About EARN

Since 1999, municipalities in Denmark have been responsible for integrating refugees, immigrants and family reunified people into the Danish labor market. Over the years, many different approaches have been taken with the goal to improve the integration efforts. Many methods and models have been developed and tested locally, but there is still uncertainty about what works, how and under what conditions.

This will be investigated by the Economic Assimilation Research Network (EARN).

EARN is supported by the Innovation Fund. The project is a partnership between the University of Copenhagen, LG Insight, the National Research and Analysis Center for Welfare (VIVE) and the Ministry of Immigration and Integration Affairs.

The project will run from 1. Jan. 2017 to 31. Dec. 2021. This page contains the scientific output from EARN, for reports, newsletters and other information, please visit the Danish website.

EARN Publications

The Role of Institutions in the Labor Market Impact of Immigration

We study the role of labor market institutions and policies in affecting the wage impact of immigration using a cross-country meta-analysis approach. We gather information on 1,548 previouslyreported semi-elasticities from 66 academic studies covering 20 developed countries. We supplement this dataset with country-level institutional structure and coverage data from the OECD. These include …

Mette Foged, Linea Hasager, Vasco Yasenov

IZA WP CREAM DP IPL WP (Older Version)

EARN Working Papers

Sick of your poor neighborhood

Does living in a low-income neighborhood have negative health con-sequences? We document causal neighborhood effects on health by ex-ploiting a Spatial Dispersal Policy that quasi-randomly resettled refugeesacross neighborhoods from 1986-1998. The risk of developing a lifestylerelated disease before 2018 increased by 5.1 percent for those allocatedto the poorest third of neighborhoods compared …

Linea Hasager, Mia Renee Herløv Jørgensen

CEBI WP

Early labor market entry, language acquisition and labor market success of refugees

Early on-the-job training offered to refugees in Denmark has a temporary positive short-term effects on employment, however reduces language tests scores after 3 to 4 years. Time spent in job training replaces time spent in language courses, which may explain the negative effect on language acquisition and the lack of persistent employment effects

Jacob Nielsen Arendt, Iben Bolvig

VIVE WP

Integrating Immigrants by Addressing Labor Shortages? A Policy Evaluation

We evaluate the effect on newly arrived refugees’ employment of a new policy, introduced in Denmark in 2013, that matched refugees to occupations with local labor shortages after basic training for those jobs. Leveraging the staggered roll-out across municipalities, we find that the policy increased employment by 5.4-5.8 percentage points one year after arrival and 8.6 percentage points two years …

Mette Foged, Janis Kreuder, Giovanni Peri

Language Training and Refugees' Integration

Language training led to persistently higher wages and employment of treated refugees after the program. Effect emerged after completion of language classes and was accompanied by additional schooling and higher probability of working in communication-intensive jobs, suggesting that language training, rather than other minor aspects of the reform, produced it. Spillover effect on higher school completion and lower probability of crime for male children with both parents exposed to the reform.

Mette Foged, Jacob Nielsen Arendt, Iben Bolvig, Linea Hasager, Giovanni Peri

CReAM DP NBER WP Latest Presentation (Video)

EARN Work in Progress

Does Granting Refugee Status to Family-Reunified Women Improve Their Integration

In many refugee-receiving countries men are the principal asylum applicant, while women are admitted through family-reunification procedures. I document that admitting women as refugees themselves, as opposed to family-reunification, has significant impacts on economic integration and decreases their risk of being victims of intimate partner violence. Using an event study approach, I find that …

Linea Hasager

The Formation of Language Skills and the Economc Success of Refugees

Language instruction increase language proficiency of immigrants and stimulate further investments in their human capital

Mette Foged, Cynthia Van Der Werf

Economic Assimilation Research Network (EARN)

About EARN

EARN Publications

The Role of Institutions in the Labor Market Impact of Immigration

EARN Working Papers

Sick of your poor neighborhood

Early labor market entry, language acquisition and labor market success of refugees

Integrating Immigrants by Addressing Labor Shortages? A Policy Evaluation

Language Training and Refugees' Integration

EARN Work in Progress

Does Granting Refugee Status to Family-Reunified Women Improve Their Integration

The Formation of Language Skills and the Economc Success of Refugees

Team

EARN Researchers

Linea Hasager

Postdoc at the University of Copenhagen

Iben Bolvig

Senior Researcher at VIVE

Jacob Nielsen Arendt

Research-leader at Rockwool Fonden

Janis Kreuder

Former Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Copenhagen

Mette Foged (PI)

Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen

EARN Affiliates and Partners

Mia Renee Herløv Jørgensen

Phd. Student at the University of Copenhagen

Cynthia Van Der Werf

Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University

Giovanni Peri

Professor at the University of California, Davis

Jakob Roland Munch

Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen

Lars Larsen

Founder of LG Insights