My research

My main research project is a book draft, based on my dissertation, titled: Give me your Engineers, your Ph.D.s, yearning to fund my Welfare State. Fiscal Crises and Selective Immigration Policies, in which I suggest that when countries face a fiscal crisis, they can use global policies, such as selective immigration policies -specifically points systems- to alleviate the domestic economy.

My theory is based in the idea that the fiscal contribution of immigrants is shaped by the type of immigrants (high-skilled or low-skilled), as well as the type of welfare state in the recipient country. High skilled immigrants are likely to pay more in taxes than what they receive in government services, particularly when those services are not universal. As a consequence, countries with relatively small welfare states (what Esping Andersen calls liberal welfare states) can use policies that attract more high-skilled immigrants, such as selective immigration policies, as a means to raise revenue for the state in the face of a fiscal crisis.

Below are the abstract of some of the other projects I am currently working on. Please do not cite without permission.

  • The Fiscal Foundations of Immigration Policy Preferences

  • Previous research has tested economic motivations for individual preferences for immigration policy, both using traditional and experimental research designs. There seems to be consensus over the impact of labor market variables in public opinion.   The results, however, are conflicting regarding the impact of fiscal concerns on individual preferences.  While Scheve et. al (2007) find that fiscal pressures at the state level significantly affect individual level preferences for immigration policy, Hainmueller and Hiscox (2010) using the same measures- argue there is little evidence supporting that hypothesis.  In this paper, I suggest using new measures in order to answer whether fiscal pressures affect individual preferences for immigration policy. I find that by using individual instead of state level measures, there is evidence that fiscal pressures do affect public opinion on immigration

  • Is the brain drain as bad as advertised? Emigration policies in developing countries:

  • Even though scholars and policymakers have voiced concerns about the negative consequences of highly skilled emigration from developing countries (the so called ``brain drain"), some of these countries implement policies to encourage their best and brightest to migrate, in contrast with the notion that the drawbacks from the brain drain are greater than the benefits it brings. But, not all developing countries implement policies to encourage emigration with the same intensity. The goal of this paper is then to answer what factors make developing countries more likely to implement policies that foster highly skilled emigration and why and when they do so. This will contribute to the literature on international labor mobility by bringing attention to the impact of international migration in the source countries and by shedding light on how developing countries are affected in different ways by migration.

  • Do immigration policies make countries more attractive to multinational corporations?

  • Multinational corporations (MNCs) have a myriad of countries to invest, which creates competition between countries that want to attract foreign direct investment.  Many multinationals require highly qualified or specialized workers that they might not be able to find locally.  I argue that immigration policies that make it easier to recruit skilled foreign workers are one of the factors that can make countries more attractive to foreign direct investment.

  • Moving from Mass Public to Policymakers. Ideal Point Estimation on Immigration Policy in the U.S. Senate:

  • Immigration policy has emerged as an important policy debate across the advanced, industrialized countries, yet it remains relatively under explored in Political Science. To date, the majority of the work in political science focuses on questions of what determines individual preferences over immigration policy, and with few exceptions it has ignored economic factors. This paper seeks to insert the legislative process into the analysis by examining what determines the vote of U.S. Senators on immigration reforms. Using a hierarchical item response theory model, I estimate the ideal points of the Senators of the 109th United States Congress (2005-2006) on immigration. I then examine several competing hypotheses about what influences the voting behavior of legislators over immigration policy: are legislators’ actions determined by the flow of immigrants, the main economic activities of the state, or by party identification. As immigration and trade are both movements of factors of production, I bring trade models to the immigration arena.