research

Publications

Several European countries have reformed their citizenship policies over the past decades. There is much to learn from their experience of how citizenship works; for whom it works; and what rules and policies matter for integration. The article surveys recent quasi-experimental evidence and field experiments from the social sciences on the link between eligibility rules, take-up and integration outcomes. Across countries and reforms, the evidence shows that faster access to citizenship increases take-up and improves the economic, educational, political and social integration of immigrants. Other eligibility rules like civic knowledge tests or application fees also impact who naturalizes and therefore benefits from citizenship. Birthright citizenship, which is much less common in Europe, turns out to be a powerful tool for getting second-generation immigrants off to a good start. Together, citizenship acts as a powerful catalyst benefiting immigrants as well as host countries. 

[Link to paper]


Working Papers/Work in Progress

We analyze whether faster access to citizenship fosters the economic integration of immigrants. Our empirical setting is Germany, which went from a strict concept of citizenship based on `jus sanguinis' to a more open citizenship policy. We make use of discontinuities in residency requirements faced by first-generation immigrants to estimate LATEs based on Local Randomization and Fuzzy RDD approaches. We find that a more liberal citizenship policy acts as a catalyst for integration, especially for immigrant women. Women's labor force participation increases by 8.9 percentage points and their earnings by 21.3%. We do not find any significant effects on immigrant men.


Using scraped data from Airbnb in New York City and Vision Transformer models for image classification, this paper examines the effects of an anti-discrimination policy that reduced the size of hosts' profile pictures. Unexpectedly, the policy increased the Black-White demand disparity by 3.3 percentage points. In response, Black hosts updated their profile pictures to make their faces more visible and increased the number of basic amenities offered. We show that the policy heightened guests' uncertainty in discerning positive facial features, such as smiles, which are positively correlated with demand, leading them to focus more on skin color.