Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Essays on the Self-Selection and Productivity of Migrants

The proposed research will study Italian passengers arriving in the Port of New York between 1907 and 1925. Using web-based transcription and standard record linkage techniques, the PI will construct a data base consisting of the personal characteristics of these passengers at their arrival in the United States and data from decennial US censuses detailing their post-arrival labor market outcomes. These data will allow the PI to improve on prior studies of the composition of migrant flows and of the labor market outcomes of migrants, allowing the PI to study several central questions in the economics of migration. 1. Are migrants positively or negatively self-selected on the basis of productivity? 2. How do the cyclical economic conditions of the sending and receiving economies affect migrant self-selection and thus the productivity composition of migratory flows? 3. How efficacious are absolute and relative (to the population of origin) measures of migrant productivity in predicting the labor market outcomes of migrants in the host economy?