Essays on Labor Economics and Immigration

Abstract

This dissertation consists of one chapter in labor economics and two chapters on immigration.Chapter 1 examines the importance of school alumni networks for labor-market outcomes. Specifically, I use LinkedIn public profile data to study the influence of vertical connections (i.e., the relationships between senior and junior workers who are connected through sharing the same alma mater) on hirings and promotions. Taking the law sector as a case study relying on an event-study design and an exposure framework, I find that having a senior worker who shares the same alma mater as a junior worker not only increases the junior worker’s chances to be hired by the firm, especially at small-size firms, but also makes the junior worker more likely to be internally promoted. Investigations into the mechanisms suggest that the homophily channel may be at play for both hiring and promotions, but the information channel appears more important for promotions. Chapter 2 investigates the spillover effects of a U.S. immigration enforcement policy, "Secure Communities," on the health status and the demand for health-care of Hispanic U.S. citizens, that is, individuals who are not directly targeted by the policy but are nonetheless culturally linked to unauthorized immigrants. By exploiting the staggered rollout of the policy within an event-study and a triple-difference framework, I find that, relative to non-Hispanic whites, Hispanics are less likely to seek healthcare and have worse physical and mental health status following the activation of Secure Communities. It appears that the negative spillover effects are mostly driven by psychological rather than income effects. Chapter 3, joint with Leah Boustan and Tammy Tseng, explores how Asian immigration has affected cities, neighborhoods and schools. We study white flight from Asian arrivals in high-socioeconomic-status Californian school districts from 2000-2016 using initial settlement patterns and national immigrant flows to instrument for entry. We find that, as Asian students arrive, white student enrollment declines in higher-income suburbs. These patterns cannot be fully explained by racial animus, housing prices, or correlations with Black/Hispanic arrivals. Parental fears of academic competition may play a role.