Microeconometric Analyses on Economic Consequences of Selective Migration

This volume was prepared by Jens Ruhose while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes four self-contained chapters that contribute to the understanding of the performance of migrants in the host society and the impact of migrants on the citizens of these societies. Given a large increase in the migrant population of many developed countries in recent decades, it is important to know both how migrants integrate into the destination countries and how immigration affects natives. Beside the motivation of the topic, the introduction in Chapter 1 of the volume summarizes three studies of the author that deal with explanations for migrant selection and the importance of migrant selection to labor force quality. Chapter 2 quantifies non-pecuniary migration costs that are incurred due to selective migration along cultural traits. Chapter 3 discusses whether early performance-based tracking of children into different school types impede migrant integration. Chapters 4 and 5 cover the effect of immigration on the host societies by showing that growing up in high immigration area increases intergenerational income mobility among natives and by showing that immigration may, under specific circumstances, increase crime.