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Items tagged with: LaborEcon

Continuing 🧵 of new migration research:

In a novel randomized evaluation, standalone English-language training for adult immigrants in the US…

—Causes ↑ 56% in annual earnings (years 2–10)

—Has +6% ROI for public purse via ↑ tax revenue

By Heller+Slungaard Mumma—> doi.org/10.1257/pol.20210336 #LaborEcon

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy Immigrant Integration in the United States: The Role of Adult English Language Training By BLAKE H. HELLER AND KIRSTEN SLUNGAARD MUMMA The ability to speak and understand a host country’s primary language is strongly associated with measures of immigrant integration. We estimate the causal effects of English language training for adult immigrants on participants’ civic and economic outcomes using randomized enrollment lotteries from a public adult education program in Massachusetts. Participation doubles voter participation and increases annual earnings by $2,400 (56 percent). Increased tax revenue from earnings gains cover program costs over time, generating a 6 percent return for taxpayers. Ours is the first randomized evaluation of adult English language training as a standalone intervention in the United States.
#LaborEcon

Immigration-driven increases in ethnic/occupational diversity—measured by surname diversity in full-universe census—caused ↑ innovation in US counties, 1850–1940

Not compositional: robust to surname FE

Simply meeting more people unlike oneself causes more new economic ideas measured as patents, including 'breakthrough' highly-cited patents

By my star GMU colleague Jonathan Schulz, +Posch & Henrich—>

dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.453120… #LaborEcon #Immigration

Surname Diversity, Social Ties and Innovation Max Posch, Jonathan Schulz, Joseph Henrich August 3, 2023 Abstract We study whether interactions between individuals with different skills, expertise and perspectives influenced innovation in U.S. counties from 1850 to 1940. We introduce and validate a new measure of social interactional diversity based on the distribution of surnames: lower surname diversity indicates more concentrated social interactions among like-minded people. Leveraging quasi-random variation in counties’ surname compositions—stemming from the interplay between historical fluctuations in im- migration and local factors that attract immigrants—we find that surname diversity increases both the quantity and quality of innovation. The results support the view that social interactions between diverse minds are key drivers of innovation. Keywords: Innovation, social interactions, surname diversity, immigration JEL Classification: 033, R11, N92, J15, Z13

Surname Diversity, Social Ties and Innovation

dx.doi.org
#immigration #LaborEcon

Does immigration cause reduced support for social policy?

73 research teams—using identical data—reached vastly different estimates.

"Researchers must make analytical decisions so minute that they often do not even register as decisions."

Breznau et al.—> doi.org/10.1073/pnas.220315011… #immigration #laborecon

Observing many researchers using the same data and hypothesis reveals a hidden universe of uncertainty This study explores how researchers’ analytical choices affect the reliability of scientific findings. Most discussions of reliability problems in science focus on systematic biases. We broaden the lens to emphasize the idiosyncrasy of conscious and unconscious decisions that researchers make during data analysis. We coordinated 161 researchers in 73 research teams and observed their research decisions as they used the same data to independently test the same prominent social science hypothesis: that greater immigra- tion reduces support for social policies among the public. In this typical case of social science research, research teams reported both widely diverging numerical findings and substantive conclusions despite identical start conditions. Researchers’ expertise, prior beliefs, and expectations barely predict the wide variation in research outcomes. More than 95% of the total variance in numerical results remains unexplained even after qualitative coding of all identifiable decisions in each team’s workflow. This reveals a universe of uncertainty that remains hidden when considering a single study in isolation. The idiosyncratic nature of how researchers’ results and conclusions varied is a previously underappreciated explanation for why many scientific hypotheses remain contested.
#immigration #LaborEcon

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