Mathis Wagner
Ph.D. Candidate Department of Economics mwagner@uchicago.edu (773) 396 7897 CV	References Robert Topel (chair) Jonathan Guryan Steven Levitt John List
I am a currently on the job market. I will be available for interviews at the ASSA Annual Meeting January 3-5, 2009 in San Francisco.
JOB MARKET PAPER
“Understanding the Labor Market Impact of Immigration” (January 22, 2009) In this paper I provide estimates of the impact of immigration on native wage levels (rather than wage inequality which has been the focus of the literature). I use variation within 2-digit industries across regions using Austrian panel data from 1986 to 2004 for identification. Using an instrumental variable strategy I find large displacement effects in the service sector and large native employment increases in manufacturing. This heterogeneous response is explained by large increases in output in manufacturing, due to a high elasticity of product demand, as immigration reduces the cost of production, while on average demand is far less elastic in service industries. Estimated substitution effects, for a given level of output, are large in both industries and in line with US estimates. The fraction of immigrants went from 5% to 15% of the labor force over this period; the estimates imply this reduced average native wages by around 4.7% and resulted in 5% of the native labor force changing industry, primarily from services to manufacturing. I extend the model to allow native labor to endogenously choose what type of labor factor to provide in an industry-region. The estimates suggest that in response to immigration, even within the same industry, natives change what they do.
WORKING PAPERS
“An Introduction to Optimal Sample Arrangements” (with J. List and S. Sadoff) revise and resubmit, Experimental Economics We provide simple rules of thumb that researchers can apply to improve the efficiency of their experimental designs. We buttress these points by including empirical examples from the literature.
“Gender Wage Differentials over the Lifecycle” Using panel data on a cohort of Austrians I decompose gender wage differences over the lifecycle. Lower wages in female occupations accounts for the initial gap at age 20 (around 15%). Subsequent widening of the gap is primarily due to one-off falls in wages after childbirth, differences in accumulation of experience and tenure account for the rest, whereas returns to experience and tenure are very similar across genders.
“Pension Benefits and Retirement Decisions: Using Income and Price Elasticities to Identify and Estimate a Structural Model of Retirement” (with D. Manoli and K. Mullen)