ESSAYS ON MIGRATION: MINIMUM WAGE, MIGRATION AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS MIGRANTS

The impact of the statutory minimum wage on employment and wage inequality has been studied in great detail. This research aims at analyzing the impact of the minimum wage policy set at the federal level on the internal and external flow of migrants (2011-2017). Analyzing migration patterns separately for West and East Germany we find that the share of migrants and internal displacements rises to high bite intensity regions of West and East Germany at varying levels that are the regions prior to the reform more employees earned less than EUR 8.50. Carrying a year-by-year analysis for west Germany we find that the migrant proportion (both internal and external) and net flow (external) rise by 0.15 p.p. approx. for the year 2016 followed by 0.11 p.p. and 0.146 p.p. respective increases in the high-intensity bite regions relative to the low-intensity. The share of early career migrants or low-skilled migrants, being the policy target group rises by 1 p.p. approx in 2016 and falls to 0.5 p.p. in 2017 while we do not find any impact on educational or asylum migrants. The share of internal migrant women increases by 0.2 p.p. approx. (2015) and lowers down to an increase of 0.13 p.p. (2016) and 0.1 p.p. (2017). This result is in line with the reducing gender wage gap post-introduction of the German federal minimum wage. There is potential for further in-depth and heterogeneity analysis on other outcomes as well. International migration has been a regular part of the policy debate for the past decade. The rise of right-wing populism in European nations and elsewhere has brought to light the relationship between immigration and the natives' attitudes towards migration and migrants and in the Western European context the literature has focused on this question across countries or regions. This paper studies the above relation using the European Social Survey (ESS) cross-sectional data for 111 Western European regions over two points in time and using a shift-share instrument to address the endogeneity issue around migration. We find a positive relation of immigration on different measures of attitudes toward migration, that is the perceived effects on culture and the restrictiveness of the desired qualifications (an index) of the migrant between 2000 and 2010 when accounting for marginal effects with the initial migration stocks in 2000 in upper quartiles. With a 1 p.p increase in the migrant share in the region, the restrictiveness index falls by 0.0068 to 0.0107 std. deviations depending on the initial migrant stock in 2000. The natives on average do not perceive cultural threat with the increase of migrants in the regions with the highest level of the initial stock of migrants in 2000. In particular, the increase in migrant share by 1 p.p. positively changes the perceived effect on culture by 0.014 s.d. (shift-share instrument by region) and 0.011 s.d. (shift-share instrument by country).