https://hdl.handle.net/10419/209556 Sat, 24 Oct 2026 02:51:34 GMT 2026-10-24T02:51:34Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/299328 Title: Discrimination and the fiscal benefits of immigration Authors: Lawson, Nicholas Abstract: In recent decades, there has been a lengthy debate about the fiscal costs or benefits of immigration, and much of the literature has found fiscal impacts that are close to zero. However, these studies have ignored the possibility that immigrants may be victims of wage discrimination in the labour market, despite evidence of such discrimination in various countries. In the presence of such discrimination, existing estimates of the fiscal impact of immigration will be biased: if immigrants are paid less than their marginal products, then someone else is receiving that income - mostly likely the firm's owners or other workers - and paying taxes on it, and that fiscal benefit is ignored by a model that disregards discrimination. In this paper, I evaluate the quantitative importance of this mechanism, by calibrating a search-and-matching model to Canadian data and simulating the fiscal impact of increases in immigration. When the model and calibration omits wage discrimination against immigrants, the average fiscal impact of immigration is negative, but it becomes positive if discrimination explains the wage gaps between natives and immigrant workers: at an economy-wide level, an annual fiscal cost of about $3 billion in the absence of discrimination becomes a fiscal benefit of about $4 billion in the presence of discrimination. My results indicate that wage discrimination against immigrants could significantly affect our estimates of the fiscal impact of immigration. Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/10419/299328 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/299329 Title: Intergenerational persistence in the effects of compulsory schooling in the U.S. Authors: Galama, Titus; Munteanu, Andrei; Thom, Kevin Abstract: Using linked records from the 1880 to 1940 full-count United States decennial censuses, we estimate the effects of parental exposure to compulsory schooling (CS) laws on the human capital outcomes of children, exploiting the staggered roll-out of state CS laws in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. CS reforms not only increased the educational attainment of exposed individuals, but also that of their children. We find that one extra year of maternal (paternal) exposure to CS increased children's educational attainment by 0.015 (0.016) years - larger than the average effects on the parents themselves, and larger than the few existing intergenerational estimates from studies of more recent reforms. We find particularly large effects on black families and first-born sons. Exploring mechanisms, we find suggestive evidence that higher parental exposure to CS affected children's outcomes through higher own human capital, marriage to more educated spouses, and a higher propensity to reside in neighborhoods with greater school resources (teacher-to-student ratios) and with higher average educational attainment. Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/10419/299329 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/299330 Title: School choice, student sorting and academic performance Authors: Munteanu, Andrei Abstract: This study examines the impact of school choice on academic achievement. I use differences in the number of schools across similar Romanian towns, generating variation in school choice for local students, who compete for seats via test scores. I find that more school choice results in increased sorting of students by admission scores across different schools. Sorting widens achievement gaps between high- and low-admission score students. High-scorers having access to better teachers and peer effects are the primary factors explaining these widening gaps. Lastly, between-school competition via school choice does not increase average achievement levels. Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/10419/299330 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/322405 Title: The impact of after-school care on maternal income: Evidence from Canadian administrative data Authors: He, Ailin; Renée, Laëtitia; Sayour, Nagham Abstract: We study the impact of affordable after-school care programs on the labor market outcomes of mothers. Specifically, we analyze the effects of a policy implemented in Quebec (Canada) in 1998, which reduced the costs and expanded the availability of after-school care programs for primary school children. To identify the causal effects of the policy, we use tax return data and a triple difference strategy, where we compare mothers of primary school children in Quebec and the rest of Canada, before and after the policy, relative to women with no children. Ten years after the policy implementation, we find an average increase in after-school care use of at least 32 school days. This increase is associated with a significant 11% increase in labor income for mothers with primary school children, mainly driven by an increase at the intensive margin of labor supply. Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/10419/322405 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z