Research

Emigration of young, highly educated individuals may deprive origin countries of entrepreneurs. We identify exogenous variation in emigration from Italy by interacting past diaspora networks and current economic pull factors in destination countries. We find that a one standard deviation increase in the emigration rate generates a 4.8% decline in firms creation in the local labor market of origin. An accounting exercise decomposes the estimated effect into four components: subtraction of individuals with average entrepreneurial propensity, selection of young and college-educated among emigrants, negative spillovers on firm creation and selection on unobservable characteristics positively associated with entrepreneurship.

In the media: Lavoce.info, L'Espresso, Il Sole 24 Ore

We study how the US presidential election of 2016 affected the subsequent inflow of Mexican-born immigrants. We use the "Matricula Consular de Alta Seguridad" data to construct proxies for annual inflows and internal movements of Mexican-born individuals, including undocumented immigrants, across US commuting zones. We find that a 10-percentage point increase in the Republican vote share in a commuting zone reduced inflows by 1.8 percent after the 2016 Trump election. The internal relocation of established Mexican immigrants primarily explains this reduction, though inflows of new immigrants decreased as well.

We study how tax incentives affect the return migration of high-skilled expatriates to their home country, exploiting a generous income tax break for returnees in Italy. Using administrative data and a Triple-Difference design, we estimate a migration elasticity to the average net-of-tax rate just below one. Responses are sizable across the upper half of the earnings distribution, indicating that tax-induced migration is not limited to top earners. A cost-benefit analysis reveals that, while costly in the short term, the scheme pays for itself in present value if a sufficiently large fraction of returnees remains after the scheme elapses.

Previous version: IZA Working Paper No. 17224, CESifo Working Paper No. 10271 

In the media: Lavoce.info, L'Opinion, Domani, Il Foglio, Radio 1, Il Post, Radio 24, La Repubblica

 (draft available upon request)

There is increasing evidence on the geographical mobility of high-earners in response to tax differentials, both across and within countries. However, an open question is the extent to which these mobility responses reflect a true movement of human capital or merely a relocation of tax bases for fiscal purposes. In this paper I study internal migration between Italian municipalities in response to changes in local tax differentials. Using administrative data on bilateral transfers of residence between municipalities, and exploiting variation in local tax rates between location pairs over time, I document three findings. First, changes in local income tax differentials induce transfers of residence towards low-income-tax municipalities, in line with the existing literature. Second, individuals move towards locations with higher property tax rates, after a reform in 2009 exempted primary residences from property taxation, consistent with homeowners transferring their fiscal residence to high-tax municipalities to take advantage of a greater tax exemption. Last, preliminary results using a novel administrative data source, linking individuals' job locations to their residence, point towards no effect of changes in local tax differentials on work- and study-related transfers between municipalities. These findings can inform policymakers to what extent raising local taxes results in losing human capital, in addition to tax revenue.

[Draft coming soon!]

We investigate whether nationally televised sports influence natives' perceptions of immigrants in European countries. Using a triple-difference strategy comparing over- versus under-performing teams, in countries with high versus low share of immigrant-descent players in the national team, before and after a highly salient international sporting event—the 2018 World Cup final stage—we find persistently improved attitudes toward non-EU migrants and higher perceived contributions of immigrants. We also observe a decrease in perceived discrimination reported by ethnic minorities. In contrast, we find no evidence of an increase in proxies for national pride.

Several countries use preferential tax schemes to attract high-skilled workers from abroad. While these schemes are motivated by the positive spillover effects of tax-induced immigration on receiving countries, there is limited empirical evidence documenting these human capital externalities in the context of tax-induced immigration. In this project, we investigate the firm-level effects of tax-induced immigration in Italy, which offer preferential tax schemes for high-skilled immigrants and returnees since 2010. Using social security data and leveraging pre-existing variation in firms’ exposure to the policy, we estimate the effects of tax-induced immigration on productivity, wages, employment and other outcomes of firms and co-workers.