Economic Studies 175 Henrik Andersson Immigration and the Neighborhood

202 Pages·2017·2.38 MB·English

Economic Studies 175
Henrik Andersson
Immigration and the Neighborhood

Henrik Andersson
Immigration and the Neighborhood
Department of Economics, Uppsala University
Visiting address: Kyrkogårdsgatan 10, Uppsala, Sweden
Postal address: Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Telephone: [phone]
Telefax: [phone]
Internet: http://www.nek.uu.se/
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ECONOMICS AT UPPSALA UNIVERSITY
The Department of Economics at Uppsala University has a long history.
The first chair in Economics in the Nordic countries was instituted at
Uppsala University in 1741.
The main focus of research at the department has varied over the years
but has typically been oriented towards policy-relevant applied economics,
including both theoretical and empirical studies. The currently most active
areas of research can be grouped into six categories:
* Labour economics
* Public economics
* Macroeconomics
* Microeconometrics
* Environmental economics
* Housing and urban economics
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given in our project catalogue. The catalogue can be ordered directly from
the Department of Economics.
Dissertation presented at Uppsala University to be publicly examined in Hörsal 2,
Ekonomikum, Kyrkogårdsgatan 10 A, Uppsala, Friday, 8 June 2018 at 13:15 for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy. The examination will be conducted in English. Faculty examiner:
Professor Albert Saiz (MIT, Department of Urban Studies and Planning).
Abstract
Andersson, H. 2018. Immigration and the Neighborhood. Essays on the Causes and
Consequences of International Migration. Economic studies 175. 181 pp. Uppsala:
Department of Economics. ISBN 978-91-506-2699-5.
Essay 1 (with Kristoffer Jutvik): This paper uses quasi-experimental evidence to understand
how changes in migration policy affect the number of asylum seekers. We look specifically
at a sudden, regulatory change in the Swedish reception of Syrian asylum seekers. The
change took place in September 2013, and implied that all Syrian asylum seekers would be
granted permanent, instead of temporary residence permits. Using high frequency data and an
interrupted time series set-up, we study the extent to which this change caused more Syrian
citizens to apply for asylum in Sweden, and how the change affected the distribution of asylum
seekers in Europe. Results show that the change in policy almost doubled the number of asylum
seekers from Syria within 2013, with a significant jump in numbers already within the first week
after the implementation of the policy. While this also decreased the share of asylum seekers to
other large recipient countries (Germany), the effects were highly temporary.
Essay 2: In this paper I estimate the causal effect of ethnic enclaves on the probability of self-
employment. To account for neighborhood selection I make use of a refugee dispersal program.
Results indicate that larger ethnic enclaves, measured as the share of self-employed coethnics
in the municipality immigrants first arrive into, affect the probability of self-employment
positively, while the share of all other coethnics has a negative effect. Results however also
indicate that there is a long term economic penalty to being placed with a larger share of self-
employed coethnics, an effect which is partly mediated through the choice of self-employment.
Essay 3 (with Heléne Berg and Matz Dahlberg): In this paper we investigate the
migration behavior of the native population following foreign (refugee) immigration, with a
particular focus on examining whether there is any support for an ethnically based migration
response. If ethnicity is the mechanism driving the change in natives' migration behavior,
our maintained hypothesis is that native-born individuals who are more ethnically similar to
arriving refugees should not change their migration behavior to the same extent as native-born
individuals with native-born parents (who are ethnically quite different from refugees). Using
rich geo-coded register data from Sweden, spanning over 20 consecutive years, we account for
possible endogeneity problems with an improved so-called ``shift-share" instrumental variable
approach; in particular, our strategy combines policy-induced initial immigrant settlements
with exogenous contemporaneous immigration as captured by refugee shocks. We find no
evidence of neither native flight nor native avoidance when studying the full population. We
do, however, find native flight among individuals who are expected to be more mobile, and
within this group, we find that all natives, irrespective of their parents' foreign background,
react similarly to increased immigration. Our results therefore indicate that preferences for
ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods may not be the dominant channel inducing flight.
Instead our estimates indicate that immigration leads to more socio-economically segregated
neighborhoods. This conclusion can have important implications for the ethnically based tipping
point literature.
Essay 4 (with Matz Dahlberg): In this paper we examine the short-run housing market
effects of refugee immigration to Sweden. Given that Sweden is a major refugee receiving
country, it constitutes an interesting and important case to study. To deal with the endogeneity
resulting from the refugees' location choices, we use an econometric specification that includes
neighborhood fixed effects and an instrumental variable that is based on a historical settlement
pattern mainly determined by a refugee placement policy. We find that refugee immigration to
small neighborhoods has no average effect on changes in housing prices in that neighborhood.
We find a positive effect on increased housing supply, measured as the number of objects on sale.
The zero effect of immigration on housing prices stands in contrast to the negative results found
in earlier studies. We hypothesize that the reason is due to different preferences for homogeneity
in Sweden, and/or to institutional features in the Swedish rental sector.
Keywords: Immigration, Neighborhood, Refugees, Asylum policy, Ethnic enclaves, Native
migration, Housing prices, Self-employment
Henrik Andersson, Department of Economics, Box 513, Uppsala University, SE-75120
Uppsala, Sweden.
© Henrik Andersson 2018
ISSN 0283-7668
ISBN 978-91-506-2699-5
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-348497 (http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-348497)
Acknowledgements
Themakingofthisthesishasbeenacollaborativeeffort. Ihavebenefited
from plenty of help from creative and intelligent people, and given the
sheer number of individuals who, knowingly or unknowingly, influenced
thecontent,Iwon’tbeabletomentionall. Hereis,however,myattempt
to thank some of the most important contributors.
First off, I thank my supervisors, Matz Dahlberg and Per Engstr¨om.
Matz, your influence cannot be overestimated. It was your suggestion
to study white flight that led me into the route of migration, which is
now the theme of this thesis. You’re encouragement, drive and genuine
interest in the topic as well as your PhD students, make you a great
mentor. It is fair to say that my thesis would have been both of much
lower quality, as well as about something completely different, had I
ended up with a different supervisor. Per, thank you for helping me
think about theory, mechanisms and what my results really mean; in
short, thank you for making me think about economics. I sincerely
hope to be able to continue working with both of you in the future.
Beyond the help of my supervisors, Matti Sarvim¨aki and Karin Ed-
mark provided insightful and truly helpful comments at my licentiate
and final seminar. In both of these occasions, I am also very thankful to
comments from P-A Edin. Further important was the cooperation with
my co-author Hel´ene Berg, who in many ways functioned as an extra
supervisor during the formative second year as a PhD student. In ad-
dition, a long list of people, including Susanne Urban, Cristina Bratu,
Tim Blackwell, Peter Fredriksson, Che-Yuan Liang, Mattias Engdahl,
Jon Fiva, Alicia Adsera, Gideon Goerdt, Florian Morath and Albert
Saiz, have at different stages and in different forms given valuable com-
ments on the texts that make up this thesis. To this list of helping
hands, I must also add a countless number of participants at seminars
and workshops.
The majority of my time as a PhD-student was spent at the Institute
for Housing and Urban Research (IBF). IBF is a great interdisciplinary
environment, and I’m thankful for perspectives from sociology, geogra-
phy and political science. I am especially grateful to Kristoffer Jutvik,
for long morning discussions, a sharp political eye, and for your positive
takeonlife. SpecialthanksalsotoG¨oranRyd´enandKerstinLarsson,for
teaching me elegant words as well as always being good coffee-company,
to Ann-Sofie Wigg Bodin for all the help with job-market references,
and of course to all my fellow PhD-students, without whom everyday
work would be considerably bleaker. IBF is a unique workplace, and it
will be hard to replace.
The PhD program also included a number of (for me) fairly technical
coursesattheDepartmentofEconomics. Admittedly,thiswasn’talways
a fun and inspiring experience, but it was made a whole lot better given
thecompanyofmyfantasticcohort: Maria,Olle,Paula,Dagmar,Lucas,
Aino-MaijaandFranklin. Itgoeswithoutsayingthatyouareallbrilliant
academics, and I have benefited greatly from our conversations, our
studying and your general advice. Most importantly however, thank
you for being able to talk about other things than economics, for seeing
the world outside of academia, and of course, for all the pancakes.
At the Department of Economics, I also owe lots of gratitude to the
administrative staff, with a special thanks to Katarina Gr¨onvall. Oskar
Nordstr¨om Skans and Luca Repetto provided excellent advice through
the job market process, during which I also enjoyed the company of
Sebastian Escobar.
InadditiontothetimeinUppsala, Ialsospentsixmonthsasavisitor
atUCLA.ThiswouldnothavebeenpossiblewithoutLeahBoustan,who
waskindenoughtoinvitemeasaguestresearcher. Formakingmytime
in California to an experience of a lifetime, I am also grateful to Marva
and Cody Shearer, the best hosts anyone could ask for.
Outside academia, I have been fortunate to have friends who helped
me sustain my social life. Thanks to Stefan, Dick, Per, Gustav, Fredrik
and Robert, for being great travel companions, and (at least seemingly)
actually interested in what I do. I am also thankful to Caroline, Johan,
Jenny, Eric, Adam, Sandra, Henrik and Fanny, for all the laughs and
conversations.
My final thanks goes to my family: My brother in law Christian
for help with everything from guitar to occasional accommodation, my
niece Ellie and nephew Oscar, for giving me a new perspective on life,
my siblings, Linus and Louise, for being my single greatest source of
inspiration, and to my parents, Kristina and Ante, for programming me
with the self-confidence, which made me believe I could do this in the
first place. Last, to Emelie, for being my outlier. For being colorful,
unique, and so wonderfully weird.
Svartb¨acken, Uppsala, April 2018
Henrik Andersson
Contents
Acknowledgements iii
........................................................................
Introduction 1
...................................................................................
I Do asylum seekers respond to policy changes? Evidence from
the Swedish-Syrian case 13
...........................................................
1 Introduction 14
...................................................................
2 Push and pull factors 16
.....................................................
3 The policy and the Syrian case 18
.......................................
4 Empirical method and data 24
............................................
5 Results 27
..........................................................................
6 Conclusion 34
.....................................................................
Appendices 39
..............................................................................
A Regression Tables 39
...........................................................
B Data sources 40
..................................................................
II Ethnic enclaves, self-employment and the economic performance
of refugees 41
...............................................................................
1 Introduction 42
...................................................................
2 Mechanisms at work 45
.......................................................
3 Empirical model and sample selection 50
.............................
4 Describing the sample 55
....................................................
5 Results 61
..........................................................................
6 Conclusion 76
.....................................................................
Appendices 81
..............................................................................
A Construction of the sample 81
.............................................
B Stability of the estimates 83
................................................
C Heterogeneity 89
.................................................................
D Categorization of languages 91
............................................
III Migrating natives and foreign immigration: Is there a preference
for ethnic residential homogeneity? 93
...........................................
1 Introduction 94
...................................................................
2 Immigration to Sweden 98
..................................................
3 Potential reactions of natives 100
........................................
4 Econometric strategy 106
....................................................
5 Data and descriptive statistics 112
......................................
6 Results 116
.........................................................................
7 Concluding remarks 128
......................................................
Appendices 133
............................................................................
A Using IV-estimator suggested by Jaeger et al. (2018) 133
.....
B Source countries 136
...........................................................
IV Refugee immigration and the housing market 139
..........................
1 Introduction 140
.................................................................
2 Estimating the effect of immigration on house prices 145
.....
3 Data 150
............................................................................
4 Results 160
.........................................................................
5 Conclusions 168
..................................................................
Appendices 173
............................................................................
A Using IV-estimator suggested by Jaeger et al. (2018) 173
.....
B Adopting specifications used by Saiz (2007) and S´a
(2014) 176
..........................................................................
C Using covariates dated in t and t+1 178
.............................
D Hedonic price equations 178
................................................