Dissertation Defense: Juno Kim
Candidate: Juno Kim
Major: Economics
Advisor: Anna Maria Mayda, Ph.D.
Essays in Migration
The dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter studies geographical mobility within a country that is prompted by political shocks. In particular, I am focusing on how partisan policy differences affect interstate migration of the low-skilled foreign-born population in the U.S. The second chapter investigates how the existence of both first- and second-generation immigrants affects the voting outcome in the U.S. The third chapter studies how a minimum wage increase affects migration incentives for low-skilled immigrants and natives through a theoretical model and derives predictions.
Chapter 1. Party Affiliation of Governors and Internal Migration of Low-Skilled Immigrants: Evidence from the US States
This paper examines how political shocks affect the interstate migration of low-skilled immigrants, particularly Hispanic individuals. Despite the Democratic Party’s pro-migration stance, regression discontinuity estimation reveals that Democrats’ close win in the US gubernatorial election leads to a lower net interstate migration of low-skilled Hispanic immigrants due to reduced inflows and increased outflows. In contrast, low-skilled white natives show higher net flows resulting from larger inflows and reduced outflows to the state. During Democratic governors’ terms, labor market outcomes for Hispanic immigrants worsened compared to white natives, as reflected in estimates showing higher (lower) unemployment rates for low-skilled Hispanic immigrants (white natives). Additionally, I found that Democratic governors set higher state minimum wages and higher Earned Income Tax Credit rates. A simple framework with imperfect substitution between immigrants and natives in the labor market demonstrates that migration and labor outcomes align with the labor market policies implemented by Democratic governors.
Chapter 2. The Political Impact of Second-generation Immigrants: Evidence from the United States (joint with Anna Maria Mayda and Meixi Wan)
This paper estimates the causal impact of second-generation immigrants on the Republican vote share in the US elections. We refine the shift-share instrument variable for second-generation immigrants by using languages spoken at home and ancestry information. Given that first- and second-generation immigrants make up 26% of the U.S. population, their political impact on the host country is significant. In particular, second-generation immigrants have both direct and indirect pathways of their political impact as they have voting rights from birth, and they received traits from their parents’ generation that are very different from other voters of third-plus generations. Various analyses that divide population by race, skill, and country of origin shed light on potential channels. Providing a closer look at how political dynamics is formed in a society with a sizable foreign-born share like the US, this project will contribute to the literature and suggest various policy implications to policymakers.
Chapter 3. A Minimum Wage Increase and Heterogenous Migration Incentives Between Low-skilled Immigrants and Natives
This study investigates a theoretical model that explains how a minimum wage increase affects migration incentives for low-skilled immigrants and natives. In a setting of heterogenous productivity across immigrants and natives among low-skilled labor due to disparity in skill sets that are specific to local labor markets, a minimum wage increase that binds low-skilled immigrants but not natives could prompt different incentives between the two types of low-skilled labor. Firms have incentive to adjust input composition in the way to lower the relative demand of low-skilled immigrants and increase the relative demand of low-skilled natives. In labor supply side, lower probability of getting a job for immigrants decreases the expected payoff in a local labor market with minimum wage increase and the continuation value of staying in the local labor market decreases. Therefore, low-skilled immigrants either don’t come into or move out from the local labor market with minimum wage increase. On the other hand, the opposite happens to native workers with the same skill level. This prediction of the model is in line with the empirical findings in the first chapter of the thesis.