Andreas Beerli

Publications

• The abolition of immigration restrictions and the performance of firms and workers: Evidence from Switzerland
• American Economic Review, 2021, 111(3), 976 – 1012, joint with Jan Ruffner, Michael Siegenthaler, and Giovanni Peri.
• Video summary, twitter summary English/ German, NZZ June 2020, ungated working paper, slides, replication files.
• Abstract We study a reform that granted European cross-border workers free access to the Swiss labor market. Our Differences-in-Differences estimations leverage the fact that regions close to the border were affected more intensely and earlier. In these regions, the employment share of foreign workers grew 10 percentage points in the decade following the reform. We find that the greater availability of cross-border workers increased wages and possibly employment of highly educated native workers although many of the new cross-border workers were also highly educated. These results are the consequence of a simultaneous increase in labor demand: free cross-border mobility increased the size, productivity, and innovation performance of some incumbent firms, attracted new firms, and created opportunities for natives to pursue managerial jobs. Most of these effects are larger in skill-intensive sectors and in firms that experienced skill shortages before the reform. Our results highlight that understanding the labor market effects of immigration requires analyzing the impact on workers and firms jointly.
• featured in: NZZ 2022.07, Blick 2020.09 (german), Luzerner Zeitung 2020.09 (german), Tagesanzeiger 2020.08 (german), NZZ 2020.08 (german), Tagesanzeiger 2017.04, VoxEU 2015, Corriere del Ticino 2015 (italian), Le Temps July 2015, May 2016 (french), Swiss Radio 2015 (german).

The supply of foreign talent: How skill-biased technology drives the location choice and skills of new immigrants
• Journal of Population Economics, 2023, 36, 681–718, joint with Ronald Indergand and Johannes Kunz. Working Paper.
• Abstract An important goal of immigration policy is to facilitate the entry of foreign-born workers whose skills are in short supply in national labor markets. In recent decades, information and communication technology [ICT] has fueled the demand for highly educated workers at the expense of lower educated groups. Exploiting the fact that different regions in Switzerland have been differentially exposed to ICT due to their pre-ICT industrial composition, we present evidence suggesting that more exposed regions experienced stronger ICT adoption, accompanied by considerably stronger growth in relative employment and wage-premia for college-educated workers. Following this change in the landscape of relative economic opportunities, we find robust evidence that these regions experienced a much stronger influx of highly educated immigrants in absolute terms as well as relative to lower educated groups. Our results suggest that immigrants’ location decisions respond strongly to these long-run, technology-driven changes in their economic opportunities.
• featured in: IMPACT Monash Business School Feb 2022, Smart Company May 2022, Media Briefing Royal Economic Society 2015, UBS Center Summary, Swiss Radio (german), Die Volkswirtschaft (May 2015: german/french, Nov 2015: german/french), Tagesanzeiger (german), BAZ Dec 2015.

• Demand forces of technical change: Evidence from the chinese manufacturing industry
• China Economic Review, 2020, 60, 101157, joint with Franziska Weiss, Fabrizio Zilibotti, and Josef Zweimüller. Ungated working paper
• Abstract This paper investigates the effect of domestic market size on innovation activities across different durable good industries in the Chinese manufacturing sector. We ad- dress the endogeneity of market size by an IV strategy, based on a measure of potential market size, which is driven only by changes in the Chinese income distribution. This measure is exogenous to changes in prices and qualities of durable goods and is a valid instrument for expected future market size. Our results indicate that an increase in market size by one percent leads to an increase in firm-specific total factor productivity by 0.46 percent and an increase in labor productivity by 0.50 percent. These findings are robust to controlling for export behavior of firms and supply side drivers of R&D.

Ongoing projects

• The Labor Market Effects of Restricting Refugees' Employment Opportunities
• joint with Achim Ahrens, Dominik Hangartner, Selina Kurer, and Michael Siegenthaler. Latest version, IZA Discussion Paper No. 15901.
• Abstract This paper investigates whether employment restrictions contribute to refugees having poorer labor market outcomes than citizens. Utilizing linked register data from Switzerland and within- canton policy variation between 1999–2015, we find substantial negative effects on employment and earnings when refugees are barred from working upon arrival, excluded from specific sectors or regions, or face resident prioritization. Removing 10% of refugees’ outside options reduces job-to-job mobility by 7.5% and wages by 3.0%, widening the wage gap to citizens in similar jobs. The restrictions depress refugees’ labor market outcomes even after they apply, but do not spur emigration nor benefit other immigrants.
• featured in: Blick am Sonntag May 2023.

• From Border Opening to Political Closing: Immigration and Voting for the Far Right in Switzerland
• joint with Ala' Alrababa'h, Dominik Hangartner, and Dalston Ward. IPL Working Paper Series 24-01.
• Abstract The main theories explaining electoral backlash against immigration give centrality to citizens’ cultural, economic, and security concerns. We test these predictions in Switzerland, which opened its labor market to neighboring countries in the 2000s. Using a difference-in-differences design, we document that immigration to Swiss border municipalities increased substantially after the borders opened, followed by a more than six percentage point (29%) increase in support for anti-immigrant parties. However, we find no adverse effects on citizens’ employment and wages nor on their subjective perceptions of economic, cultural, or security threats. Instead, we describe how far-right parties introduced novel threats to increase hostility toward immigrants. Our evidence demonstrates how elite rhetoric targeted border municipalities and had the greatest effects on voters vulnerable to political persuasion. Together, these findings emphasize the role that elites may play in driving anti-immigrant votes.

• The right to be heard: a randomized controlled trial on economizing procedural justice
• joint with Lorenz Biberstein, Martin Killias, Michel Maréchal, and Nora Markwalder. Slides available at request.
• Abstract The right to be heard – Audi Alteram Partem – is a fundamental principle underlying most legal systems and constitutes a basic human right. Legal scholars argue that the right to be heard is essential for the rule of law because it helps achieving truth and legitimizes judicial sentencing. On the other hand, hearings are labor and time intensive, leading to an overloaded criminal justice system, particularly for mass crimes. We evaluate the importance of hearings in the context of a large-scale reform of the Swiss Criminal Procedure Code, which delegated sentencing power from courts to the prosecutors through the means of penal orders. As a consequence of the reform, prosecutors sentence offenders by sending them a penal order that is solely based on police reports in roughly 90% of all criminal proceedings, de facto removing the defendants‘ right of being heard. We conducted a field experiment in collaboration with a public prosecution office in Switzerland and randomly invited defendants to participate in a prosecutorial hearing, allowing us to investigate the causal effect of hearings on prosecutorial sentencing, perceptions of procedural fairness, and recidivism.

I’m passionate about finding synergies and collaborating with NGOs, public and private sector organizations and research institutions to advance our understanding of human behavior allowing us to design, test, improve and scale social programs, policies and interventions that ultimately allow people and communities to thrive. Here are some organizations I have been working with:

Blogs / policy briefs