Working Papers
PTSD and Refugees’ Underemployment – Evidence from People Displaced from Ukraine
with Mette Foged (University of Copenhagen, Rockwool Foundation), Karen-Inge Karstoft (University of Copenhagen)
RFBerlin Discussion Paper, featured in RF Berlin’s Research Insight: Why Some Refugees Struggle to Work
Revise and resubmit at Economic Journal
ABSTRACT
Employment gaps between refugees and natives are well documented, yet the role of trauma-related mental health in shaping these gaps remains underexplored, partly because most data sources lack measures of symptoms early after arrival. We assess probable PTSD shortly after displacement in an entire refugee arrival cohort and link these data to administrative tax records. We find that PTSD symptoms are associated with lower employment probabilities, explaining roughly one-quarter of the refugee-native employment gap one to two years after arrival. This difference is nearly twice as large as the difference attributable to English proficiency and comparable to the difference linked to pre-displacement employment. Among employed refugees, probable PTSD is associated with fewer hours worked per month, though not with lower hourly wages. Our findings underscore the potential of early psychological screening and support as complements to existing labor market integration policies.
The Making of a Ghetto: Place-Based Policies, Labeling, and Impacts on Neighborhoods and Individuals
with Jack Melbourne (Bocconi), Sara Signorelli (CREST, Ecole Polytechnique), Yajna Govind (Aix-Marseille Université, Copenhagen Business School)
RFBerlin Discussion Paper, IZA Discussion Paper (outdated)
Revise and resubmit at Economic Journal
ABSTRACT
Policies targeting disadvantaged areas aim to improve their conditions, but the labels they impose carry consequences of their own. In this paper, we examine Denmark's Ghetto Plan, one of the first recent place-based policies explicitly targeting migrant populations. Under this policy, certain public housing deemed ``problematic'' were officially designated as ``ghettos'', with minimal additional implications. Using rich administrative data and a Difference-in-Differences approach, we show that the policy backfired, worsening spatial inequality through compositional shifts driven by native avoidance. In addition, the policy was particularly detrimental to exposed natives, who accepted a 4% annual income loss to leave stigmatized areas.
How Initial Accommodation Shapes Refugee Integration: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the Ukrainian Displacement Crisis in Denmark
with Mette Foged (University of Copenhagen, Rockwool Foundation), Jens Hainmüller (Stanford), Mikkel Stahlschmidt (University of Copenhagen, Rockwool Foundation)
RFBerlin Discussion Paper
ABSTRACT
Sudden displacement crises require rapid expansion of refugee accommodation, yet little is known about how housing type affects integration. The 2022 Ukrainian refugee crisis triggered unprecedented use of pop-up housing and private hosting. Using administrative registers on the full population of Ukrainian refugees in Denmark and linked surveys, we classify initial accommodation from address records, track refugee outcomes for 18 months, and exploit quasi-random within-municipality assignment. Private hosting raises employment and earnings, lowers transfer receipt, and improves well-being, while pop-up shelters perform no worse than conventional public housing. The results suggest that how refugees are housed matters beyond where they are placed.
Who Opens Their Homes to Refugees? Social ties and capacity during the Ukrainian refugee crisis
with Mette Foged (University of Copenhagen, Rockwool Foundation), Jens Hainmüller (Stanford), Mikkel Stahlschmidt (University of Copenhagen, Rockwool Foundation)
ABSTRACT
Private hosting of refugees is a high-cost prosocial behaviour: households share their homes for months. Whether it can scale during displacement crises depends on who steps forward, but population-level evidence is scarce because hosts are rarely identifiable in the full population. Using Denmark's linked address, population and housing registers, we identify about 3,900 households that privately hosted Ukrainian refugees after Russia's 2022 invasion and compare them to all other households. Hosting is highly selective along two margins. Ukrainian-linked households are far more likely to host, and workplace exposure to Ukrainians is associated with hosting. Hosts also come disproportionately from larger households in spacious homes. Selection on socioeconomic resources, including owner-occupation, is concentrated among non-Ukrainian hosts, whereas Ukrainian-linked households host across the income distribution. The findings clarify when private hosting can provide flexible civic reception capacity during displacement shocks.
Work in Progress
After Autocracy - Tunisia After the Arab Uprisings
ABSTRACT
What happens to the existing balance of political power when autocrats leave? I study the territorial redistribution of political power in Tunisia after the Arab Uprisings, four weeks of mass protests forced the president of 24 years to step down, setting Tunisia off on a transition out of autocracy. Political decentralization was an important part of the new constitution a Constituent Assembly elected in October 2011 started to draft. But municipal elections were not held until May 2018. In these seven years, the central government appointed, and replaced municipal councils by decree. I generate a novel data set on these council appointments from regulative texts and exploit variation across regions and over time to quantify the power struggles that arose between civil society seeking greater autonomy and the state trying to establish larger territorial reach. I find that appointments led to more violent conflict. This conflict was driven by repeated replacements of previously appointed councils. Event studies support the idea that violent conflict was indeed a reaction to council appointments and not vice versa.
Motivations for Female Political Representation - Perceptions and Preferences from Tanzania
with Pablo Selaya (University of Copenhagen), and Sina Smid (Bocconi)
ABSTRACT
Why do people want more women in politics? While women’s numeric representation has increased globally, it remains unclear how the public perceives its connection to substantive policy influence. This paper examines public preferences regarding the relationship between numeric and substantive representation in Tanzania—a pioneer in institutionalized gender quotas. Using original survey data, including survey experiments conducted at the University of Dar es Salaam across three time points (2020–2021), we develop a novel and robust measure of these preferences. Our findings show that support for increased female political representation is primarily driven by a desire for greater substantive representation. Respondents who express this motivation are significantly more likely to perceive that female candidates face higher standards in politics. Moreover, the gap between preferred and perceived levels of representation serves as a meaningful indicator of demand for gender equality, but not with support for Tanzania's current gender quota. We find that respondents generally favor affirmative action policies aimed at equality of opportunity over equality of outcome.
Compositional changes in Ukrainian refugee arrival cohorts in Denmark - Socio-economic characteristics, war exposure, and mental health over the course of war
with Sara Skriver Mundy (University of Copenhagen), Mette Foged (University of Copenhagen, Rockwool Foundation), Karen-Inge Karstoft (University of Copenhagen)
ABSTRACT
Long-lasting wars sustain displacement and the arrival of refugees in receiving countries. At the same time, as wars endure, characteristics of arriving refugees may shift, warranting changes in reception programs to better meet their needs. However, studies on such compositional changes remain limited. This study examines compositional changes across Ukrainian refugee arrival cohorts in Denmark, drawing on all adults who immigrated between the full-scale invasion in Feb. 2022 and June 2026. Combining representative survey data with official socio-economic and health registries, we study changes across arrival cohorts to assess whether later cohorts might have fewer socio-economic resources and poorer mental health. Analyses are ongoing (based on Feb. 2022 to June 2024 arrival cohorts so far), but are expected to be completed by March 2027 (including all arrivals up to June 2026). Preliminary findings reveal shifts in socio-economic factors and war exposures, with more mixed findings on mental health. A big share of the earliest cohort are middle-aged females from central Ukraine, accompanied by minor children, and with spouses remaining in Ukraine. Later cohorts were more mixed in terms of gender, age, region of origin, and accompanying family. The proportion of highly educated Ukrainians decreased by approximately 10 percentage points between the early and latest arrival cohorts, and war exposure increased markedly from 53% to 81% over the same period. Despite this, the share meeting criteria for probable PTSD decreased slightly across cohorts, and official health data indicate no differences in cumulative incidence of psychiatric treatment between arrival cohorts. This study indicates compositional differences between Ukrainian arrival cohorts, highlighting the importance of adapting reception programs over time as the profile of newly arriving refugees evolves with the duration of conflicts.
Refugee Assimilation Across Scandinavia
with Jacob Nielsen Arendt (Rockwool Foundation), Bernt Bratsberg (Frisch Center), Mette Foged (University of Copenhagen, Rockwool Foundation), Olle Hammar (Linnaeus University), Giovanni Peri (UC Davis), Oddbjørn Raaum (Frisch Center), Sébastien Willis (Uppsala University)
PURPOSE
Refugee employment has recently reached record high levels in Denmark, with similar improvements in Norway and Sweden. Understanding why this has occurred – and whether it has occurred at the cost of limited language investments - is key to sustain the positive development. We will examine how the size and composition of the arrival cohorts, local labor demand, and national policy reforms contribute to employment trajectories of refugees by comparing Denmark, Sweden and Norway in a unified framework.
The Perceived Importance of Language Training
with Mette Foged (University of Copenhagen, Rockwool Foundation), Giovanni Peri (UC Davis)
Survey experiment pre-registered at AEA RCT Registry, DOI: 10.1257/rct.13858-1.0
Metanorms and Segregation
with Vicky Fouka (Stanford), and Alain Schläpfer (Stanford)