Papers by Ainoa Aparicio Fenoll
Health Economics
The “healthy immigrant effect” refers to the well‐documented fact that immigrants are healthier t... more The “healthy immigrant effect” refers to the well‐documented fact that immigrants are healthier than natives upon arrival, but their health level converges to that of natives over time. Unfortunately, we know little about whether environmental, institutional, or selective return migration mechanisms are behind the convergence. In this paper, I test whether immigrants' naturalization influences health convergence speed. Using restricted‐access Spanish health data from the National and European Health Surveys, I estimate the impact of naturalization on health by exploiting that naturalization is possible after 2 years of residence for immigrants from specific countries and after 10 years for all other immigrants. I find that naturalization worsens immigrants' health and thus accelerates the speed of convergence to natives' health. Increases in employment are potential mechanisms behind this effect.
Social Science Research Network, 2022
economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our t... more economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
The MIT Press eBooks, Sep 30, 2016
Speaking the language of the host country eases migrants' integration and tends to boost their ec... more Speaking the language of the host country eases migrants' integration and tends to boost their economic success in the country of destination. However, the decision to acquire language skills may in itself be determined by the intention to migrate. In addition, conditional on being a migrant, the relation between language skills and migrants' integration and economic success goes both ways. Using data on the study of foreign languages during compulsory education in European countries, we test whether and how much language proficiency determines migration flows across Europe. The European Union with basically unlimited labor mobility and pronounced differences in youth unemployment rates provides an ideal testing ground for our hypothesis. We find that speaking the language of a country increases the likelihood to migrate to that country almost fivefold.
Labour Economics, Dec 1, 2022
We conduct a randomized controlled trial to study the effect of gender composition of teams on pe... more We conduct a randomized controlled trial to study the effect of gender composition of teams on performance, self-concept, working style, and individual satisfaction in endogenously and exogenously formed teams. We randomly divide a sample of high school students into two groups: we assign students in one group to teams of varying gender composition using random assignment and we allow the students in the other group to form teams freely. We find that students form disproportionately more male-predominant teams that those that would be formed under random assignment and that students in endogenously-formed gender-biased teams prefer even more gender-biased teams ex-post. Our results also show that female-predominant teams under-perform other types of teams but these differences disappear when teams are endogenously-formed.
Social Science Research Network, 2012
Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published i... more Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
Labour Economics, Aug 1, 2015
This paper studies the impact of product market competition on job security. I use di¤erences bet... more This paper studies the impact of product market competition on job security. I use di¤erences between types of labor contracts to measure job security. The e¤ect of competition on the use of di¤erent types of labor contracts is identi…ed by changes in legislation that lead to exogenous shifts in competition. Using both worker data from the Spanish Labor Force Survey and …rm data from the Spanish Business Strategies Survey, I show that job security decreases with competition. A one standard deviation increase in competition decreases the probability that a worker switches to a more secure labor contract by at least 22 percent.
B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2015
In Southern Europe youngsters leave their parental home signi…cantly later than in Northern Europ... more In Southern Europe youngsters leave their parental home signi…cantly later than in Northern Europe and the United States. In this paper, we study the e¤ect of a monthly cash subsidy on the probability that young adults live apart from parents and childbearing. The subsidy, introduced in Spain in 2008, is conditional on young adults renting accommodation, and it amounts to almost 20 percent of the average youngsters' wage. Our identi…cation strategy exploits the subsidy eligibility age threshold to assess the causal impact of the cash transfer. Di¤erence-in-Di¤erences estimates show positive e¤ects of the policy on the probability of living apart from parents, living with a romantic partner, and chidbearing for 22 year-olds compared to 21 year-olds. Results persist when the sample is expanded to include wider age ranges. The e¤ect is larger among young adults earning lower incomes and living in high rental price areas. This is consistent with the hypothesis that youngsters delay household formation because the cost is too high relative to their income.
Review of Economics of the Household, Jan 21, 2016
This paper analyzes peer e¤ects among siblings in the decision to leave parental home. Estimating... more This paper analyzes peer e¤ects among siblings in the decision to leave parental home. Estimating peer e¤ects is challenging because of problems of re ‡ection, endogenous group formation, and correlated unobservables. We overcome these issues using the exogenous variation in siblings'household formation implied by the eligibility rules for a Spanish rental subsidy. Our results show that sibling e¤ects are negative and that these e¤ects can be explained by the presence of old or ill parents. Sibling e¤ects turn positive for close-in-age siblings, when imitation is more likely to prevail. Our …ndings indicate that policy makers who aim at fostering household formation should target the household rather than the individual and combine policies for young adults with policies for the elderly.
World Development, Nov 1, 2018
We estimate the causal effects of immigrant networks on individuals' remittance sending behavior ... more We estimate the causal effects of immigrant networks on individuals' remittance sending behavior for migrants from many different countries residing in Spain. Our methodology addresses typical issues that arise when estimating network effects: reverse causality, common unobserved factors, and self-selection. In particular, we instrument the size of networks by predicting the number of migrants in each location using the location's accessibility by distinct methods of transportation and information about how migrants from each country initially arrived in Spain. Our findings show that immigrants from above-average remitting countries remit more if they live in larger networks. Testing for mechanisms of network effects, we find that these migrants are more likely to send remittances via bank transfers which suggests that large networks of individuals who remit a lot might be better at sharing information about cheaper remittance channels (bank transfers compared to money orders in post offices or agencies). In line with this hypothesis we find that due to network effects migrants shy away from the most expensive remittance channels, potentially freeing resources for additional remittances. Our results suggest that network effects could boost policy efforts to lower remittance prices.
Social Science Research Network, 2008
This paper assesses the impact of product market competition on job instability as proxied by the... more This paper assesses the impact of product market competition on job instability as proxied by the use of fixed-term labor contracts. Using both worker data from the Spanish Labor Force Survey and firm data from the Spanish Business Strategies Survey, I show that job instability rises with competition. In particular, a one standard deviation increase in competition in an economic sector decreases the probability that a fixed-term worker gets an open-ended contract within that sector in a given year by more than 30%. The effect is identified by means of exogenous shifts in competition brought about by changes in legislation.
Review of Economics of the Household, Nov 29, 2019
Family support is stronger in countries with weak family policies. In this paper, I test whether ... more Family support is stronger in countries with weak family policies. In this paper, I test whether the impact of women's retirement on their daughters'employment di¤ers between countries with strong and weak family policies. Using SHARE and self-collected historical data on early and full retirement ages in 20 European countries, I …nd that women's retirement leads to an increase in their daughters'employment in countries with low family bene…ts, while the opposite is true in high family-bene…ts countries. The positive e¤ect found in low family-bene…ts countries can be explained by a decrease in monetary transfers and an increase in grandchild care following retirement. Instead, the reduction in help with practical matters and contact with daughters can explain the negative e¤ect in high family-bene…ts countries.
Economics of Education Review, Jun 1, 2018
This paper explores whether native-immigrant differences in mathematics test scores can be accoun... more This paper explores whether native-immigrant differences in mathematics test scores can be accounted for by a lack of English proficiency. To identify the causal effect of English proficiency on test scores, I use the fact that language proficiency is closely linked to age at arrival, and that migrant children arrive at different ages from different countries. Using US data from the New Immigrant Survey, I find that English proficiency has no effect on mathematics tests and therefore they can be used to assess students' ability net of language effects.
Economics of Education Review, Oct 1, 2021
Social Science Research Network, 2010
This paper addresses the implications of transitory changes in labor market conditions for low ve... more This paper addresses the implications of transitory changes in labor market conditions for low versus high educated workers on the decision to acquire education. To identify this effect, I use the improvement in the labor market prospects of low educated workers motivated by the increases in employment and wages in the construction sector during the recent housing boom. The estimation strategy is based on the fact that changes in the labor market driven by the construction sector affect only men. Increases in construction activity are found to increase men's propensity to drop out of high-school, relative to women. According to this finding, policies promoting education should strengthen when in the presence of transitory shocks in the labor market that make dropping out more attractive.
Journal of Human Capital, Jun 1, 2016
This paper estimates how returns to education affect school enrollment and grade completion using... more This paper estimates how returns to education affect school enrollment and grade completion using a novel identification strategy. The strategy exploits construction data for the Spanish housing boom and the fact that the construction sector employs mostly uneducated men. Hence, the Spanish housing boom significantly decreased the returns to education for men while it hardly affected those for women. I show that a 10 percent decrease in the ratio of wages of educated to uneducated individuals leads to a 2 percent decrease in the probability of being enrolled in school and a 0.2 percent decrease in grade completion among 16–18-year-olds.
AEA Randomized Controlled Trials
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Papers by Ainoa Aparicio Fenoll