Browsing by Author "Undurraga, Raimundo"

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    Immigration and Labor Market (Mis)Perceptions
    (2022) Ajzenman, Nicolás; Domínguez Rivera, Patricio; Undurraga, Raimundo
    Exposure to immigrants often triggers sentiments of hostility and backlash among native-born populations. Among the main concerns identified by surveys, labor market conditions typically rank at the top. We combine a two-way fixed effects model with a Bartik-type 2SLS model to causally estimate the effects of immigration on labor outcomes in Chile, where the foreign-born population almost tripled in five years. While immigration did not systematically affect employment levels, it did cause an increase in unemployment-related concerns. Our results provide a plausible hypothesis to explain the backlash against immigrants: misperception regarding the effect of immigrants on labor market conditions.
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    Immigration, Crime, and Crime (Mis)Perceptions
    (2023) Ajzenman, Nicolás; Domínguez Rivera, Patricio; Undurraga, Raimundo
    This paper studies the effects of immigration on crime and crime perceptions in Chile, where the foreign-born population tripled in less than ten years. We document null effects of immigration on crime but positive and significant effects on crime-related concerns and on preventive behavioral responses, such as investing in home security. We explore several channels and provide suggestive evidence related to low- versus high-education immigrants, ethnicity-related intergroup threats, and the role of local media. (JEL D83, D91, J15, K42, L82, O15, O17)
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    Location Preferences and Slums Formation: Evidence from a Panel of Residence Histories
    (ELSEVIER, 2022) Celhay, Pablo; Undurraga, Raimundo
    Slum dwellers may decide to live in slums due to location preferences, even though they have access to subsi-dized housing in the city outskirts. We examine this hypothesis by studying the evolution of location choices across slum and subsidized housing dwellers, for which we construct a panel of residential trajectories that spans between 1960 and 2008 in Santiago, Chile. While slum and subsidized housing dwellers are born in munici-palities with statistically comparable levels of wealth, labor force participation, and share located in the inner urban zone, we find that slum dwellers are more likely to end up living in municipalities located in the inner city, with lower poverty levels, and higher levels of labor force participation. Consequently, employment rates among slum dwellers are significantly higher. Still, slum dwellers show inferior housing. From a revealed preferences approach, this result suggests that slum dwellers are willing to consume lower quality housing for geographical access to better labor opportunities. We further examine this hypothesis by using a trade-off game designed to elicit stated-preferences for location (relative to housing) and find that, consistent with their revealed preferences for location, slum dwellers are significantly more likely to prioritize location quality over housing quality than their subsidized housing counterparts. Overall, our results suggest that location preferences play a non-negligible role in slums formation.