through TFP growth, and have no impact on the employment rate. The positive employment effect of immigration is the most robust of all the effects identified in this paper.

Credible Redistributive Policies and Migration across US States

Does worker mobility undermine governments ability to redistribute income? This paper analyzes the experience of US states in the recent decades. We build a tractable model where both migration decisions and redistribution policies are endogenous. We calibrate the model to match skill premium and worker productivity at the state level, as well as the size and skill composition of migration flows. The calibrated model is able to reproduce the large changes in skill composition as well as key qualitative relationships of labor flows and redistribution policies observed in the data. Our results suggest that regional di¤erences in labor productivity are an important determinant of interstate migration. We use the calibrated model to compare the cross-section of redistributive policies with and without worker mobility. The main result of the paper is that interstate migration has induced substantial convergence in tax rates across US states, but no race to the bottom. Skill-biased in-migration has reduced the skill premium and the need for tax-based redistribution in the states that would have had the highest tax rates in the absence of mobility.

Immigration and the survival of the welfare state

This paper analyzes the political sustainability of the welfare state in a model where immigration policy is also endogenous. In the model, the skills of the native population are affected by immigration and skill accumulation. Moreover, immigrants affect future policies, once they gain the right to vote. The main finding is that the long-run survival of redistributive policies is linked to an immigration policy specifying both skill and quantity restrictions. In particular, in steady state the unskilled majority admits a limited inflow of unskilled immigrants in order to offset growth in the fraction of skilled voters and maintain a high degree of income redistribution. Interestingly, equilibrium immigration policy shifts from unrestricted skilled immigration, when the country is skill-scarce, to restricted unskilled immigration, as the fraction of native skilled workers increases. The analysis also suggests a new set of variables that may help explain international differences in immigration restrictions.

Gender Specialization in Households: An Empirical Analysis

This paper studies the effect of parental education on the educational attainment of children in the US for cohorts born after 1910. Importantly, we allow for cohort-specific differences by gender. Our estimates show that paternal education has been more important for the attainment of male children (paternal specialization on sons). However, maternal specialization (on daughters) seems to have appeared only for cohorts born after 1955. We interpret these results as evidence that fathers are more important role models for sons while mothers are a more important reference for daughters. We argue that our results are robust to the presence of hereditary unobserved ability and conjecture that both types of gender specialization may have been present in earlier cohorts too.

Rising Sea Levels and Sinking Property Values: The Effects of Hurricane Sandy on New York's Housing Market

Are coastal cities adjusting to rising sea levels? This paper argues that large-scale events have the potential to ignite the process. We examine the effects of hurricane Sandy on the New York City housing market. We assemble a large plot-level dataset with rich geographic data on housing sales in New York City for the period 2003-2015, along with information on which building structures were damaged by the hurricane, and to what degree. Our difference-in-difference estimates provide robust evidence of a negative impact on the price trajectories of houses that were directly affected by Sandy. Interestingly, this is also the case for houses that were not damaged but face high risk of coastal flooding. Our results suggest that Sandy has increased the perceived risk of living in those neighborhoods. We also show that the negative effects on housing prices appear to be highly persistent.

The Decline of the Welfare State: Demography and Globalization

No abstract available.

The effect of the H-1B quota on the employment and selection of foreign-born labor

The H-1B program allows skilled foreign-born individuals to work in the United States. The annual quota on new H-1B visa issuances fell from 195,000 to 65,000 for employees of most firms in fiscal year 2004. However, this cap did not apply to new employees of colleges, universities, and non-profit research institutions. Additionally, existing H-1B holders seeking to renew their visa were also exempt from the quota. Using a triple difference approach, this paper demonstrates that cap restrictions significantly reduced the employment of new H-1B workers in for-profit firms relative to what would have occurred in an unconstrained environment. Employment of similar native workers in for profit firms did not change, however, consistently with a low degree of substitutability between H1B and native workers. The restriction also redistributed H-1Bs toward computer-related occupations, Indian-born workers, and firms using the H-1B program intensively.