Working papers

Adema, J., C.G. Aksoy, P. Poutvaara (2023), The Effect of Conflict on Ukrainian Refugees’ Return and Integration CESifo Working Paper No. 10877

Abstract What is the causal effect of conflict on refugees’ return and integration? To answer this question, we launched a panel survey of Ukrainian refugees across Europe in June 2022 and combined it with geocoded conflict data. Most refugees plan to return, and initial return intentions strongly predict actual return. Those who initially plan to settle outside Ukraine integrate faster. Increased conflict intensity in the home municipality discourages return there, but not to Ukraine as a whole. It also has no effect on the likelihood of working. Liberation of the home district increases return, while increased pessimism about the outcome of the war reduces return intentions.

Gehring, K., J. Adema, P. Poutvaara (2022), Immigrant Narratives. CESifo Working Paper No. 10026

Abstract Immigration is one of the most divisive political issues in many countries today. Competing narratives, circulated via the media, are crucial in shaping how immigrants’ role in society is perceived. We propose a new method combining advanced natural language processing tools with dictionaries to identify sentences containing one or more of seven immigrant narrative themes and assign a sentiment to each of these. Our narrative dataset covers 107,428 newspaper articles from 70 German newspapers over the 2000 to 2019 period. Using 16 human coders to evaluate our method, we find that it clearly outperforms simple word-matching methods and sentiment dictionaries. Empirically, culture narratives are more common than economy-related narratives. Narratives related to work and entrepreneurship are particularly positive, while foreign religion and welfare narratives tend to be negative. We use three distinct events to show how different types of shocks influence narratives, decomposing sentiment shifts into theme-composition and within-theme changes.

Adema, J., C.G. Aksoy, P. Poutvaara (2021), Mobile Internet Access and the Desire to Emigrate. EBRD Working Paper No. 264 Vox EU Column

Abstract We analyze how mobile internet access affects desire and plans to emigrate. Our empirical analysis combines survey data on 617,402 individuals with data on worldwide 3G mobile internet rollout from 2008 to 2018. Exploiting temporal variation in 3G rollout from 2,120 subnational districts in 112 countries, we show that an increase in mobile internet access increases the desire and plans to emigrate. Using lightning incidence as an instrument provides additional evidence that the effects are causal. The effect on the desire to emigrate is particularly strong for those with secondary education. In line with our theory, an important mechanism appears to be that access to the mobile internet lowers the cost of acquiring information on potential destinations. In addition to this, increased internet access reduces perceived material well-being and trust in government. Municipal-level data from Spain shows that 3G rollout also increased actual emigration flows.

Works in progress

  • Low-cost Language Learning: a Boost to Move? Evidence from Duolingo (draft available upon request)
  • A Welfare Assessment of Migration in the Presence of Technological Change and Trade– with Panu Poutvaara
  • Between Compassion and Contempt: Home Country Events and Hosts’ Attitudes – with Padmaja Kadambi
  • What drives refugees’ destination choice? Evidence from a conjoint experiment among Ukrainian refugees – with Lasha Chargaziia, Yvonne Giesing and Panu Poutvaara

Peer-reviewed publications

  • Adema, J., Nikolka, T., Poutvaara, P., Sunde, U. (2021), On the stability of risk preferences: Measurement matters. Economics Letters, 110172
    • We exploit the unique design of a repeated survey experiment among students in four countries to explore the stability of risk preferences in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Relative to a baseline before the pandemic, we find that self-assessed willingness to take risks decreased while the willingness to take risks in an incentivized lottery task increased, for the same sample of respondents. These findings suggest domain specificity of preferences that is partly reflected in the different measures.

Other publications

  • Adema, J. (2024), Missies met koningspaar naar Duitse deelstaten leiden niet tot meer handel. (in Dutch) ESB
    • An argument in defense of royal houses is that they are important in economics diplomacy. I use the staggered trade missions of the Dutch diplomatic mission to the German federal states with the king and queen since 2013. In a triple/gravity staggered DiD framework I find that those trade missions did not increase exports nor imports.