Research
Publications
Labor Market Effects of the Venezuelan Refugee Crisis in Brazil (with Hugo Sant’Anna) [Ungated Preprint]
Journal of Economic Geography. Jan 2026.
We use administrative panel data on the universe of Brazilian formal sector workers to investigate the labor market effects of the Venezuelan refugee crisis, focusing on Roraima state, which experienced a sharp, localized refugee inflow. Using difference-in-differences, we compare outcomes for Roraima workers to those from similar northern states without refugee arrivals. We find that hourly wages of Brazilians in Roraima increased by approximately 2% with no overall evidence of employer-initiated job separations. Wage gains were more pronounced in sector-occupation pairs with limited refugee presence and non-tradable sectors, consistent with demand-driven mechanisms. We also find suggestive evidence of labor complementarities.
The End of Free Movement and International Migration (with Hugo Sant’Anna) [Ungated Preprint]
Economics Letters. Dec 2025.
This paper examines how the end of free movement following Brexit in January 2021 reshaped non-transient international migration flows involving the UK. Using a novel dataset of monthly bilateral migration flows from 2019 to 2022 constructed from Facebook user location data covering 181 countries with high spatial and temporal resolution, we estimate a gravity model framework to assess post-Brexit changes in migration patterns. We find that the end of free movement significantly reduced migration between the UK and EU countries, while migration from non-EU countries to the UK increased. Migration from the UK to non-EU countries also declined. These findings illustrate that Brexit reconfigured the geography and composition of international migration flows.
Working Papers
Immigration Enforcement and Local Business Dynamics (with Hugo Sant’Anna)
Under review
This paper examines the effects of interior immigration enforcement on local business dynamics. Exploiting the federally determined rollout of the Secure Communities (SC) program across U.S. counties, we use county-sector-year Census administrative data to show that enforcement reduces establishment entry and job creation, with no significant effect on exit or job destruction. We provide evidence consistent with a labor supply mechanism: SC activation reduces the immigrant population, raises wages, and generates larger effects in immigrant-intensive and high-turnover sectors. The decline in job creation is driven by continuing establishments adjusting along the intensive margin rather than exiting.
Trade Effects of Immigration Enforcement in Labor-Intensive Agriculture
Under review
This paper examines how interior immigration enforcement, which reduces the supply of immigrant farm labor, affects domestic and international trade in the U.S. specialty crop sector. Using variation in enforcement intensity within and across states between 1997 and 2012, I find that stricter enforcement is associated with declines in the number and share of immigrant farmworkers and in the production of labor-intensive specialty crops. I then estimate reduced-form gravity models and find that increased enforcement lowered both interstate and international exports while increasing imports from U.S. states with lower enforcement intensity. In contrast, I find no direct effect on international imports. These results suggest that short-run adjustments to labor supply shocks occur primarily through domestic reallocation of specialty crop production and reduced exports rather than increased reliance on foreign imports.
This paper investigates the evolution of economic and welfare gaps between low-skill agricultural and non-agricultural workers in the United States from 2001 to 2023. Using harmonized microdata from the American Community Survey, I construct a pooled cross-section of wage and salary workers aged 18-60 with a high school education or less, focusing on occupations with low educational requirements, a high share of immigrant labor, and physically intensive work. The results show that even after accounting for observable worker characteristics and regional or time differences, agricultural workers consistently earned lower wages and faced higher poverty rates than their non-agricultural counterparts. However, the wage gap narrowed substantially, by roughly 35-40 percent, over the two decades. Decomposition analysis shows that the narrowing of the wage gap was not driven by changes in the demographic composition of the agricultural workforce. Agricultural workers also worked more weekly hours, though this difference has diminished since COVID-19. They had consistently lower health insurance coverage and a lower household-income-to-poverty ratio, and immigrant agricultural households continued to rely more heavily on SNAP than their non-agricultural peers. These gaps persist even after accounting for agriculture’s concentration in rural areas. As U.S. agricultural producers increasingly compete with non-agricultural sectors for a relatively common pool of low-skill workforce, persistent wage and welfare gaps may limit the agricultural sector’s ability to attract and retain labor critical to the food supply.
Does Employer-Based Immigration Enforcement Reduce the Undocumented Immigrant Population? Re-examining the Effects of LAWA (with Hugo Sant’Anna)
Under review
This paper replicates Bohn, Lofstrom, and Raphael (2014), who use the synthetic control method to estimate the effects of Arizona’s Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) on the state’s likely unauthorized immigrant population. Our narrow replication confirms their main finding: LAWA led to a 1.5-2 percentage point decline in the noncitizen Hispanic share. In a wide replication, we apply the augmented synthetic control method and synthetic difference-in-differences and extend the sample through 2015. The core finding is robust to these alternatives, though the effect attenuates after 2011. Migration data suggest responses along both outflow and inflow margins.